Categories
aubergine coconut courgettes creme fraiche cumin food lime rice tomato video

roasted vegetable chilli with parmesan wedges

Those lovely people at Vouchercodes.co.uk asked me to come up with a family-friendly money-saving recipe.  Just for them I made roasted vegetable chilli with parmesan wedges. They filmed it to boot. Watch the whole recipe below on YouTube:

Fun fact: I wasn’t going to make wedges, it was supposed to be polenta fingers. Unfortunately the wrong ingredients were delivered! Disaster. A quick rummage around the store cupboard and I settled on (what else) potatoes instead.

Make sure you pop along to see others in the series, such as Meemalee’s Burmese Chicken Noodles and Helen’s Blue Cheese and Fig Gnocchi.

My full recipe is below:

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roasted vegetable chilli with parmesan wedges

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 3 courgettes
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds heaped
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds heaped
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 red onion
  • 1 tin tomatoes
  • 2 red peppers
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika rounded
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
  • 1 tin kidney beans
  • 300 g long-grain rice
  • 1 tin coconut milk
  • 4 baking potatoes
  • 2 tablespoons grated parmesan
  • 1 lime
  • 300 ml creme fraiche

Instructions

  • First the veg prep: peel and quarter the onion, thickly slice the courgette, half the peppers and deseed, and quarter the lime. Cut the potatoes into wedges.
  • Get a large casserole dish over a low heat, the oven on to 180C, and a saucepan over a medium heat.
  • Lay the wedges in a single layer on a baking tray. Scatter over half the parmesan with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch each of salt and pepper. Roast for 40 minutes, turning occasionally.
  • Put the fennel seeds, cumin seeds, garlic and onion into the food processor with a pinch of salt and whizz to a paste, then add the tomatoes to blitz further. Add to the large casserole pan. Add the paprika and chilli powder.
  • Add the courgettes and peppers to the baking tray, season with salt, pepper and oil and put in the oven for 20 minutes until softened.
  • In the saucepan, dry fry the cumin seeds for a minute to get nice and aromatic, then add the kidney beans and their juices. Allow this to simmer away. After 5 minutes add it to the tomato pan.
  • Wipe out the kidney bean pan and add the rice and coconut milk. Simmer until the rice is tender, then leave covered until needed.
  • 5 minutes before they're done, scatter the remaining parmesan over the potatoes and allow to crisp.
  • Roughly chop the griddled veg and also add to the tomato pan.
  • Check the chilli for seasoning and then serve with rice, potatoes, lime wedges and a blob of creme fraiche.

Video

Categories
beef curry food lime

beef rendang

When Jamie started banging on about using brisket to save money, I didn’t need any convincing. I’ve been a fan of this largely ignored beef cut for years; I’ve got 5 or 6 recipes around here somewhere including the mighty cholent, a very popular dinner in this house.

I bought a lovely 2.5kg piece for £19, divided it up and froze half. I roasted the other half to serve 4 people generously and still had four portions left. Two of them ended up in this beef rendang. I don’t often get out to a Thai restaurant but this is my go-to order. It’s a thick, rich and deeply coconutty curry with a low, slow-burning heat.

And this recipe is a blinding version of beef rendang. As with every single Jamie recipe in existence I’ve dialled the heat right down but it still packs a spicy punch that really delivers. This one is going on regular rotation in my house.

Based on a recipe from Save with Jamie.

Beef rendang (serves 2):

250g shredded brisket (any cooked beef will do, or you could fry some strips of steak instead)

½ teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

300ml coconut milk

200ml beef stock

1 lime

Flatbreads or tortillas, coriander leaves and more lime wedges on the side

Coconut rice to serve

For the paste:

1 red onion

1 thumb-sized piece of ginger

2 cloves of garlic

1 bunch of fresh coriander

  1. Blitz the paste ingredients together with the coriander stalks in a food processor with some salt. Add some oil to a pan and fry this paste off for about 15 minutes.
  2. Add the beef, stock and coconut and bring to the boil. Simmer for another 15 minutes, grate in the lime zest and add lime juice to taste. Season and serve with rice, flatbreads, coriander leaves and rice.
Categories
beans chilli cumin food lime peppers rice tomato

15 minute chilli con carne meatballs

Jamie Oliver thunders on with another lightning-quick meal, this time turning his attention to chilli con carne. I’m no stranger to rapid chilli but this is a more hearty and balanced version than mine. This chilli dinner is from Jamie’s 15-Minute Meals.

The genius here is to disassemble chilli con carne’s parts (spiced meat, cumin, beans, tomatoey sauce) and cook each part separately. This way you get a “best of” chilli with all the things you love but in a fraction of the time.

I departed from Jamie’s recipe slightly – he used bulgar wheat where I went for regular basmati rice but the effect and timing is the same. I also didn’t have a lemon to hand so used a little more lime in the rice. He also grilled some chilli peppers as a garnish but they’re really not my thing so left them out. Other than that it’s exactly as is, and it’s extremely tasty. At 14 minutes to crank out it wasn’t too demanding on my time either! I’m especially a fan of blitzing a jar of peppers with passata to make a sauce base which I’m definitely going to repurpose in other recipes for a quick fix.

Chilli con carne meatballs (serves 4):

For the rice:

1 mug basmati rice

1 lime

1 cinnamon stick

For the meatballs:

400g beef mince

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 small jar peppers

4 spring onions

Bunch of coriander

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

700g passata

1 tin kidney beans

1 pinch cumin seeds

  1. For the rice, put the basmati rice with twice the quantity of boiling water into a lidded saucepan over a medium heat, along with half the lime and the cinnamon. Stir often while you get on with everything else.
  2. Combine the mince and garam masala with some salt and pepper and divide into 16 meatballs. Get them into a frying pan over a hot heat with a little oil, tossing regularly.
  3. Get another frying pan super-hot. In a liquidizer blitz the peppers, half the spring onions, paprika, half the coriander and passata to a smooth sauce and add this to the pan.
  4. Add the kidney beans and cumin seeds to the meatball pan. Once the meatballs are browned on all sides remove while you continue to heat the beans. Once the rice is cooked plate with the meatballs, sauce and beans, and garnish with the remaining coriander and sliced spring onions. Serve with creme fraiche or natural yoghurt if you like, and the lime wedges on the side.


Gary Fennon

Categories
chicken lime noodles peanut butter

chicken skewers, satay sauce and noodle salad

This recipe is adapted from one of Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals. If you’ve browsed around this blog in the last couple of months, you’ll have noticed that I’ve gone through quite a lot of them, and they’ve all been pretty fantastic. This is the first one that felt like a lot of fuss for okay results. I’m sure it could be simplified to a more straight-forward stir fry style recipe. I’ll be back with this one.

Chicken skewers, satay sauce and noodle salad (serves 2):

For the satay sauce:

½ a bunch of fresh coriander

A few slices of red chilli

1 clove garlic

3 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

1 tablespoon tahini

Soy sauce

2cm ginger

Zest and juice of 1 lime

For the chicken:

2 chicken breasts, diced

Runny honey

For the noodles:

1 nest per person

50g unsalted cashews

½ red onion

½ bunch fresh coriander

Soy sauce

1 lime

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon fish suace

1 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

To serve:

More fresh coriander

2 little gem lettuces, shredded

  1. Get a grill on screaming hot. Whizz together all the satay sauce ingredients in a food processor. Taste and check – more lime? More soy?
  2. Skewer the chicken breasts and baste with half the satay sauce. Drizzle with olive oil and pop under the grill for 10 minutes on each side, or until golden and cooked through. When you stop to turn them over, drizzle over the honey.
  3. Put the noodles in a bowl, pour boiling water over and cover for 5 minutes. Bash the cashew nuts to pieces and add to a frying pan and heat gently – make sure they don’t burn.
  4. Peel the red onion and pulse with coriander. Mix with the soy, lime juice, sesame oil and fish sauce. Taste and check for seasoning. By this time the noodles are probably ready drain, wash them under cold water and toss with the red onion salad.
  5. Back to the cashews, adding honey and sesame seeds to coat. Once golden, tip into the bowl with noodles and combine well.
  6. Serve the skewers on top of the noodle salad with lettuce, more coriander and the remaining satay to dip.
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