I’m finally back , mainly because I remembered I meant to post more frequently and I realised I hadn’t been. This time I’m going to be posting a dinner I’ve made myself completely at my new student flat. It isn’t the first one I’ve made of course (I was cooking all last year) but it’s the first one I’ve actually bothered to photo so it’s the first “student” meal I’m posting. As you may have gathered this post was origonally meant to be posted 3 days ago but I’ve only just got round to finishing it.
The day I cooked this from scratch was one of those days where I got back and really really didn’t want to cook, but didn’t really have a choice in the matter (not if wanted to eat) I actually cooked this a few days ago, but I made enough to last 4 days.
So this is what I had, pasta (very typical student), vegetable & bean sauce/stew, broccoli and fried aubergine. On Wednesday and Tuesday (when I cooked this) I had it slightly different. (I was at home on Thursday night so didn’t have this)
This is how I had it on Tuesday and Wednesday: pasta, vegetable & bean sauce/stew and green beans.
basically on Tuesday I cooked it then stored the pasta and sauce in tubs in the fridge to reheat then cooked fresh greens each day.
So onto the cooking. I knew I was going to do a sauce/stew with all the veg I had in the fridge in it. I know from past experience that carrots take a lot longer to cook than other veg so it’s best to steam them so till they’re nearly cooked first then add them to the sauce or everything else gets over cooked. So to start off I sliced up the carrots, I had fairly thin carrots so i just cut them into circles but if you’ve got larger ones you could cut them smaller, once these were cut I putt them in the steamer to steam through while I got on with the rest of the sauce.
I began with a base of a carton of cut tomatoes with chilli, I then added a tin of borlotti beans (for protein) I used these cos I had 4 tins of them but you could use whatever beans you wanted. I then sliced two medium onions and half a pepper into cubes and added these to the mix. I would have added more veggies but these were all I had. I then thought I’d better put in some Flax Seed Oil, this stuff is disgusting, but in a vegan diet, if you don’t want to take supplements, this is one of very few sources of Omega 3’s and 6’s which are very important to stay healthy. As I said it’s disgusting but if you put it in a sauce you usually can’t taste it, I however did put too much in, which lead to a mad dash to try to mask the taste with other stuff, all I had was salt, ground pepper and mixed herbs, I added a very tiny amount of salt (I usually wouldn’t add any to a sauce) and more ground pepper and mixed herbs than I’d usually add, as I could still taste the flax oil I then decided the best thing to add was tomato ketchup as it was all I had that I could use (I would NEVER normally put this in) but I squirted some in and mercifully it did mask the taste of the flax oil. By then the carrots were steamed through to nearly cooked so I added them as well. It was at this stage I put the greens on to steam, as I mentioned earlier I had green beans on Tuesday and Wednesday, then I had broccoli Friday. Now green beans take a lot less time to cook then broccoli, but broccoli is more of a “typical” green (and it’s very healthy) but I didn’t have any broccoli till today and I had green beans which were open, so they needed using up. for the beans I took of the ends then sliced the longer ones in half then dumped them in the steamer, for the broccoli I cut of a few florets I sliced the largest in half (so it takes less time to cook then placed them in the steamer. You could have whatever greens you wanted I like these so it’s what I have.
Once the greens were cooking (and heading towards finished) I put in the pasta (as it hardly takes any time to cook) I put it in the boiling water I’m using to steam the greens (to save on washing up) while it’s going I’m continually stirring the sauce so it doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pan, once it’s bubbled up I usually take it as cooked and remove the pan with the sauce in from the heat, or turn it down to a very low simmering heat just to keep it warm. The greens are usually done before the past so I put these on the plate and then once the pastas done I use the steamer to drain the pasta. Once the pasta been drained I tip it back in the pan and put in a drizzle of olive oil and mix it round. Then put out however much pasta I want and add sauce and it’s done.
When it comes to fried aubergine, it’s totally up to you if you do this, but I love aubergine which is why I did it. It can be a bit finicky to get right, first slice the aubergine, I say about 5-7mm thick is best but if they’re ticker or thinner that’s fine just alter cooking time. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, then place the aubergine slices in (be careful as it will spit), sprinkle with a very small amount of sea salt then turn over and sprinkle again, then leave these sizzling. They do need to be watched very carefully or they will burn and you will have carbonated aubergine. When they’re done they should be browned all over and still slightly mushy, make sure you cook both sides too. Then serve immediately.
So that’s it that was tea for most off last week!