...We've been doing loads of cooking recently.
Yesterday had a whole shelf in the fridge dedicated to two large sprigs of broccoli, nearly 1kg of green beans, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and courgettes. All of these we'd bought at the weekend and used some of, but were waiting to be finished in meals this week. We then went to the shop (well four shops actually, by the time we managed to find all the ingredients we were looking for!) and cooked up three different meals - two sets of lunches for work and our dinner. I think we manged to use every pan we have!
So what have we been cooking? Well a large part has been lunches for work during the week. For this we have been cooking soups. The first soup we made was a recipe that Scotty found with loads and loads of veggies in called 'Rainbow Soup'. The first time we made it we mainly followed the recipe (but struggled to find a substitute for spinach, and found ourselves shelling the green beans because we couldn't get hold of decent ones), but the second time we ad-libbed a bit more. Here's our basic recipe;
Rainbow Soup
Fry up loads of onions with diced carrot. Then add other veggies, like peppers and courgette (this was our ad-lib). Then add tomato sauce (we make our own passata as it's cheaper to use the fresh toms than to buy tins - simply boil up tomatoes for 10 mins, remove the skins and then whizz them in a food processor). Add some chicken stock and green beans. Simmer away and add sweet paprika (we only have normal paprika and soon learnt that you need less of this than the sweet stuff to get it spicy). When everything is cooked then blend away!
The second soup that we made we found the recipe for in the Super Foods book that Fabs gave me as a birthday present. I think it was under the 'broccoli' section, but it could have been under the 'sweet potato' section as both are Super! We don't normally eat sweet potato even though it's usually quite easy to get out here, but this year we have been having it a bit more and so we thought we'd give this soup a go.
Broccoli and Sweet Potato Soup
Fry in a large pan onions, diced sweet potato (one large sweet potato per 100g of broc) and a chopped tomato. Once the sweet potato has browned then add stock and the broccoli and bring to a boil then simmer. Once everything has been cooked then blend and add pepper.
It was this soup that caused us the real shopping trauma this evening; it took us five shops before we found some sweet potato! We've said before how it's rare for anyone to be able to cook a meal out here without needing to visit more than one shop. This seems to be that some shops are better for certain ingredients, some shops are more reliable than others for having the range of ingredients in, and sometimes you forget things! This evening we gave Save Way a miss to start with as they hardly ever have sweet potato, we thought that Kimo would be a good bet but they didn't have any. At this point Scotty took all our other Kimo shopping home and I went a few blocks away to try Seoudi Market. No luck, so I thought I may as well continue another few blocks to Adam Market. This time when he shook his head I asked 'lei' (why?) and he replied that the season is over. That explains it, but it doesn't help the fact that we have two large broccoli stalks in our fridge that need eating. In a final attempt I head to Metro on Road 233. We've found that the veg we buy from Metro doesn't tend to be as good a quality as we get elsewhere but they do tend to have everything in. I strike it lucky when I find four 1kg bags of sweet potato left and leave happy.
After a quick trip to Save Way (because we needed juice and a few other things that it didn't make sense to carry half way across Maadi) we were finally home with everything we needed to cook our planned meals.
First up we made the Broccoli and Sweet Potato soup. Then once this was simmering we started to prepare our dinner of baked salmon with potatoes and green beans. With that cooking we chopped up some peppers and courgette to make an omelette with the six eggs that we didn't eat at the weekend. The plan here was to make an omelet that we could both take in to work for lunch, but once we added extra cheese and remembered about the bacon in the freezer it was a lot larger than we'd planned! Not to worry - we'll just have a few more meals out of it!
After dinner we bagged up the soup into portions and then stuck these in the freezer so we're all set for lunches during the week. How domesticated and how organised we have become!
Yesterday had a whole shelf in the fridge dedicated to two large sprigs of broccoli, nearly 1kg of green beans, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and courgettes. All of these we'd bought at the weekend and used some of, but were waiting to be finished in meals this week. We then went to the shop (well four shops actually, by the time we managed to find all the ingredients we were looking for!) and cooked up three different meals - two sets of lunches for work and our dinner. I think we manged to use every pan we have!
So what have we been cooking? Well a large part has been lunches for work during the week. For this we have been cooking soups. The first soup we made was a recipe that Scotty found with loads and loads of veggies in called 'Rainbow Soup'. The first time we made it we mainly followed the recipe (but struggled to find a substitute for spinach, and found ourselves shelling the green beans because we couldn't get hold of decent ones), but the second time we ad-libbed a bit more. Here's our basic recipe;
Rainbow Soup
Fry up loads of onions with diced carrot. Then add other veggies, like peppers and courgette (this was our ad-lib). Then add tomato sauce (we make our own passata as it's cheaper to use the fresh toms than to buy tins - simply boil up tomatoes for 10 mins, remove the skins and then whizz them in a food processor). Add some chicken stock and green beans. Simmer away and add sweet paprika (we only have normal paprika and soon learnt that you need less of this than the sweet stuff to get it spicy). When everything is cooked then blend away!
The second soup that we made we found the recipe for in the Super Foods book that Fabs gave me as a birthday present. I think it was under the 'broccoli' section, but it could have been under the 'sweet potato' section as both are Super! We don't normally eat sweet potato even though it's usually quite easy to get out here, but this year we have been having it a bit more and so we thought we'd give this soup a go.
Broccoli and Sweet Potato Soup
Fry in a large pan onions, diced sweet potato (one large sweet potato per 100g of broc) and a chopped tomato. Once the sweet potato has browned then add stock and the broccoli and bring to a boil then simmer. Once everything has been cooked then blend and add pepper.
It was this soup that caused us the real shopping trauma this evening; it took us five shops before we found some sweet potato! We've said before how it's rare for anyone to be able to cook a meal out here without needing to visit more than one shop. This seems to be that some shops are better for certain ingredients, some shops are more reliable than others for having the range of ingredients in, and sometimes you forget things! This evening we gave Save Way a miss to start with as they hardly ever have sweet potato, we thought that Kimo would be a good bet but they didn't have any. At this point Scotty took all our other Kimo shopping home and I went a few blocks away to try Seoudi Market. No luck, so I thought I may as well continue another few blocks to Adam Market. This time when he shook his head I asked 'lei' (why?) and he replied that the season is over. That explains it, but it doesn't help the fact that we have two large broccoli stalks in our fridge that need eating. In a final attempt I head to Metro on Road 233. We've found that the veg we buy from Metro doesn't tend to be as good a quality as we get elsewhere but they do tend to have everything in. I strike it lucky when I find four 1kg bags of sweet potato left and leave happy.
After a quick trip to Save Way (because we needed juice and a few other things that it didn't make sense to carry half way across Maadi) we were finally home with everything we needed to cook our planned meals.
First up we made the Broccoli and Sweet Potato soup. Then once this was simmering we started to prepare our dinner of baked salmon with potatoes and green beans. With that cooking we chopped up some peppers and courgette to make an omelette with the six eggs that we didn't eat at the weekend. The plan here was to make an omelet that we could both take in to work for lunch, but once we added extra cheese and remembered about the bacon in the freezer it was a lot larger than we'd planned! Not to worry - we'll just have a few more meals out of it!
After dinner we bagged up the soup into portions and then stuck these in the freezer so we're all set for lunches during the week. How domesticated and how organised we have become!
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