An easy, quick dinner

Whoops! Consumed before imaging!

I suppose this idea is based on bruschetta, but it's not really like proper bruschetta at all. It uses lots of convenience ingredients so it's easy on your hands and easy on your time. I'm sure you can chop and change the vegetables used in here easily, as long as they are fairly swift to cook (no turnips!).


Quick 'bruschetta'

Serves 2

Takes around 20 minutes


2 bulbs of fennel

2 courgettes

Olives (amount to taste)

8 artichoke hearts

350g jar of your favourite pasta sauce

200g garlicky/herby cream cheese

Bread of your choice (I chose ciabatta rolls)

Garlic butter (or just use garlic bread)


* Slice up your veggies whilst heating some oil in a pan and preheating your grill (broiler, I think). Spread the garlic butter on the bread, if using.

* Gently fry the courgettes, fennel, artichoke hearts and olives until soft, which should take around 7-10 minutes.

* Pop the buttery bread under the grill. Stir in the cream cheese and then the pasta sauce into the veggies and lower the heat to simmer and thicken for about 10 more minutes. Keep an eye on it so it doesn't go dry.

* When the bread is lightly toasted serve with the veggie mix on top.

Fennel and lemon risotto & easy pasta bake

First up is the fennel and lemon risotto.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1089640/fennel-and-lemon-risotto

Now, I'm not a big risotto fan (overexposure as the veggie option in restaurants), but I have to admit this was delicious. The wine gave it a very strong tang; if you omit it you will have to really make the effort to add more flavour elsewhere. The fennel was lovely and buttery and imparted a flavour that synergised well with the lemon; that scented, fresh flavour that makes this a very summery dish.

I served it as recommended with shaves of parmesan, which I think is a must. My gripe is that without any sides, this wasn't a very big dish. I compensated a bit the second time by adding more rice and stock, and luckily my second fennel bulb was a bit bigger. Oh and I can't stand zesting lemons, but there's really no way around it; it's the zest that adds the real lemony hit.

Overall a very good recipe, one that I would make again if I can be bothered to zest!



Secondly, the cheesy broccoli pasta bake.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1094665/cheesy-broccoli-pasta-bake

I messed around quite a bit with the recipe, making it with the white sauce I usually make and adding some sweetcorn because I didn't think just the broccoli was enough veg. There's nothing much else to say about it really, it's a standard pasta bake. It can be rather bland if the sauce isn't tasty enough, so really make sure there's plenty of garlic, mustard and herbs in there. I even chucked in some old parmesan I had.

I put in the broccoli raw and it cooked just about enough but still a bit crunchy. I like it like that, but if you don't then boil it first. I also added herby breadcrumbs under the cheese topping.

It was ok, but I prefer making my pasta bakes with tomato based sauces.

Spring soup

This is a big, chunky broth that I put together to celebrate the fact that spring was coming! I overestimated the size of my pan though and ended up leaving out some of the ingredients, including some extra stock which would have been useful as I kept it overnight. Make sure you use good quality stock, as the vegetables by themselves aren’t especially tasty. I used Knorr’s premade vegetable stock.

Spring Soup

Serves a generous 4

Time to make close to an hour with inefficient time keeping and inexperienced chopping!

1.5 litres of good vegetable stock

1 crown of broccoli

4 plum tomatoes

100g green beans (French beans)

1 large courgette

Bunch of spring onions

3 measures of garlic (cloves, sliced, or tsps. of Bart’s)

1 bulb of fennel

Few springs of thyme

75g pasta for soup or broken spaghetti

Seasoning

Optional: a dollop of pesto or cream cheese or parmesan (or all 3?) for on top.

Optional: bread to serve with

* Prepare the veg – separate the broccoli into small florets. Slice the courgette thin, long slices. Chop the green beans in half and deseed the tomatoes and slice thinly. Finely slice the fennel and the onions. Heat some oil in a large saucepan.

* Fry the fennel, garlic and spring onions on a medium heat for around 15 minutes, making sure they don’t brown too much.

* Add the rest of the veg, the herbs, the pasta and the stock and seasoning then bring to the boil. Cover, then simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve hot with dollops of pesto (or whatever your prefer) and some good bread.

Fennel and artichoke orzo

Orzo is a little pasta shaped like a rice grain. I had some left after using it in soup, so I cast around for a way of using it up. This turned out to be a very filling pasta dish; the packet on the orzo said use 75g-100g per serving and I used 100g. It made a bit much, so today I’ll stick to 75g. The dairy in the dish could be made using whichever you prefer: cream, crème freche, fromage frais… I made this after the indulgent Christmas period so I used 0% Total. Also any pasta could be used, although stiring this all into tagliatelle might be a bit tricky. Oh, and watch out, orzo goes really gooey!

Fennel and artichoke orzo

Serves 4

Took around 45mins to prepare and cook

2 fennel bulbs, sliced

350g drained and chopped artichoke hearts (can be marinated or tinned)

300ml cream

Generous splash of dry white wine

50g Parmesan cheese

125g Spinach (shredded baby spinach is best, but I used chopped frozen)

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

30g butter

Olive oil for cooking

Orzo pasta (allow 75g dry weight per person)

*Saute the fennel over a medium heat in the butter and olive oil until soft and caramelised (around 20 minutes should do it)

*Add artichoke and cook for a further 5-10mins

*Stir in cream, mustard, wine and parmesan and bring to the boil, then simmer for 5mins.

*Meanwhile cook the orzo in a large pan of salted water for about 8-10mins then drain well.

*Add the orzo and the spinach to the sauce and cook until spinach is wilted.

Additional notes: On the second run I added some pine nuts for a bit of variation on texture. I also sprinkled in some dried savory - it really brings out the flavour whilst still being extremely subtle.