Aubergine Stuffed Pepper

3rd June 2017

I've gotten a bit exhausted with some of the other veggie cookbooks. Its becoming a lot of veggie side dishes rather than full meals, which is great sometimes, but not when I'm bulk cooking for work lunches. So I turned to some old fashioned recipes.

Smaller cubes of aubergine were set to fry in a large frying pan with salt, pepper and garlic until it began to soften. Then I added the passata and stirred in some grated cheese.

I poured the aubergine mix into a bowl and used the tomato and spices left in the pan to briefly fry either side of a halved pepper to soften it. This was then filled with the tomatoey aubergine and topped with grated cheese. The peppers were baked for approximately 10 minutes until the peppers are cooked through and the cheese is melted.

I served the peppers with a quorn steak which was novel, I normally don't eat vegetarian substitutes. But it was actually pretty nice. The whole meal was really delicious. The recipe made enough for a second portion of stuffed peppers for a future lunch at work.

After such a delicious cheesy lunch, I just had to go for a sunny walk along the river and drink some Pimms. Cheers!

In the Meantime..

Various dates in May 2017

In between the other recipes in May, I made a couple of quick things.

The first was vanilla and camomile cupcakes which can be found in an earlier blog post here: http://cookingwithgingers.blogspot.com/2015/04/camomile-vanilla-cupcakes.html

There wasn't a lot of difference with this batch other than I made the cupcakes smaller and go further. I think this was probably the most successful batch of butter icing actually. The consistency was beautiful and there was the perfect amount to cover all the cupcakes fully.

I also made a couple of stir-frys from the mix and match pages from A Modern Way To Cook. This provides lists of ingredients under the headings "greens", "crunchy", "sweet", "carbs" etc. which allows personal taste and preference in creating wholesome meals.

In my favourite combination so far, I used broccoli, sweet potato, tofu, sugar snap peas, vermicelli noodles, chilli and sesame. It was pretty high in calories but really tasty and across the board healthy.

Quinoa and Pearl Barley Risotto

23rd May 2017

I'm not sure if I made this correctly or not. I mean, I made it like the recipe said, but it ended up being way more than the 4-6 portions suggested and it was very oniony. Still, pretty good.

First, the leeks were finely chopped and gently fried in coconut oil until slightly browned.

The quinoa and pearl barley were added along with some lemon juice and vegetable stock. This was simmered for around 20 minutes, when most of the liquid was absorbed and the grains were tender.

Petit pois and spring greens were stirred in and cooked briefly. Finally, the small cubes of feta went into the mix along with salt and pepper for seasoning and topped with basil. This lasted me over a week of meals, and was very filling and nutritious. However, I was very ready for a change of lunch by the time I got to the last portion. Note to self: sometimes I eat way less than a recipe suggests!

Ricotta & Courgette

1st May 2017

I should be better at writing this blog in a timely fashion...

So more salady recipes as we enter summer! First, we got a big slab of ricotta cheese and topped it with honey, lemon zest and chilli powder and baked it in the oven.

Meanwhile, I finely chopped some pepper, chilli, spinach and added some courgette spaghetti to a bowl.

When the cheese was supposed to be browning on top (the honey was getting golden I guess...?), I added the pistachios for a further few minutes to roast.

Finally this was all mixed together with a little pesto to create a creamy salad. It was a great lunch option for a couple of days, although pretty high in calories when you think about the cheese and nuts. Proteinous!