A Wee Bit of Cooking

I’ve made this successfully with home-made and with pre-made polenta before.  The former was unsurprisingly the best but I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at the latter on a cold, wet February day.

Polenta al Forno

(serves 2 with salad)

200g home-made or pre-made set polenta, cut into 1 cm thick slices or circles

300g spinach

1 clove of garlic, crushed

200ml passata or home-made tomato sauce

Handful grated mozzarella

Handful grated parmesan

Pepper

• Wash the spinach then add (wet) to a hot pan.  Cover and shake over the heat until the spinach has completely wilted.  Drain and squeeze all of the moisture out of the spinach.  Chop roughly.
• Add a drizzle of olive oil or butter to the hot pan along with the garlic and chopped spinach.  Cook over a med-high heat for a minute or so to cook through the garlic and dry out the spinach thoroughly.  Remove from the heat.
• In a shallow oven proof dish, add a layer of polenta followed by the spinach then the tomato sauce and the mozzarella.  Add one more layer of polenta and top with the parmesan and a sprinkling of pepper.
• Bake in a 190 oC oven for 40 minutes until golden and bubbling. 

Now that we’re reaching the end of January, the days are slowly but surely starting to stretch.  There are hyacinths on my windowsills and I’ve noticed  a few snowdrops starting to push out of the frozen ground.  It’d be easy to believe that spring is almost here but there’s fresh snow in my garden and  I’m still walking Marco in the dark before and after work.  That tells me we have a while to go yet.

One of the bright sides of this is more weeks to make and eat this soup.  Can’t get enough of it just now.  I’ve been making the ham stock version but the veggie version is great too.  Just don’t omit the parmesan rind.  It’s absolutely essential, imho. 

Winter Minestrone

(serves 6)

Splash of olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 rashers of trimmed back bacon (optional)

1 carrot, chopped

2 sticks of celery, chopped

1 fennel bulb, chopped

1/2 small turnip (swede to all you non-Scots – the yellowy one)

Sprig of rosemary, finely chopped

Bay leaf

Tin of tomatoes

1.5 litre ham stock (or vegetable)

1 rind of parmesan

400g tin of haricot or butter beans

100g wholemeal spaghetti

1 head of spring greens, sliced finely

• Heat the oil in a large, heavy pan.  Add the onion and bacon and cook for 5 mins.  Add the carrot, celery, fennel and turnip and cook over a medium heat for another 10 mins until veg is beginning to soften.
• Add the bay and rosemary.  Stir well.  Add the tomatoes, ham stock and parmesan rind.  Simmer for 5 mins before adding the spaghetti, beans and greens. 
• Simmer until the spagetti is cooked.
• Remove the parmesan rind and serve.

One day I’m going to  follow Christina,  Sophie and Celia’s examples and get some chickens.  They sound like wee characters, they looks amusingly grumpy, I really like the sound of their clucks and, as if all that wasn’t enough, they produce one of my very favourite foods: eggs.

Quite sure I’ve mentioned my love of eggs before.  Truth be told, I eat  far too many of them.  There’s just so much one can do with them!  This is my latest egg-based Saturday lunchtime obsession. 

Mushroom Baked Eggs

1 field mushroom per person, stalk cut out

1 large egg per person

Salt and pepper

Cayenne pepper

• Preheat oven to 200 oC. 
• Season inside of mushroom and place in shallow baking dish, gills up.  Bake for 10 minutes.
• Break egg into a cup.  Remove mushroom from oven and pour egg into the hollow of the egg.  Sprinkle with a little salt and cayenne pepper.
• Bake for another 10 minutes until the egg white has turned, umm, white and wobbles gently.
• Serve with something to dunk in the yolk.