Recently...

... I've been a bit lazy on the cooking front. What with so many weekends away (brothers wedding, weekend in london, dates ;) ) there's just not been the time or the motivation to get creative. There's also the fact that cooking is way more fun when you have people to share the products with.

I've taken to checking other blogs daily and now have a massive folder of bookmarked things that I need to make when I finally have reason to/space in the kitchen to store etc.

It's not to say I haven't been eating well of course, but I've shifted to much more wintery foods recently, like cabbage soup, veggie chillis, dhals and tomatoey butter bean stews. I definitely need to dig out the slow cooker and make some casseroles soon, it's currently being outshined by my pressure cooker - never realised just how handy it is!

Exciting food to come soon, including the nightmares of long distance xmas dinner planning. That's right, the shopping has been left up to me this year. Gulp.

Nut roast

After a late night conversation about vegetarianism and how my friend thought it would be difficult to get everything required from a vegetarian diet I've been thinking about vegetarian meals. This week I'm going to make my friend a greek inspired meal with hummus and tomatoey butter beans, to show him just how much good stuff you can get without meat.
In the process of deciding what to cook I stumbled upon nut loas recipes. As it's a Sunday I decided to go all out and make a roast. Usually I don't bother as a roast for one is a lot of work and just a bit depressing. A nut roast on the other hand appealed to me as it could easily become a sandwich filling for the week, and doesn't require lots of dishes and prep.

As usually I started off with an idea about what I wanted to put in it, searched around for recipes which met my desires, came up short so decided to put together my own version. All the quantities are pretty approximate, which is annoying for anyone trying to copy, but I make no apologies for this, adjust everything to your own taste and enjoy!

Nut roast, savoy cabbage, ketchup and mayo

Nut roast

150g mixed nuts (I used salted roast mixed nuts from sainsburys)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 leek, sliced
1 stick celery, diced
1 carrot, diced
handful mushrooms, diced
1 tbsp flaxseed
handful grated cheese
1 tsp mixed herbs
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
splash worcester sauce
1/2 cup fine breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten
Salt and pepper, to taste

Start off by blitzing the nuts in 2 batches, you want some fine and some left chunky. In a large bowl combine the nuts, breadcrumbs, cheese, flaxseed, herbs, mustard and worcester sauce. Mix and set to one side whilst you prepare the vegetables.

Heat a frying pan with a little oil. Add the onions and leeks, turn down the heat and cook for around 5 minutes until softened. Add the celery and carrots and cook for around 10 minutes. Finally add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes more.

Add the vegetables to the bowl. Mix everything together and then add in the egg. Mix well using your hands. It should form a loaf type consistency. If too wet add more breadcrumbs, too dry you can add a little bit of extra egg, a little oil or more sauces eg mustard.

Shape into a loaf tin and bake in a preheated oven at 160C for about an hour.

Tasty tasty loaf

Spinach and sweet potato Chana Dal

Baby its cold outside.... So it's time to start cooking warming hearty food again, this doesn't mean it has to be unhealthy or overly heavy. A couple of weeks ago I bought Chana Dal in the supermarket when I was restocking on lentil type things. This is the first time I have ever made something with them, so we shall have to wait and see how it turns out, though I'm pretty confident that enough spices will make everything ok.

Spinach and Sweet potato Chana dal curry type thing

1 sweet potato, skin on, chopped into 1cm cubes

1/2 cup chana dal, prepared for cooking as per packet instructions

1 medium onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, sliced

2 green chillis, 1 left whole, one chopped

100g frozen spinach (this is a total guess as to the quantity I used)

1 tsp tumeric

3 cardamom pods

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chilli powder

1/4 tsp fenugreek powder

salt

oil for frying

Arrange the sweet potato cubes on an oven tray, drizzle with a little oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for 20-25 minutes in a preheated oven at 180C until the cubes are tender. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Boil the chana dal with 1 tsp tumeric, the whole chilli and the cardamom pods until cooked, around 30 mins for me. Drain if any water remains and set aside.

Meanwhile heat a heavy based frying pan with a little oil. Add the spices and fry until fragrant, then add the garlic chilli and onion. Turn the heat down and cook for around 5 minutes until the onion is soft, stirring occasionally. Add the spinach and stir well, adding about 1/4 cup of water, or more if desired. After around 10 minutes mix in the sweet potato and adjust seasoning, I always find that what appears to be a lot of salt is required. 

Stir the spinach mix into the cooked dal, check seasoning and mix well. Serve with or without rice and yoghurt. 

My curry turned out to be pretty spicy so I stirred a few spoonfuls of yoghurt through it towards the end of cooking. Got to say for an experiment it turned out pretty well 

Duathlon and a lack of food

So full time work is busy... Surprisingly so. I get home in the evenings and it feels like I sit down and all of a sudden its time to sleep. I really don't know where the time goes and the level of darkness these days makes it always feel later than it is.

As such my cooking style has changed. These days I tend to cook one big meal a couple of times a week and then eat it for lunch/dinner until it runs out. I think the next thing I'm making will be cabbage soup, I'm looking forward to trying the recipe I got from my colleague.

Despite not cooking much my meals are all pretty healthy (with the exception of this week where I went out to TGI Fridays and ate my weight in ribs on monday and tonight when I destroyed a massive chinese...). I'm making a lot of things like soup, veggie chilli/bolognaise and the odd curry.

I made this earlier in the week, and I've got to say it's amazing. I made a few changes, including cooking it in the pressure cooker, I'd forgotten just how much faster everything cooks in it. I have decided that I must make more use of it for interesting and quick meals.

As for the title of the post? Well tonight I took part in the VA triathlon, though I only did the duathlon (ie running and cycling). Overall time was 27:56 for 2.5km run and 10km cycle, given the lack of training I did I'm pretty happy. And I got a medal, so it was totally worth it.