The weather was stunning last week, sunny with bright blue skies and first blossom on my cherry trees.  Everything looked absolutely normal from up here on the hill, the water of the estuary and Cardigan Bay beyond glistening and twinkling, very beautiful.  Easter weekend and the following week are usually a mad-house, with tourists flooding in, eating ice creams, munching chips and catching unsuspecting crabs from the jetty, with the beach crammed with families, wind-breaks and sand castles.  By contrast, the silence continues to be truly deafening.  The lock-down continues to be observed, and face masks, visors and latex gloves are increasingly commonplace.   I continue to play with my new cooking regime, and it is an interesting challenge that amuses me, but although the tone is light, the reality is very much on my mind. 

Saturday

On Friday I made myself a lamb shawarma on the bbq, along with two sausages and a couple of chicken thighs.  I kept the sausages for brunch on Sunday, dipped cold into Levi Roots Reggae Reggae sauce (we all have our vices!).  I used the chicken thighs, beautifully smokey, to make a chicken Caesar salad.  I cheated.  I have never actually summoned up the courage to make my own Caesar salad dressing, and always buy the Cardini bottle version.  Fortunately for me, the Aberdyfi Village Stores sells it, so I was able to slosh it all over the place as usual.  I like my chicken Caesar salad with Romaine lettuce, salted anchovies and wedges of par-boiled egg, as well as little cubed crutons painted with olive oil and done under the grill.  I forgot to take a photo.

Sunday

Pan-fried plaice fillet with capers, served with creamed leeks, lemon zest, peas and bacon pieces, and some shallow-fried semi-circular “chips.”  I love the distinctive flavour of plaice, subtle but unmistakeable.  I find that any cooking method other than poaching works a treat.  Poaching drains the flavour and does nothing for the texture, whereas frying, grilling or roasting all lend real depth to the flavour and firm up the texture.

Normally I would dredge the fish in egg and then flour, but I am short of both so just fried it directly in butter with a scattering of capers, allowing the butter to go brown and nutty.  The creamed leek part of the meal is so easy.  The bacon bits are gently fried in a little butter, the leeks, peas and lemon zest are added and left soften in a lidded saucepan for a few minutes before adding a splash of wine and a good slosh of single cream.  Heat gently until nearly ready to serve and then raise the heat to bubble the wine and cream, which will thicken it up.  I rarely eat chips at home, because I don’t have room in my kitchen for a deep fat fryer, and I am a bit wary of a pan of boiling oil in my kitchen, but my Mum used to do the following, something that was very like a chip but shallow-fried.  A spud is sliced into oval discs about 1cm thick, and these can be halved into semicircles.  These are  parboiled for 5 minutes, during which time about 2-3cm (1 inch) of cooking oil is heated.  To test if it is hot enough, put in one of the slices, and if that starts to sizzle, put the rest in.  If they have been par-boiled they take about five minutes after the heat has come back up to sizzling strength.

In the excitement of having my first chips in months, I served myself far too many, but the leftovers were frozen down for incorporation into a mash I am planning for next week.

I love all types of fish, but it is remarkably difficult to get hold of here, which seems mad for two neighbouring seaside villages.  The only local supplier of fish is excellent, usually operating in Aberdovey between Easter and October (when the weather allows him to go out in his boat), but obviously has a limited variety of stock, confined to what he can catch locally.  At the moment, of course, he is closed for the duration.  Vacuum-packed salmon, cod and haddock are usually available in the small supermarkets, but anything else is rather beyond their scope.  I got into the habit of buying my seafood in the Chester and Wrexham areas when over in my father’s direction and returning them here to put in the freezer, and today’s plaice fillet was bought elsewhere and frozen down, but obviously that’s not practical right now.  I am still eating my way through the freezer, but when I have enough space I will see if I can buy online from specialist seafood suppliers, although if other online food shopping is anything to go by, that may be impossible.

Monday

Melanzane alla Parmigiana (aubergine in parmesan cheese).  One of my favourites and one of my occasional vegetarian dishes.  Perhaps surprisingly I can buy aubergines locally.  I didn’t have the right ingredients for a classic Melanzane alla Parmigiana in the fridge, but this alternative version worked remarkably well.  The main ingredients missing were mozzarella, which is wonderful in this dish, and fresh basil for the topping.  I replaced the basil with bottled basil pesto, added in blobs as I built up the layers in the ovenproof dish (which I will do in the future, as it worked brilliantly), and added fresh oregano on top, and replaced the mozzarella with leftover feta (which gives a very welcome touch of brightness and freshness to the dish) and cheddar.  It wasn’t as great as mozzarella, but it was pretty good.  Fortunately, I had plenty of Parmesan, purchased on my last shopping trip.  It is cooked in two parts.

First, the sauce.  I put some halved tomatoes in boiling water for a couple of minutes, plunging them into cold water to remove the skins.  Then the garlic and onions are sautéed in olive oil until the onion is soft, about 5 minutes.  The tomatoes, garlic, onions and, in my case, a big glug of Big Tom are whizzed up in the food processor and poured into a pan.  Next, finely sliced fresh chilli or dried chilli flakes, and some serious grindings of black pepper are added to the mix.  The resulting sauce is then simmered for around 15-20 minutes.  At this point pre-heat the oven to Gas 6/200C/390F.

Second, the aubergine needs to be cooked.  Slice the glossy, dark-skinned aubergines into disks about 5mm-1cm thick.  Pour some seasoned flour into a bowl and toss the aubergine in the flour.  Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, making sure that the oil is very hot so that the flour stays on the aubergine and it cooks quickly rather than sucking up all the oil.  Fry til golden-brown on both sides and drain on kitchen paper and allow to cool.

The final stage is to layer the aubergine with the sauce, blobs of basil pesto (if using) and cheeses in alternating layers in an ovenproof dish.  First the aubergine, then the tomato sauce and pesto, then the mozzarella and parmesan if you have it, or other cheeses if you don’t, pushed down into the sauce, followed by the next layer of sliced aubergine. You simply repeat the layers until you reach the top layer of aubergine.  Add a thin layer of the sauce, cheese and a good sprinkling of parmesan.  If you want added texture, you can mix the parmesan with breadcrumbs, which is what I did tonight.  If you have no fresh herbs to serve when it comes out of the oven, you might want to sprinkle some dried herbs in with the breadcrumbs.  Then pop it in the oven for around 25 minutes, but keep checking towards the end of the cooking time to make sure that it comes out when bubbly and golden brown, before the top burns.  Serve with fresh basil on top, or whatever you have as an equivalent.  I put one lot of oregano on top before I put it into the oven, because I like them crispy, and another lot of fresh just prior to serving.

It is difficult to retrieve a portion from the oven dish tidily, and it looks like a disorganized heap on the plate (at least, it does the way I do it), but the flavours are great.  I served it with a small salad of diced cucumber and tomato in a little gem leaf, with ground fennel seed over the top, a serious hit of black pepper and sea salt, and a French vinaigrette dressing based on tarragon vinegar.  The tarragon vinegar is simply made by stuffing a pack of fresh tarragon into a big bottle of white wine vinegar and resting for a couple of weeks for the flavours to develop.  Tarragon is usually available from the Tywyn Spar, which almost always has an excellent selection of fresh herbs.  Feta would have been a good addition but I needed the last bit in the fridge for the melanzane itself.

I often serve this as an accompaniment to another dish when I’m cooking for more than one;  it works very well as a side dish with just about any meat or white fish dish.  I made nearly double what I needed and will be having the remainder with as an accompaniment to Tortilla Española later in the week.

Another version of this dish adds crisped Parma ham layer to the last layer of aubergine, which then has the rest of the top level added to it as above.  Alternatively, the same combination of vegetable ingredients are also very good when finely chopped or roughly whizzed in a food processor and used as a sauce over pasta, with or without meatballs, with the cheese dotted here and there, and baked or grilled until the cheese melts.

Tuesday

Ethiopian chicken curry (Doro Wat).   The Ethiopian national dish is a top favourite of mine, a very simple one-pot meal.  It is made with berbere spices.  The Co-Op in Tywyn does a Bart tin of berbere spice mix, but it is also easy to buy online.  My favourite blend is sold by a third party on Amazon.  Berbere is basically made up of chilli, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, cloves, allspice, paprika, carom, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg and black pepper.  Seeds and pods, rather than ground spices, are used wherever possible.  It has a warm, aromatic punch with a bit of heat, and this permeates whatever is cooked with it, especially when marinated overnight.  As well as chicken, it is traditionally made with hard boiled egg, which is spectacularly good.  The soft but solid texture and blandness of the egg is a wonderful contrast to the rest of the curry’s textures and its rich flavours.  I chucked in a couple of dehydrated limes and some okra into mine, because I love them, but they are not part of the traditional recipe.  I also had some aubergine left over from the melanzane alla parmagiana, so that was also thrown in, chopped, and fried with the onions.  This is a slowly cooked dish, so I do it in the slow cooker (pre-heated for half an hour on high and then dropped to low), but it can be done in a casserole dish on a very low heat on the hob just as easily.

I use bone-in chicken thighs because I like the flavour, but I remove the skin beforehand and render it down for frying the onions.  It’s a simple dish if, as I do, one avoids making one’s own berbere spice mix and Niter Kibbeh (spice-infused clarified butter, although it’s on my to-do list because it looks wonderful).  First the chicken is marinated in the berbere spice mix with olive oil, sea/rock salt, sliced ginger, crushed garlic and lemon juice overnight.

When ready to cook, heat some olive oil in a frying pan, chop an onion, some garlic and sliced ginger and fry it.  When it has heated through and is just beginning to brown, tip it into the pot with a small glass of white wine, a spoon of honey and enough stock to create a sauce.  Into the frying pan, add the marinated chicken thighs and allow the entire dish to heat gently, turning to ensure that both sides are warmed through, and then tip into the slow cooker or casserole.  If it is in the slow cooker, and you are using four thighs that you have warmed through in the frying pan, five hours on low will do fine.  If you are heating on the hob, two hours on a very low setting should be fine.  This allows all the flavours to mature and blend.

Traditionally Doro Wat is served with very thin flat-bread called injera.  It would probably work well with rice or cous cous too.  I am a complete salad addict, so love this served with a fresh green salad, with feta when I have any (unfortunately used up now), as many herbs as possible, with a major mint component.  I also made my usual Greek yogurt, mint and cucumber mix to serve alongside it.

I made two batches, one for me and one for the freezer.

Wednesday

Multi-national tapas:  Tortilla española and melanzane alla parmigiana.  In England a Spanish Omelette is often made with mixed veg, and is very good, nowadays usually referred to as a frittata and great for using up leftovers, but the traditional version in Spain, where my family lived in the 1970s, is made just with potatoes and onions, which is what I have done here.  In Spain tortilla española (pronounced torteelya espanyola)  is eaten hot, warm or cold, and all work for me, usually served with herb salad but here with leftover melanzane.  They are often served in cake-like slices as tapas, which are eaten either singly as quick snacks or with other tapas to make up a meal.  If I am cooking for more than one, I like to make them small in diameter but thick in depth, which is how they were served where I lived.  Every time I make one I am propelled back in time nearly four decades to the hills beyond Barcelona, where we spent many summer weekends riding horses or collecting blackberries in the sunny, dry and deeply aromatic countryside, wrapping up our activities with a deep slice of freshly made warm tortilla, at least 3 inches thick, before returning to the city.

Whether you slice or dice your spuds is a matter of personal choice.  I slice them because I like the laminated texture that it creates.  They are parboiled for around 5 minutes and drained in a sieve until all the steam escapes.  Again, dicing or slicing onions is down to personal preference.  I like them sliced, and quite thickly so that the onion retains its texture.  The onions are fried (with garlic if using).  The parboiled potato slices are then browned.  Eggs are whisked together lightly.  The egg mix is simply seasoned with salt and pepper.  You can either tip the onions and potatoes into the egg mix and pour into the pan, or mix the potatoes and onions in the pan and pour the egg over the top.  The more onion and spud you have, the less egg you need to fill the pan, but you still need enough to cover the contents.  But more egg makes it more of an omelette. It’s a matter of preference.  Milk can be added to make the egg go further, but the resulting tortilla is blander.

The tortilla is made in a small frying pan or skillet.  The traditional method is to cook it through on the hob, very slowly.  When the top is still a little runny, slide it onto a plate, place the empty frying pan over the top and flip the two together so that the undercooked top lands on the bottom of the frying pan.  This will create an evenly cooked tortilla.  When ready, just a few minutes later when you think the base will be golden, slide the omelette out on to the plate.  Job done!

I had a slice warm with the leftover melanzane alla parmigiana from Monday, heated through in the oven.  Two tapas-type portions, and boy did I enjoy it.  Anything tomato-based goes well with anything egg-based, with textures and flavours offering good contrast to one another.  In Cataluña square slices are served in French-style bread, the classic Bocadillo de Tortilla Española.  My school was a lovely old pink villa on the outskirts of Barcelona, and its tiny tuckshop sold the some of the best Bocadillo de Tortilla in the city.  The rest of the tortilla will be breakfast tomorrow instead of my usual toast, and my evening meal on Friday.

Thursday

Burger in a bun with toppings.  Burgers are so personal.  I like mine made of plain, good quality mince, lightly seasoned, with an egg to bind it together, and left for at least half an hour to consolidate in the fridge, so that it doesn’t fall apart.  Other people like onions, Worcester sauce and/or herbs in theirs, even a cheese filling.  Whatever the component parts, the beef must be of very good quality.  Accessorizing a burger with sauces, relishes, pickles, salad etc, is even more of a matter of individual preference.  I like mine with pickled gherkins, French’s American mustard, Heinz tomato ketchup, and raw onion slices, usually in a super-fresh soft or crispy white bun (mine came out of the freezer, but still not bad).  Part of me knows that it is completely disgusting but oh, it works so well!  This is my most guilty food secret, but fortunately I only fancy it very rarely. I sometimes have a salad on the side to alleviate some of the guilt, but today it was pure self-indulgence.  I placed the burger in my George Foreman grill to cook, and the rest is just a matter of assembly.  It is the ultimate fast food, very oozy and messy, which is  usually my idea of hell!  But for some truly bizarre reason it is heavenly.

Friday

Today was a total abdication of cooking responsibilities, even worse than yesterday’s in terms of effort expended, but a lot healthier.  I had cold tortilla española with a green salad liberally accessorized with Fragata olives stuffed with lemon (which I am trying to mete out as I only have two cans left), capers and salted anchovies.  I ate early as I had skipped my usual slice of morning toast and was walking in the sand dunes for over three hours, coming back hungry.  The sun was still shining and was gloriously warm, and it was wonderful to sit outdoors eating my tortilla and salad with a glass of chilled Chablis in the sun.  Bliss.

This week’s conclusions:

There’s not a lot to add to the last two weeks, but here are a few additional thoughts.

1. Although proper cooking is excellent and rewarding, even when dumbed down for the available ingredients, it turns out that sometimes a burger in a bun is just what’s really needed.
2. Substitutions really are excellent.  I’m beginning to get into the swing of it, and although I was really not enjoying having to substitute perfectly matched ingredients for whatever happened to be in the fridge, I have found that some of my substitutions have given a real lift to dishes that I had never considered changing.
3. Store cupboard spices and herbs change the way anything tastes.  You could have a freezer full of nothing but chicken, but if you also had a cupboard with a good mix of herbs and spices you could change how it tastes every day of the week and never get bored.
4. Making enough for two or more meals has been a life-saver.  I love cooking, but it’s time consuming to do it every day, and making enough for later in the week or depositing in the freezer really lightens the load
5. Milk, cream, egg whites and soft cheese like Brie and Perl Wen can be frozen.  Cheese doesn’t ripen any further when you take it out of the freezer, so it has to be perfect when you decide to freeze it down.
6. Thanks to Jan for this thought. If vegetables begin to look sad and old, or you simply have an excess of them, they can be frozen down for making sauces and soups later.
7. And thanks to Lisa for this thought.  If elderly or excess vegetables are compatible they can be made into a sauce there and then in the blender and then and frozen down to be used over pasta or as a base for casseroles and stews later.
8. I miss fish!

Glorious daffodils, the tiniest of the narcissi providing an amazingly powerful and lovely, heady scent.

I enjoyed my experiments with a new approach to shopping and cooking last week and learned a few things about myself.  Chief amongst these is that without knowing it, my basic approach to shopping and cooking has always been very ad hoc, and random, which is another way of saying that as a shopper and cook I am generally a seriously disorganized heap, very unsystematic.  Last week I sat down and planned a week’s worth of menus for myself based on what I had in the fridge, freezer and cupboards.  It’s how my Mum used to organize things, planning a week’s worth of menus, which must be vital when managing family dining, but not something I’ve really ever tried, except at Christmas.

The horrors of the coronavirus are there on the news every day, and I am very aware that this is a frightful, agonizing time for a lot of people.  I am trying not to add to that, and changing my disorganized shopping habits seemed essential, but I was surprised that it was something I enjoyed doing – for which I am deeply grateful.  So, onwards and upwards.

By Sunday I had, over a period of about a month, run out of spuds, carrots, broccoli, cheese, Greek yogurt, mushrooms, cream, cooking wine, bread and milk (the latter not a disaster, as I’m not a tea or coffee drinker), with a single lemon left to play with (sob!) and only a small amount of plain flour left, half a pack of cornflour and no other types of flour in the house.  By Wednesday I had also used up all the fruit but for one pear, salmon, olive oil, the last lemon, the remains of a heroic courgette (bless it, it carried on for three weeks and was still in great condition), asparagus, eggs, bread, and lemon squash (my equivalent of tea and coffee).  So I went shopping in Tywyn on Wednesday, just under two weeks after my previous shopping expedition.  As I used to shop around twice a week, that seems to count as some sort of achievement.  Those purchases, combined with the stuff still in my freezer,  should see me clear of shops for another fortnight, which helps with the social distancing.

Saturday

White wine vinegar, peppercorns, butter, an egg (from which only the yolk is required), a shallot, small bay leaves, a salmon fillet, asparagus tips and sliced courgette.

Poached fillet of salmon served with griddle asparagus, bacon bits, courgette and an Hollandaise sauce.  A small fillet of salmon was one of the unexpected finds when I did an inventory of the contents of my freezer.  A rumble in the fridge produced the last of some elderly asparagus and about a third of a courgette.  Asparagus and salmon are a marriage meade in heaven.  Usually I wrap the asparagus in Parma ham, but I didn’t have any.  So I decided to substitute a rasher of bacon, and slice it into strips after cooking, just to add some additional flavour.  I had a block of Welsh butter that was past its sell-by date, so this was an ideal choice.  Hollandaise is incredibly fattening, but pure luxury, and it ties together the salmon and the asparagus brilliantly.  A reasonable substitute would be mayonnaise.

An impromptu bain marie, at the back, with a glass bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water heats the sauce, reducing the chance of splitting, very much like cooking with chocolate.

Hollandaise is something that my Mum taught me how to do, using a traditional method, and it has only ever split on me once, ironically when I was on holiday in France and using a salt-free butter.  I have since found that you can use salt-free butter, but it must be added far more slowly than salted butter.  It is a bit of a faff doing it the traditional way, although it works, so you might want to have a look around for quick versions using melted butter, which a lot of chefs recommend.

Mum’s method is a two-part job, first reducing a combination of white wine vinegar, lemon juice, white wine, bay leaf and crushed peppercorns to a third of its volume.  Then, the reduced liquid is mixed in a glass bowl with egg yolk, placed over a pan of simmering water, and the butter is then added by chunks, incorporating each before adding another, until it emulsifies into a sauce (about five minutes).  Keep an ice cube to hand if you’re going to try this for the first time, because if it does start to split due to over-heating, you can rescue it by chucking in an ice cube and stirring until it rights itself, whereupon you retrieve the ice cube.  If it gets too thick, stir in small spoonfuls of cold water until it is the right consistency.  This recipe on the Leiths website is pretty much the same as mine, except that my glass bowl sits on a small saucepan of simmering water, ensuring that the bowl does is a good distance from the water (see my photo; the glass bowl sits on a small pan at the back of the hob).

Other than that, it’s dead simple.  I griddled everything in the one pan – the salmon, courgettes, asparagus and bacon, but a frying pan or grill are just as suitable.  In fact, there is always a danger with the griddle sticking, so make sure that everything is lightly coated with butter or oil before it goes on to a griddle, that the griddle pan itself is lightly oiled, and that the griddle is very hot.  It always slightly alarms me to see the griddle pan smoking, but it works perfectly.  The bacon strips were a bit of a wild experiment, and looked out of place on the plate, but were delicious with all the other ingredients.  Lucky!  I forgot to photograph the finished product, but the Hollandaise was a daffodil yellow, thanks to the combined colouring of a particularly rich egg yolk and the butter, and the texture was superbly silky.

Sunday

Chopped pork and laverbread sausages (skinned), low salt stock cubes, parmesan cheese (which I didn’t actually use in the end), garlic, tortellini, chopped onion, chopped skinned tomato, fennel, chillies and black pepper.

Deconstructed sausage, fennel seed, tomato and chilli sauce over pasta.  Years ago I saw this Jamie Oliver recipe in a food magazine and gave it a whirl.  His pregnant wife was addicted to it at the time, and he called it Jools’s Pregnant Pasta.  This version of it has been a quick-to-table favourite of mine ever since, especially when I am feeling lazy. The last of my stock of the Aberdovey butcher’s pork and laverbread sausages were the stars of this meal, although they were deconstructed (the sausage is extracted from the cases) to combine with the other sauce ingredients.  Again, it’s an easy meal, one of the easiest.  It would be even easier with tinned chopped tomatoes, whereas I use skinned fresh tomatoes whizzed up in a food processor.  Tinned ones are far too sweet for me, just a matter of preferences.

I think that Jamie Oliver does it with rigatoni but although I usually use tagliatelle, I needed to use up the tortellini that I used for the wild garlic pasta last week.  So it was just a matter of frying the onion, garlic and deconstructed sausage meat, sprinkling over some dried chillies, ground fennel seeds and some dry thyme (I don’t have dried oregano, but that’s better), and then adding the tomatoes and letting it simmer.  I also added a serious glug of Big Tom, a tomato drink with chilli and celery, because the tomatoes were rather tasteless even though they added useful texture.

Then I boiled the pasta and added it the sauce with a couple of spoons of the pasta water to loosen up the sauce, and it was job done.  I usually sprinkle fresh basil over it, or fresh oregano from the garden, but I have no basil and my oregano plant is looking very sorry for itself after the winter.

I had enough sauce left over for a second meal, so decided to have that on Wednesday, with two days in between to provide a reasonable gap.

Monday

Chicken, bacon and mixed vegetable casserole.  After a rumble in the freezer last week, I found the contents of a chicken, bacon, carrot, mushroom and frozen pea pie (i.e. leftovers).  Happily it worked just as well as a casserole. I made it about a week before the lockdown kicked in.  The chicken is browned with the mushrooms and chopped bacon and the veg.  Once softened slightly, flour is sprinkled over the top and stirred well to incorporate the flour.  White wine, chicken stock or water is then added.  It bubbles for 15 minutes with a large bay leaf, then a dollop of cream, some parsley and oregano.  All terribly easy, plonked into the freezer and ready to plonk into the oven when I wanted it.  I originally intended to top it with mash, but I had run out, so instead I served it with pointy cabbage, which seems to last forever in the salad draw of the fridge, and afterwards munched a beautiful William pear.

Tuesday

Ham horns with a diced salad on a bed of Romaine lettuce.  I bought romaine lettuce the week before last, and it had been sitting obediently in my fridge looking perfect, but I knew that it wouldn’t last forever.  It was perfect salad weather, sunshine and blue skies, so it time to switch gear from cooking hot dishes and getting on with assembling salad materials.

I usually have a slice of toast for breakfast and then something small for mid-afternoon if I feel like it, but often I go from toast to the evening meal without anything in between.  For some reason, on a Sunday I usually have brunch instead, and it is sometimes a simple tomato, raw onion (purple, Spanish or shallot) and caper mix plonked on toasted French or Italian bread (given the current situation, last Sunday it was a slice of Village Bakery Large Tin!).  The toasted bread is brushed with olive oil, and the salad mix is topped with a drizzle of vinaigrette made with German mustard, loads of black pepper, and basil if it’s available.  But that mix also makes a great salad when the bread is replaced by the sort of lettuce leaves that hold the other ingredients, like Romaine or little gem, which is what I did here.  Two Romaine leaves provided beautiful little vessesl for the other salad ingredients, including all of the above, plus chopped mint and cubes of feta.

Ham horns are an invention of my mother’s, and when she did them they were wider at the front an narrower at the back, hence horns, and looked great on the plate.  I can never get it right and have given up, so mine are simple tubes.  I made my own mayonnaise, but often use a good shop-bought mayo that I keep in the fridge for when I’m being lazy or don’t have any eggs.  Then it’s just a case of hard-boiling an egg and chopping it into a bowl of mayonnaise with as much parsley, chervil or coriander as you fancy, seasoning it (salt, pepper, perhaps paprika, cayenne or fennel seeds), spooning it into the middle of the ham, pulling the sides together and flipping it over so that the edges are underneath and the horn holds together.  The ham horns are incredibly filling so, apart from the salad, not much else is needed.

Wednesday

I extracted the second part of Sunday’s deconstructed sausage pasta, and enjoyed it just as much as I did when I first made it.  The chilli packed more of a punch, and the flavours had blended beautifully.   I made no changes, but if I had had a handful of spinach or wild garlic to hand, and basil to tear and throw over the top, I would have included them for both flavour and colour.  Tortellini always expands surprisingly during cooking, and I only just remembered on time, throwing in less than I had initially put out to use, which was just as well or there would have been a lot left over.

Thursday

Cauliflower, mushroom, bacon and pointy cabbage in a cheese and mustard sauce, with a crunchy breadcrumb topping.  It was a gloriously sunny day, and I really wondered whether such a winter-style meal was a good choice, but it all needed using up, so I went ahead.  In the event, at this time of year when the sun goes down the temperature drops dramatically, and a good hot one-pot wonder was ideal.  I always use this particular dish for using leftover vegetables and other odds and ends like ageing mushrooms, bits of ham and bacon, all of which were chucked in.  It can be cooked on the day or the day before.   It’s easy, but the cheese sauce needs a close eye keeping on it, and the cauliflower must be very well drained if it is not going to turn the gooey sauce to liquid.

I fry the mushroom and bacon in advance and let them cool.  The cauliflower (together with cauli leaves), cabbage, and any other leftover veg are steamed or boiled.  The cheese sauce starts with a butter and flour roux, to which chicken stock is slowly added until it is good and thick, making a velouté.  A good glug of milk is added, and then the cheeses go in.  I had some almost tasteless orange stuff (Leicester?  Gloucester?), an excellent cheddar, some very old parmesan and some sharp, citrusy feta.  I diced it all and chucked it in, and a gorgeous sauce emerged.  The cabbage and cauli were drained for 15 minutes to allow the steam to be released.  Then the cauli and cabbage were added with the bacon, mushrooms and sage, and it was all stirred together.  Beadcrumbs were sprinkled lavishly over the top, parmesan was grated over the top of that, chilli flakes were sprinkled, black pepper was grated, and a few dabs of butter were added to the top to help it brown in the oven, for 25 minutes.

To cut through the smooth richness and unctuousness, I made a small salad with cherry tomato, romaine lettuce, sliced cucumber, capers, mint leaves, basil leaves, loads of salt and pepper and an acidic mustard vinaigrette.  I always mean to eat my meal and salad simultaneously, but usually I end up eating them consecutively, with the salad making up a second course.

Friday

Lamb Shawarma.  Another ersatz meal.  It’s a simplified and scaled down version of a Yottam Ottolenghi recipe, from his excellent book Jerusalem, and needs to be prepared the day before you want to eat it, because the lamb needs to marinate in the spices overnight.  I found a disposable bbq in my garage so and was only cooking for one I used a double lamb chop from the freezer, instead of the long slow roast and a leg of lamb in Ottolenghi’s recipe.  The list of spices, shorter than Ottolenghi’s, looks intimidating if you don’t do this sort of cooking often but fear not – the Coey in Tywyn sells a Co-Op branded version of a Shawarma mix that is simpler than the usual mix, but is a good substitute; I like it for seriously cheering up chicken in a chicken salad.  However, here are the spices that I usually use, which are a shorter list than the original recipe:  cloves, cardamom pods, fennel seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, fenugreek seeds, star anise, chilli flakes, cassia bark (Ottolonghi uses cinnamon instead), paprika, ground ginger, ground sumac, fresh coriander and garlic.  Most are available, remarkably, in the Tywyn Co-Op.

The seeded spices are dry-fried or dry-roasted for a few minutes, then ground using a pestle and mortar and added to a small roasting tin with the powdered spices, fresh garlic and ginger.  I mix them with a small amount of olive oil and rub into the lamb, and leave in the fridge to marinate overnight.  If you like it hot, a good hit of Tabasco or an equivalent gives it more of a hit.  Then, when you want to eat it, it’s a simple matter of putting it on the bbq or in the oven. I barbecued mine, with chicken and sausages for quick wins during the week.  It is usually cut into pieces and served wrapped in flatbread or pitta, but I think that the bready wrap dulls the flavours and I like it served as it is, well seasoned, with a mixed Mediterranean salad, the same as yesterday’s, with added feta.  Lamb and feta are a blissful combination.  The whole lot, lamb and salad, is sprinkled with fresh coriander but if it’s not available, parsley and a serious squeeze of lemon juice are good.

Conclusions

I replenished my supplies on Wednesday and still have some other ingredients to be getting on with.  All of the older veg that was sitting in the fridge over the last couple of weeks was used up, either to eat fresh or to contribute to meals for the freezer, with some more still in the fridge and in respectable condition, so I think I’m winning so far. The problem for me was always going to be vegetables, as my freezer was already well stocked with meat and fish, and a couple of other odds and ends (frozen peas, ginger, okra, breadcrumbs etc).

My culinary ponderings at the end of this week are as follows.

1. Substituting ingredients is surprisingly effective.  I’ve never put my mind to it before.  On a normal day, for the salmon meal I would have popped down to the shop and bought Parma ham and baby new potatoes.  But the courgettes were brilliant instead of the spuds, slightly caramelized, and the bacon, cut into strips, was surprisingly delicious.
2. I used an egg yolk for the Hollandaise sauce, and should probably point out that the egg white can be used in another meal (for example, whisking the egg whites to peaks for cheese soufflé or a puffier French omelette, or for making my favourite, tempura batter).  Alternatively, it freezes perfectly, so it can be frozen down for future use.
3. Again with the salmon meal, I intentionally cooked too much asparagus, as it as it was on its last legs.  I froze down what I didn’t eat for use in a future soup.  Cooked vegetables often give greater richness to soup than raw veg.
4. If you don’t have either frozen pastry or the ingredients for making pastry for a pie, good alternatives are mashed potato over the top (as used in cottage pie) or sliced potato (for example in Lancashire stockpot).  In the absence of either pastry or spuds, breadcrumbs can turn the meal into a gratin, and failing all of that, the usual pie contents still make up a great casserole.  All new thinking to me.
5. Right now, it is a good practice to hang on to stale bread, whizz it up in the food processor to make breadcrumbs and freeze them, and not just for gratins and crumbles or coating fish for frying.  In Spanish cuisine, breadcrumbs are a standard thickening for sauces and casseroles/stews, so if you’re short of flour or cornflour, it might be worth giving it a whirl.  The BBC Food website has loads more ideas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/breadcrumbs
6. Tomatoes are always a problem for me.  I really dislike tinned tomatoes because they are far too sweet for me, so I usually make tomato-based sauces by skinning over-ripe fresh vine tomatoes and whizzing them up in the food processor or finely chopping them, but even doing that, the ones that are sold in the UK are often fairly bland.  Tomato paste, passata or sun-dried tomatoes can give bland tomatoes a useful lift.  More unusual solutions are bottles or cartons of tomato juice, sold in the drinks section, and Big Tom (a bottled tomato drink with celery and chilli).  These would need thickening up for most uses, but they are surprisingly effective as a fall-back, which I’ve used many times before.  Big Tom was used very successfully in last week’s Chicken Bamya and this week’s deconstructed sausage pasta, because the salad tomatoes that I was left with were useful for texture and colour but almost completely tasteless.