simple sag aloo!
July 15, 2011 § 1 Comment
Sag aloo [or saag aloo or even saag aluu] is one of those amazing things that if you’ve never had it you’ll never miss it, but it’s so cheap and easy that once you have in your repertoire it’s very tempting to trot out at any given opportunity. Usually served with roti bread, or nan or even rice, it’s a sort of catch-all term for leafy greens – usually spinach [sag] and potatoes [aloo] that are fried in mustard seeds and other spices. I usually team it up with a meaty curry, but sometimes it’s just as nice on its own, which is what myself and husband refer to as ‘pauper’s curry’ as it’s a really dirt cheap meal when you’re craving spice and carbs. Mmmmmmm…… spicy caaaaaaarbs……
get a bit of bread time!
July 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
Some days in the golden kitchen I have hours to research, tweak, fiddle and faff about with what we’ll be eating. Other days, when there’s somewhere else to be or something else to do there’s barely enough time to chew and swallow, never mind prepare food. We had such a day this week, when husband was going to have a turnaround time of 10 minutes from arriving home before we had to leave again and make the mammoth car journey to Castlebar. I say mammoth not because it’s far [about an hour's drive] but because it’s one of the most awful twisty depressing roads I’ve ever had the misfortune to travel. If there wasn’t for the lure of shops, people, and general town-like-activity at the end of it, then I’d happily never travel that road. But I digress…
Sunday evenings in our house when I was growing up were called ‘get a bit of bread time’. Mum would have been knackered from cooking the obligatory roast chicken lunch, [the same meal every Sunday for over 40 years - my parents are nothing if not consistent!] and any hunger pangs later in the day were, in her eyes, up to ourselves to sort out. The premise was that you [a] got a bit of bread and [b] put something on it and [c] ate it. Which is what we did the other day…
bacony butternut squash!
July 10, 2011 § 1 Comment
Well, here’s a thing – today’s goings on in the golden kitchen are also inspired by that episode of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s ‘River Cottage Everyday’ that was on telly the other night. I say ‘inspired by’, because as I watched it I thought ‘oh yum’ but forgot the details of it all about half an hour later… I usually make soup with roast butternut, and I have stuffed them before, but something about Hugh’s addition of bacon and nuts to the stuffing triggered something in me. Something deep, deep down within me that said ‘MUST. EAT. THIS. SOOOOOOON.” I had a squash in the fridge that I was planning to roast and soupify anyway, so armed with what I could remember of Hugh’s recipe I set off.
And in my personal history of eating things stuffed with other things, I think this was the most delicious stuffed thing I’ve ever eaten. Really, I’m not just saying that. It was amaaaaazing….
