Parsnip and bacon pasta

I was asked on Twitter if I'd posted this recipe ever. And whilst I was sure I had - some googling and checking of tags informs me that I haven't. Which is odd, as soon as parsnips come into season (usually after the first frost) it pops up on our menu. it's a quick and easy dish to make, and if you have parsnips arrive in a veg box, and lingering in the veg tray of the fridge it's a great way to use them up.

I'm not sure how, or why this works - the sweetness of the parsnips that start to caramelise seems to meld with the melted parmesan and the garlic just sort of lingers in the background. You could use a shedload of herbs to give this more oomph, but I have to say that this is how I prefer it. If I had herbs in the garden (next year hopefully) then I would probably add them, but I'm not buying those piddly packs from the supermarket in order to tart this up. I have plenty of other places that 90p could be spent.

Parsnip and bacon pasta

Butter - a fair bit, I'd say about 50g
Garlic - to your taste, I normally use 3 cloves
4 biggish parsnips
1 pack of smoked bacon, snipped into strips
About half a pack of parmesan (you know the pre-packed triangles you can buy.) If you're a veggie, Sainsbury's Basics hard cheese is veggie friendly as I know parmesan isn't
Pepper
I don't add salt to this because of the salt in the cheese and bacon, but it's entirely up to you
Pasta - normal portion size is fine. We tend to use fusili or penne, but that's just personal preference. I think this would be nice with taglietele but again, I wouldn't buy special pasta for a mid week supper.

Put the water for your pasta on to boil - the sauce takes about 10 minutes to cook so you probably want to start cooking the bacon now, and the rest as the pasta goes in
Snip the bacon into strips and cook in a frying pan. You want the fat to start to render down so that you're just left with the crispy bits. If you're watching your weight, then just cut the fat off and add the bacon in with the rest of the ingredients
Peel the parsnips. Then with your veg peeler, continue to peel them in strips until you just have the core left. I don't use this in this recipe but save it to add to soup.
Pop your garlic in your press to squish, or finely chop
Grate the cheese
Add about half the butter to a biggish pan (the one you've got the bacon in if you've already started) Let this melt down, then add your parsnips. Stir so that the parsnips are all mixed in with the butter and bacon and turn the heat down so that this continues to cook gently
Once your pasta is cooked, dunk a ladle or mug into the pasta water (you want about half a mugful) and pour that into your frying pan
Drain your pasta and add that to the frying pan, along with the rest of the butter and cheese. Stir again so the cheese melts
Season with pepper to taste and serve in bowls

I hope you enjoy, as I say it's a bit of a staple for us, and a nice different way to use up those parsnips.

Global Fusion Taste Team: Garlic, chilli and ginger

There's been a little bit of excitement in the Pantry of late, which should hopefully produce some interesting posts going forwards. Today is the first in a series of posts in my role as a member of the Global Fusion Taste Team. I answered a callout on Twitter for team members (I'm always a bit reticent to do that as I'm never sure I'm 'good' enough - well that's not true, I know I am, I just know that this blog and it's little following *waves* aren't up there with the big hitters) Anyway, this week a big box arrived, which had he been here would have led Mark to roll his eyes and ask if I've been online shopping at Lush again. In it was, a pinny, a recipe notebook (stationery and a pinny - can Worldfoods read my mind?) as well as a huge range of sauces and dips for me to try, work with and feed Mark with over the coming weeks. Excited? I am.

So Wednesday night loomed and courtesy of a meeting at work being cancelled we had a night in together. Off to Sainsos we went with the first challenge looming in my mind. It involved a garlic, chilli and ginger, dipping, or stir fry sauce. Having spent much of the recent weeks in hotels a stir fry really appealed, with lots of veg and some brown basmati rice.

Ginger, garlic and trinity are often hailed as the 'holy trinity' (apologies for the blasphemy) of Chinese cooking, and if I'm just doing a bog standard stir fry I will press or chop a couple of cloves of garlic, grate variable amounts of ginger and chop up a chilli as my base. Initially I thought the jar would work as a sub for these, but on sniff test and finger taste I felt it needed a bit more oomph for my tastebuds. On investigation, the recipe suggestion was to add more, so lesson learned - READ things in advance Penelope. I should also say that the last time I did a stir fry out of a jar it was about 10 years ago and I intially worried that it was going to be that incredibly cloying sweet synthetic taste I remembered, however this was light, fresh and not at all syrupy.

I should point out here that Mark likes things significantly milder than I do so I actually made two generous dishes from one jar of sauce, and both those dishes did two solid meals. Mark had his leftovers for lunch the next day, and mine went in the freezer for a later date.

Pantry Prawns; courtesy of Worldfoods

1 clove of garlic, pressed
Large peice of ginger grated
(to my shame) teaspoonful of lazy chilli
250g prawns (Mark had 2 chicken thighs finely sliced, and cooked until brown)
Red pepper chopped
Courgette chopped
Onion finely chopped
Spinach
Sweetcorn
(I forgot I had edamame beans and green beans in the freezer, but had I remembered I would have added those too)
Half a jar of Worldfoods Chinese ginger, garlic & chilli sauce

In a large pan or wok, heat up some flavourless oil and add your garlic, chilli, ginger and onion. Sweat the onion off, stirring constantly
Add prawns, and cook until they turn pink,
Add vegetables and cook until they just start to soften
Add sauce and reduce down

It took, less than 10 minutes to cook this, bearing in mind I also did a chicken one that was missing the extra spices, and rice as well. Perfect for a quick, easy supper when you've been at work all day and done battle with Mr Sainsburys to boot. You'll see from the pic, that I had got out soy sauce to use as a condiment as I hadn't added salt at any point, but really didn't feel that the dish needed it - I'm terrible for underseasoning things though so do a taste test yourself, and add soy or salt to taste.

The only thing I think I would do different again, would be to add some coriander at the end to freshen it up.

So, there you have it, my first challenge as a member of the Global Fusion Taste Team... watch this space for more installments, including my favourite - Pad Thai!

Moving too fast? Slow down

The Last Five Years is one of the first more modern musicals that I grew to love. Jason Robert Brown's music caught my attention immediately, and having not seen it onstage until a few years back, had to ask my friend Claire to put the songs into narrative order for me. Whilst not the prompt for this post, I've embedded Colleen Ballinger singing Summer in Ohio below, just because it's one of my favourite songs and never fails to raise a smile, no matter how miserable the day.

Now where was I? Slowing down. The sheer length of this year's winter. Has it seriously not been the longest ever winter in the history of the world? The sheer length of this year's winter has meant that I feel like I've been eating casseroles for ever. Although at least twice a week I have a tendency to have to skip dinner as I just can't eat after Guides and Brownies - it's too late and I'm too shattered to start cooking. Certainly anything nutritous. I'm quite good at marmite on toast.

Just after Christmas, fuelled by decongestants and paracetamol I bought a slow cooker as my boyfriend wasn't having any of this toast and marmite for dinner business. What we took to doing was putting a casserole or similar in the cooker the night before and then switching it on low as we went out of the door in the morning.

I just thought I'd post about something simple and cheap I've been cooking at least every couple of weeks as Mark likes it, it's dead simple and the flavour improves if you eat it the next day.

Slow cooker Spag Bol

1 onion
2 cloves garlic
4 carrots
350g lean minced beef
1 tin tomatoes
Red wine (fill the tin of tomatoes up with wine)
Tomato puree
250g mushrooms (I say this as a quantity but only because I use half a packet of mushrooms when I cook it)
Oregano
a bay leaf

Spaghetti
Parmesan cheese

Now I have to own up, I might be able to do the chef style onion chopping, but for this and the casseroles I've been cooking, I throw that, the garlic, the peeled carrots and mushrooms in the food processor and blitz them until they're all finely chopped. This all goes straight into the slow cooker. As do the tinned tomatoes, wine, a big blob (such a technical term!) of tomato puree, and of course the mince. I then give everything a stir and switch it on in the morning.

When I get in from Brownies or Guides all we do is cook the pasta in salted boiling water and grate some parmesan (some, when in conjunction with cheese, means lots in my book). Serve in a bowl in front of that week's episode of Glee cwtched up.

Healing food: Salmon and greens

Firstly I should apologise for the dearth of posting over the last week or so. I've been feeling unwell since Sunday (which was entirely my own fault and due to the vast quantity of wine consumed on Saturday), but when I was still horribly poorly on Tuesday I realised that I had probably just done my usual and got myself run down. Scarily for me this usually precedes a chest infection so I've been doing my utmost to heal myself. This has meant lots of rest, fluids and fairly simple food.

Today I've worked from home and in a final bid to kill or cure, I made my stock healing meal. Fish, cooked in sherry, soy, chilli, garlic and ginger with pak choi and brown rice. It's not particularly posh and neither is it difficult, but it feels insanely healthy and the simplicity of it really does appeal to me when I'm unwell.

All I do is splash some sherry in a bowl, and add 2 grated cloves of garlic, lots of grated ginger, and 2 whole red chillis chopped up. I then add lots of soy sauce to this and just taste to check how it is.

I then line a baking tray with foil and place on this the pak choi (stems/ leaves/ technical term anyone?). On top of this goes the fish (I used salmon today as that's what I had in) and then the soy/ sherry mixture is poured over the top. I then close the foil up tight to make a parcel and bake it in the oven for about half an hour. While this is cooking I boil the rice (yes, still doing rice a la Delia - it's faultless so I see no reason to change).

Et voila! A big bowl of simple, healing food. This plus an early night, will hopefully sort me for once and for all!