Another lockdown anniversary

 

Tomorrow (Friday) is my tenth wedding anniversary. It’ll also be the second one we’ve spent in lockdown. Even last year, when our anniversary plans were cancelled, we had grand ones for this. Maybe we’d go back to that hotel in Florence where we spent our honeymoon… Ah well. Maybe by next year – although I’m not counting any chickens yet. (I’m writing this on the Jacobin Day of the chicken, so I have the little feathered critters on the brain.) Having survived ten years of marriage, including one year in lockdown without either of us murdering the other, I reckon we have earned the bottle of moderately expensive champagne that I am about to put in the fridge for tomorrow.

Food for the next couple of days (even if we’re not going away as planned, I’m still celebrating for the whole weekend) will mostly be of the meal kit variety, with most of the work done, but I have had quite an interesting week of cooking so far.

Monday was soup from the freezer –roasted aubergine and tomato. It’s a magnificently simple Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe: roast aubergine, then add tinned tomatoes, stock and cumin. Roast a little more, then blend. I didn't take any pictures of this, because, well, soup looks like soup. 

Fritters: always a good thing

Tuesday’s dinner was a result of my occasional resolve to try and add variety to the pandemic routine by at least cooking something different. In this case, quinoa fritters with green goddess sauce, from New Kitchen Basics. I have cooked quinoa before, but it was a long time ago, and I didn’t like it enough to make me revisit the experience. But, I can never resist a fritter. First, cook your quinoa for fifteen minutes, while you ponder exactly how it is supposed to be pronounced (I’m mostly going for keen-waa) and chop a lot of parsley and mint (or persuade a passing husband to do it for you).

When the quinoa is cooked spread it out on a plate to cool, while you make the green goddess sauce: mix half the herbs with half yoghurt and half mayonnaise (or thereabouts), some crushed garlic and lime or lemon juice.

When the quinoa has cooled, mix it with the other half of the herbs, feta, lime/lemon zest and egg. Dollop into a hot pan and fry until crisp. They were delicious, and they didn’t stick to the pan or fall apart while I was frying them.

The hungry gap must have got to our mostly-seasonal veg box people, as this week’s delivery contained all sorts of unseasonal delights, including an aubergine and a red pepper, which went into a stir fry from one of Claire Thomson’s other books, Home Cookery Year. It has a Chinese name which translates as ‘three treasures from the earth’ (the third one is potato).Chop and salt the aubergine, and leave it for ten minutes while you chop everything else, and make the sauce (rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil). Then you can actually cook. 

Really quite a lot of chopped aubergine

Other chopped things (sauce behind)

This is not a just throw it all in stir fry: you cook the potato for five minutes, then take it out, then the aubergine in batches. You then put all the aubergine back in the pan, along with the red pepper. Next you add spring onion and garlic, then put the potato back, then add the sauce. Serve with rice, and in my case, the emergency prawn crackers from the back of the cupboard, because I was having a bad day. They were good, as was this.

Finished stir fry, prawn crackers not pictured

And tonight, we had Sabrina Ghayour’s harissa and honey sticky chicken and carrot and pistachio salad, both from Simply. I think I have blogged both of them before, so briefly: grate carrot, add pistachios, nigella seed, dill if you have it (we used parsley instead). Mix with oil/honey/lime juice dressing. For chicken, fry strips of chicken, then add cinnamon and garlic granules (!), followed by harissa and honey. Cook until chicken is cooked through and sauce is a caramel consistently. It’s all delicious, but a word of warning: it will mess up your pan. There was husbandly grumping about the state of the pan. Still, never mind. Champagne tomorrow.

Pan-damaging chicken and carrot salad