Q, R and S ramblings

 I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while and time just seems to slip away. But hearing the sad news of Liz passing away brought back into focus just how grateful I am to have this forum to communicate on. This blog has been a constant in this long mad year and while I posted like mad in the early days it’s indicative of how fluid time has become that even with the best intentions I’m posting less just because I keep thinking ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’, and then it becomes like jam, because it’s always about tomorrow. With that in mind, this is actually about food from the last couple of weeks that contributed to the #ConfinedAtoZChallenge.

I got up to ‘P’ last time, so now I have Q, R and S.

Q is for Quiche

I made a quiche of some sort every couple of weeks as they freeze well so I always get two meals for two out of one quiche which is great for the many confined days when I don’t know what the hell I’m going to cook. I always have a few bought pie shells is the freezer so there’s no pastry-making faff  - hmm, that feels like it should be a hashtag - #nopastrymakingfaff.

This time around I made a smoked salmon, sour cream and dill quiche. I basically thought about the flavours you put on a blini and put them in a quiche. I bake the pastry base blind for 10 minutes and then after it cools down I egg wash it and give it another 5 minutes or so in the oven to seal.

The quiche filling is some sliced red onion that I’ve sauted and let cool. Beat four eggs and add as much sour cream as you feel moved to add and mix again. The sour cream sometimes stays in big globules, but it doesn’t really matter. Layer the bottom of the pastry shell with a bit of the sliced cooked onion, then scatter a bit of chopped up smoked salmon, pour over a bit of the egg/sour cream mixture and add seasoning and some dill (dried or fresh), then rinse and repeat until all your onion, smoked salmon pieces and egg mixture is used up. Grate a little parmesan on the top if you want and bake at around 400F for about half an hour.

R is for Rice

This could also be S for Stir fry, so it’s a shove-by meal that bestrides the alphabet like a culinary Colossus of Rhodes – sort of. Come to think of it, the smoked salmon in the quiche could make that an 'S' contender as well. It's all aboard the S Express...

The rice is jasmine rice for the stir fry which I precooked and let cool. One of the problems in our house with stir fry is that I don’t really eat much veg but the husband loves his veg so I have to have several pans on the go. I make a sort of mother ship stir fry with onion, garlic, ginger, mushroom and any other common ingredients like chicken, plus the rice. Those all come together with added sesame oil and tamari. Meanwhile I stir fry the veg for himself in another pan, and since I like prawns in stir fry and he doesn’t, there’s a third small pan (thank god for dishwashers) for my prawns. The fun bit is timing it so the mother ship pan and the other pans are at temperature and are cooked at the same time. Also trying to remember how much tamari and sesame I put in each of them so it’s not ridiculously overpowering when it comes together.

When it’s all hot and cooked, the rice mixture goes in each bowl and his ingredients and my ingredients get mixed into our respective bowls. Sounds complicated, but I think I’ve got it down to a fine art now as it works out fine and is always really tasty and uses up loads of leftovers.

I also usually try to make a stir fry the day after we’ve had an omelette as there always seems to be a bit of omelette left over and it’s handy just to slice up and bung into the mother ship rice instead of faffing around (there’s that word again) with creating egg-fried rice from scratch.

S is for Soup

In the spirit of using left overs, we were clearing out our raised veg bed before this year’s early planting and there were a few carrots and beets still in the ground. So after a bit of googling I came up with a recipe for Spiced Roast Beet and Carrot Soup. I only had about half the amount of veg that the recipe called for, but even at that, I upped the amount of garam masala considerably, but it really is just about your taste.

This was a really easy soup and the colour is great. As I’ve said, me and veg aren’t friends, but it got a thumbs up from the husband and I was able to freeze quite a bit, so that’s a result all around.

Right, that’s all for now. Next up with be T, which makes me think I really need to go put the kettle on.

Take care everyone, keep safe and well. And with my thoughts on Liz, thank you again for being such a lovely community over the last year.