Help ~ I Think I’m Evolving!

~  Menu  ~

Leftover Haluski in a Creamy Tomato Sauce

Crunchy Fried Pappardelle

Glass of Secret Red

1 Square (honest) of Caramel Chocolate

Coffee

I bought some fancy pasta the other day; Pappardelle made by The Bay Tree - it was pretty and called out to me and, in any case, I had a cunning plan.

I wanted to try Haluski which is an Eastern European “peasant” dish of egg noodles tossed with onions and cabbage that have been cooked in butter.  I had it for dinner last night and it was a heck of a lot tastier that I expected. 

Haluski  ~ for 2

1 thinly sliced medium onion

2 good handfuls of thinly sliced cabbage

225g wide egg noodles, cooked and drained

1 generous knob (if you can imagine such a thing!) of butter

~   Melt the butter, add the onion and cook stirring from time to time till tender and starting to brown.

~   Add the cabbage and cook for another 5 or 6 minutes, its nice if this too is starting to caramelise.

~   Stir in the noodles and heat through.

That’s pretty well it.  Some versions have caraway seed added but not mine, I can’t stand them. After tasting the Haluski from the pan, as this was to be my entire meal, I doctored it a bit with some leftover Serrano ham, some Gran Padano and a little smoked black pepper.  Nice dinner.

I couldn’t eat it all, as is so often the way, and this happily lead on to today’s lunch.

As you know I do like a bit of crunch with my meals so I fried a few pieces of the leftover pappardelle in olive oil to crisp and heated the rest of it up in a mixture of my favourite bought in pasta sauce and double cream. The fried pasta came out exactly as I had hoped and imagined, crisp but with a bit of chew, and went so well with the sauce I might do it again but fry the lot!

Lunch pudding was a single square of J.D. Grosse’s 70% Dark Ecuadorean chocky with crystals of slightly salty caramel in it.  I have written about this make of gorgeous chocolate before , it is not just any chocolate, it is Lidl’s finest!  I couldn’t decide whether to have any or not, on the one hand I had just eaten a lunch high in calories and fat so didn't deserve any but, on the other hand, what did it matter after eating all that bad stuff.  So I compromised.

Help ~ I Think I’m Evolving!

I think I should stop compromising and start being more abstemious!  I'm not sure if I am just getting fat or maybe evolving if this cartoon, which I’ve had in my wallet for years, is anything to go by!

Embarrassing Pringle Situation

~ Menu ~

Fresh Pappardelle

A totally inappropriate Spicy Fresh Tomato Salsa

White Wine Spritzer

No Pud

Bit of a strange lunch today – a sort of fusion dish that could have been better!

I had half a bag of fresh pappardelle left over from my recent trip to Waitrose. I ate the first half of the pack a few days ago with a delicious …

Creamy Chilli Roasted Tomato Sauce 

Enough to coat 225 g (raw weight) pasta and feed 2 people

about 8-10 cherry tomatoes

drizzle olive oil

salt and pepper and a few chilli flakes

1 tsp tomato paste

15g butter

200 ml double cream

50g freshly grated Parmesan plus more for sprinkling

~ Halve the tomatoes and toss together with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and a light sprinkling of chilli flakes to taste.
~ Pop into a hot oven for about 10 minutes, during which time …
~ make the sauce.
~ In a medium sized sauce pan melt together the butter and the tomato paste.
~ When melted add the cream and bring to a boil.
~ Immediately turn down the heat, add the cheese and stir till melted.
~ Simmer, stirring, till thick.
~ Add the roasted tomatoes and any juices.
~ Toss with the hot pasta and sprinkle with more parmesan cheese.

Pictured before the
embarrassing Pringle situation

Unfortunately I wanted a quick lunch and hadn’t got anything really appropriate with which to dress the pasta. I did, however, have some fresh tomato salsa that needed using up and some parmesan cheese (of course) so I cooked the pasta and tossed all three things together. It tasted well but the sauce was too runny and tended to slide off and lurk about in the bottom of the bowl. I had to eat in a scooping and slurping fashion. 

 The other problem I had was that, as previously mentioned, I do like a bit of crunch with my food and I had none. So I’m afraid I did something rather strange. I am not proud of this but I crumbled a few Pringles over the dish and they did help a bit. I know, I know - I am a complete Palestine!

Fresh Tomato Salsa – some vague guidelines

~ Peel, seed and finely chop about 500g nice ripe red (and yellow and green if you can get them) tomatoes.
~ Seed and finely chop a mild or a hot (or medium heat) chilli.
~ Crush 1 or two garlics to a mush.
~ Finely chop a handful of fresh coriander or parsley.
~ Mix all together, add a mini-glug of olive oil and the juice of half a lime (or an orange is good and a lemon's not bad).
~ Taste and season.

Of course it is pretty cold here and snowy but has been a lovely bright sunny day. This morning the air was full of what looked like tiny silver threads that weren't snow and that drifted about (both upwards and downwards) and sparkled in the sunshine but didn’t seem to lay on my sleeve however hard I tried to catch some. Very pretty and I tried to take a picture but it came out nowt (I am under a severe Geordie influence reet noo!) No-one we spoke to knew what it was or had seen such a thing – any ideas?