Pak Choi

My best and worst day of the week is Wednesday. Its a low because I will spend all day working on my evil thesis but equally I get my vegetable box. This Wednesday I spent a lot of the day on Excel, which is very tedious. But then my ray of light arrived. This week in the box we got:

• Cabbage
• Pak Choi
• Courgettes
• Kohl rabi
  
• Tomatoes
• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Onions
• Potatoes
  

As soon as I saw the pak choi I wanted to make a stir-fry. The pak choi was huge, I have only ever seen the smaller ones before. So I got a veal steak to put on the top of a noodle based stir-fry. I know it seems extravagant to use a veal steak but we had some in the freezer from the Farmers Market. I remember that we had it because the day before the people who we buy the veal from appeared on the F Word.

Ingredients:

• 1 Onion, chopped
• 2 Garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 Red chilli, finely chopped
• Mushrooms, sliced
• Pak choi, roughly chopped
• Courgette, halved and sliced
• Fine rice noodles
• 1 Veal steak
• 2 Tbsp Oyster sauce
• 1 Tbsp Soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp Fish sauce
  

Cook the noodles as instructed on pack. Griddle steak as you like and leave to rest whilst you cook the stir-fry.

Fry the onion for a couple of minutes and then add the chilli and garlic for about half a minute. Then add the mushrooms and courgette and fry for a minute or two before adding the pak choi, oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce, cook for 2 mins. Stir in the noodles, serve with steak on top.

Cabbage Pesto

I have been wanting to make pesto for ages, but with amount of Basil needed for a traditional pesto made it quite pricey. The last time we were visiting Andrew's folks we were given 3 basil seedlings. As you can see for the photo they are doing well but not well enough to make pesto from.


I have seen loads of recipes for pesto made with rocket, spinach and watercress. So with spring cabbage in our box this week I decided to give a cabbage pesto a go.

I suppose pesto is a bit like Thai Green Curry paste everyone has there own recipe with different ratios of ingredients. SoI gave it a go. I used 2 tbsp of pecorino cheese, a handful of pine kernels, 1 garlic cloves, lemon zest, juice of half a lemon, cabbage leaves which had been cooked for 4 mins in boiling water and olive oil to loosen.

Andrew had gone climbing so I prepared everything beforehand. Its the scientist in me!


So when Andrew came back, I fried a courgette. I then added the tomatoes until they had soften slightly. The pesto was added, as was a pinch of chilli flakes. Finally cooked penne and a handful of black olives was added.

I didn't tell Andrew what the pesto was made with and he thought that it was made from parsley, so the cabbage taste obviously wasn't over-powering. I did put a lot of cheese in it though.

For the third week in row I will be entering this into this weeks Presto Pasta Night which this week is hosted by Hillary of Chew On That. Have a look at the round, which should on Hillary's site on Friday.

Ketchup

When I went to the Farmer's Market, the weekend before last, I bought 2 kilos of soup tomatoes to make tomato ketchup with. They had been sat in our kitchen for a week before I had to chance to make the ketchup.

I decided to use Jamie Oliver's recipe from Jamie at Home. The first stage is to cook the aromatics in olive oil, these included fennel, red onions, coriander seeds, 1 red chilli, 4 cloves and ginger.


I then added the 2 kilos of tomatoes, which I had chopped, to the pan.


I also added some water. This was brought to the boil and left to simmer until it had reduced by half.

I then pureed this with my stick blender and passed it through a sieve twice. Red wine vinegar and sugar was added and it was then reduced it until it looked like ketchup. This was then poured into sterilised jars.

We will let it mellow for a while and then we will be eating our own ketchup. Andrew wants to try and make Hugh's ketchup. So he might be making some rival ketchup. Watch this space . . .

Broad Beans

After the runner beans in last weeks box, this week we had broad beans. I wanted to put them with some pasta, so I started hunting around my book collection. I came across a recipe for broad bean and ricotta pasta in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries. I only made a couple of changes.

I podded the beans and boiled them until they were cooked about 8 mins. I then skinned the beans. I then gently fried some sliced garlic cloves, without browning, in some olive oil. After a minute, I added the beans and a handful of spinach. Then I added 25o g of ricotta and the juice of a lemon. The cooked pasta was added to this mixture.


Then pasta was dished with a drizzle of olive oil and some grated pecorino.

I am entering this into this weeks Presto Pasta Nights, which this week is hosted by Ruth @ Once Up A Feast. Make sure you have a look at the round up.

With the decent weather we have been having the veg box is getting a bit more exciting:

• Purple Kohl Rabi
• Spring Cabbage
• Spinach
• Broad Beans
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Potatoes

Meme

Jules from Domestic Goddess in Training has tagged me for a meme, here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their Blogs.

So here are my facts:

1. After my GCSE's I did a year of catering college before I decided that I wanted to do something a bit more academic and went off to do A-levels.
   
   
2. I would love to own a smallholding.
   
   
3. When I am not working, climbing or cooking , I love to go the cinema. Picking a favourite film is very hard for me, so I'll leave that for another meme.
   
   
4. I have appeared on BBC News 24 and some national papers talking about my PhD work.
   
   
5. By the time I finish my PhD I will have spent 22 years in education, you would have thought that I learnt something by now!

I tag

• Closet Cooking
• Tinned Tomatoes
• Blagger
• Yumblog
• Accidental Smallholder

Thanks to Jules for thinking of me.