Quinoa dinner

I really like the nutty flavour of this grain – quinoa – but I only thought to use it as the basis of a meal the other day (when we had eaten pasta too often!). Halfway through cooking, I had the idea that vinegar and honey would complement the flavour of the quinoa, and it worked really well. I added a bit of pomegranate molasses for extra zing (I think lemon juice would work equally well).

The only problem was that I overcooked the quinoa – so don't try and make it look like the picture! I'm also still using up my (wonderful) glut of tomatoes and runner beans, but you could substitute the vegetables with other ones. I think butternut squash and spinach could work really well.

Quinoa dinner

Serves 2

100g quinoa, rinsed

1 tablespoon vegetable stock (such as Boullion)

A handful of cherry tomatoes

6 runner beans

1 yellow or red bell pepper

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses

Cook the quinoa according to the packet instructions (it's available in Waitrose, and don't let it lose its grainy-ness - mine turned into stodge quite quickly!). Add the vegetable stock to the quinoa and water as it's boiling and give it a quick stir. Add the runner beans, tomatoes and bell pepper towards the end of cooking. When the quinoa is cooked (you may have to drain excess water) add the vinegar, honey and pomegranate molasses, and season to taste. Serve hot with bread on the side (the bread in the picture is from a wonderful Turkish deli on Isabella street in Southwark).

Indian spiced pitta pockets

I was chatting to a friend at work this week and she told me about how her family cook Indian food. She was brought up in a Hindu home in Birmingham and explained that the base flavour of every curry consists of three spices: black mustard seeds, turmeric and ground coriander, and all the different variations of Indian dishes can be made from this base. I was inspired to try this for lunch today so I made this filling for pitta bread.  It had a nice, subtle flavour because I didn't add any chilli (which you could, of course, add if you like).

Indian spiced pitta pockets
Serves 2

2 pitta breads
1 chicken breast
10 cherry tomatoes
1 teaspoon sunflower oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt

To serve:
Salad leaves
Mango chutney

Heat a frying pan to a medium heat with the oil and add the black mustard seeds. Heat until they pop, then turn down the heat and add the turmeric, ground coriander and salt. Chop the chicken into strips and add to the pan. Fry until almost cooked through and then cut each tomato in half and add them to the pan. Toast the pitta breads while the tomatoes are warming (I used our toaster, so much easier than the oven!). Cut open the pitta pockets and fill with the chicken mixture once all pieces are cooked through. Serve with salad leaves and a teaspoon of mango chutney on the side.

Fresh garden vegetable pasta

I've been watching green tomatoes grow all summer and now I'm finally getting a regular supply of tasty, red, ripe ones (it's almost September!), although I should be very grateful really, because these tomatoes grew without me realising when I used some of last year's tomato growbag to top up the pots on my patio. So instead of growing flowers, up came tomatoes! I didn't even realise they weren't flowers until they were quite big and had that tomato smell. Shame about the flowers. I also have some late runner beans, which my Granny gave me as little plants. They're enjoying the wet weather and beginning to grow some delicious beans. The rest of the vegetable patch contains some gladioli, which were going to be cut flowers but only one made it into the house, a cabbage from last year that survived the caterpillar attack and a forgotten pepper plant that might grow a pepper, one day. You can probably tell, I'm not that great at maintaining my veg patch, which makes me all the more grateful for this lovely pasta dish, the ingredients for which grew all by themselves!

Fresh garden vegetable pasta
Serves 2

100g spiralini (or your pasta of choice)
8-10 fresh cherry tomatoes
4 runner beans
A handful of capers, rinsed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
A handful of marjoram (or oregano - I just happen to grow marjoram in my garden)

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the packaging. Chop the runner beans into short lengths, about 2 cm each and add to the pan with the pasta towards the end of cooking. Chop the tomatoes into quarters and the capers into smaller pieces (I find this distributes their salty flavour, especially the bigger varieties). When the pasta is cooked, drain most of the cooking water, but leave a few tablespoons of water behind in the pan. Add the tomatoes, capers, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and toss to combine. Sprinkle the marjoram on top to serve.

Home-made croissants

I embarked on an adventure this weekend and attempted to make croissants from scratch. I had lots of fun making the pastry - definitely the thing to do on a cold rainy weekend. Except it was a hot, sunny weekend so I missed out on the good weather! I didn't mind - what could be more fun than going back to the kitchen every few hours to do something more to progress the pastry?

I found that the proving step is very important (otherwise they're heavy and doughy, much like bread if you don't prove it), and it's important to keep it as cold as possible, as with other pastries.

I inadvertently made mini croissants because I hadn't quite worked out how long the triangles have to be to make ones of normal size. However, they were very cute and my colleagues certainly enjoyed sampling them!

I used the instructions from here. Annoyingly, the ingredients are on the first page and the instructions on the other pages, so had to keep going back to refer to the ingredients. Apart from that, I don't think I can improve upon the recipe, so I'll just leave you with a couple of photos.

Marrow and spinach lasagne

A friend of ours came round last week for a church meeting and she arrived holding a marrow! Apparently something had made it difficult for her and her husband to get to their allotment, so the courgettes they were looking forward to, had turned into marrows. I also had the lasagne sheets in the freezer left over from my pasta-making day, so I made it into a delicious lasagne. I used cottage cheese for this, which did look a bit ugly in the pan (a very lumpy cheese sauce!) but tasted good and wasn't noticeable once it's assembled. You could use ricotta, of course, but I couldn't find it in my little local supermarket. Low-fat soft cheese would also work well. This would be a good vegetarian dish if you omit the bacon.

Marrow and spinach lasagne
Serves 2–3

For the green part -
500g spinach
1/4 of a marrow, peeled and deseeded then grated (I used the trusty food processor for this)
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

For the white "sauce" part -
2 cloves garlic
1 small red onion
3 rashers smoked bacon, chopped
1 small tub of cottage cheese
4 tablespoons of vegetable stock (or a generous sprinkle of Boullion and water - you can mix it in the pan, which saves washing up!)
1 teaspoon English mustard


fresh lasagne sheets (I used mine straight from the freezer)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Finely chop the red onion and soften in a pan with some oil. Add the garlic and after about 5–8 minutes, add bacon and fry until cooked through.

Grate the marrow and defrost (if using frozen spinach) the spinach. If using fresh spinach, roughly chop it. Use half the spinach to form a layer on the bottom of the dish, then add half the marrow on top. Spinkle half of the nutmeg and half of the pine nuts on top.

Add the cottage cheese to the bacon and onion mixture, then add the stock and mustard and taste for seasoning (It was pretty salty by this point due to the bacon and stock, which seasoned the whole dish nicely).

Layer lasagne sheets on top of the marrow, then add half of the sauce and more lasagne sheets. Add the marrow again with the rest of the nutmeg and pine nuts, with another layer of lasagne and sauce, followed by the final layer of lasagne. Top it off with the rest of the spinach and the parmesan.

Place in the hot oven for 20 minutes. I have a grill in my oven so I switched it to grill at the end to get the top crispy.

Enjoy with a fresh salad!