All wrapped up

In which I tamper fully with two recipes even though both are from Home Cookery Year and look perfectly fine as they are. I often do tweak stuff, but this seemed particularly egregious.

I don't know why specifically, but things are not ideal with me at the moment. The collywobbles over opening up, surely. And some daft errors at work, which left me last night feeling absolutely flat. To the point where I almost abandoned cooking dinner even though (as you'll see) it was incredibly simple. And also where I forgot I was supposed to make soup. I remembered today at 12.05pm, just after starting lunchtime yoga. And this isn't a soup you can do in a hurry. Bah. 

So let's start there, since the soup is now my dinner tonight. The recipe is Cavolo Nero and Polenta Soup, and I really hope it has enough ballast to get me through the wine tasting that's starting at 7.30. Oops. But it is very nice, even though I've embrangled it badly. 

 

It starts, not just with an onion, but with a soffrito - carrot, onion, celery, 10 minutes minimum. But my first embranglement starts here - I don't actually have cavolo nero, which you cut the leaves off and chuck away the stalks (="use them in another recipe" say the recipes that don't ever use anything but the leaves). I have chard, whose stalks are perfectly manageable. So I chop them up and add them to the soffrito.

Then plenty of garlic, and some rosemary or sage. 2 minutes. Then add in the leaves of your cavol- chard and wilt them a bit. 

Then plenty of stock, and 10 minutes or so of cooking. Then pour in about 80g of polenta - not enough to absorb all the liquid, but enough to solidify things a lot. Mine is, as ever, quick-cook, but I gave the soup another 10-15 mins cooking anyway, to bring things together. It gloops up rather well - a useful one to remember if you need thickening and don't have small pasta to hand. "Cook until it tastes good" says the recipe, which is easy to understand and also slightly worrying. If it doesn't taste good after an hour, do I keep boiling?

I did not then add a tin of borlotti beans, because this looked pretty solid. But in theory, you do. A twisted minestrone rather than a soup that's too particular.

Serve with a big squeeze of lemon, a slug of oil, a scatter of parmesan - all things that would liven up the lowest of soups. Which this isn't. And in my case, with a double handful of wild garlic and sorrel, which wilts under the pleasantly bland main soup and tastes springlike and joyful. I've nearly used up last week's market greens, but not quite. 

Lunch today, and dinner yesterday, were altogether lighter and fancier: prawn taquitos. Except... not. 

Not-taquitos:

Mix a thinly sliced onion, thinly sliced spring cabbage, lime juice (half a lime for half a spring cabbage sort of deal), tomatoes, coriander, garlic and leave to macerate for a bit. Or, if you're me, cook the onion, cabbage and garlic lightly for a few minutes, then mix in tomato and lime and coriander. Yes, either way, you're having cabbage with prawns. Do not let this put you off - this is a gorgeous sharp-herby mix and one I'd recommend. Including the cooked version. 

Take your spare half lime and squeeze it into some sour cream. Lay aside till serving. This was the point where I nearly, nearly gave up last night, even though I was about 4 minutes from dinner. Bah, moods.

Then just fry some prawns till cooked. I had them whole the first night and chopped up the second - the latter a bit easier to manage when you're stuffing them into a tortilla. Whichever, mix them into the cabbage salad combo. 

Then soften (ideally corn) tortillas in a frying pan, and stuff them with the salad mix, secure with cocktail sticks and deep fry. 

Or, not. I don't deep fry, and I thought this would work as a tortilla mix, which it did. Messy, but perfectly doable. I softened each tortilla in a dry pan on one side, then added a little oil when I turned it over, and rolled the tortilla up enough to fry it more or less on all sides. This photo is from last night, whereas for lunch I managed much tighter rolls and less spillage. They went lightly crispy, which was good. 

Serve with the lime sour cream on the side. Probably the odd spare bit of lime for extra squooze. And, I think, also something green. This is not elegant, but it's very good. It stretches prawns quite nicely while the stuff that is doing the stretching tastes good, not just padding. Will definitely make again.