It’s been a while since I last posted a recipe. So I’m going to post 2 tonight! Ha! They fall under the ‘what can I make with what I have in my cupboards / fridge’ category. And were so yummy that I will definitely make them again.
Let’s start with a little bit of Chinese inspiration. We love Chinese food here (well, any food from the Far East and we are a happy bunch), so it’s always a source of inspiration when I try to come up with dinner ideas. We had received in our veggie box some cabbage and plenty of carrots. The hubs is not a fan of cabbage (bad memories from a grandma who used to boil green veggies to death), so I had to find a way I was sure he would enjoy it! I also had some frozen raw prawns and a quick idea started to germinate.
Here is what I did. I finely sliced a white onion. I heated up some sunflower oil in a frying pan (a wok would work fantastically well here) and started to fry my onion in that. I added 2 generous tablespoons of chinese spice mix (yep, lazy can be good in the cooking area, too). I then added my thawed prawns, 2 medium sized carrots finely sliced and half a cabbage shredded. I fried that for 3-4 min, then I added about a teaspoon of sugar, 2 big tablespoons of white wine vinegar (if you have rice wine vinegar, I guess that would be even better). I fried that for another 3-4 min. Then I added half a chili, finely chopped. Gave a good stir, added a good splash of soy sauce and dinner was ready. Next time, I’ll add some noodles, probably, to make it even more filling (we are good eaters here). It was delicious and my husband said he enjoyed the cabbage this way! Score!
Our veggie box also came with 2 courgettes (I think Americans call them zucchinis?). Now, I’m not a huge fan of courgettes. I find them difficult to digest most of the time and they can be a little bit overpowering when mixed with other vegetables (I feel the same way about cucumber, oddly enough). I used one courgette in a lunch soup for me and the baby but I still had one left. What to do with it?
I had bought some Italian sausages from our local butcher (with sundried tomatoes, chilis and various delicious herbs) and I started to think about a pasta meal…
Suddenly, inspiration struck and I got cooking. I finely sliced a white onion and made some spaghetti-looking bits of courgette (I’ve got a nifty tool similar to this one that came very handy – I got mine from John Lewis but I can’t find it on their website). I left the core of the courgette out (who wants to eat all those pips anyway?). I fried that in some vegetable oil, added the sausages that I had cut in bitesize chunks. When everything got coloured, I lowered the heat and let cook for a good 15min (so that the sausages were perfectly cooked: raw sausage meat = wrong!). In the meantime, I cooked some pasta. When the courgette and sausages mix was well cooked, I added 2 extremely generous tablespoons of creme fraiche, stirred for a couple of minutes and then served. It was absolutely yummy! A good way to prepare courgettes (and I didn’t feel like I was eating them for hours afterwards!). I will definitely make that again when those vegetables are in season.
So? Hungry yet?
