Cheap Bone Stew in a Pressure Cooker

This is a rather low effort, quick recipe and the ingredients are cheap. You can get the meaty flavour without buying actual meat. Hooray for resourcefulness and for a good effort-to-tastiness ratio!

Ingredients:
2 tbsp oil
1 tspn butter
1kg bones
1 onion
2 big stalks of celery
5 carrots, chopped
2 potatoes, chopped
5 turnips, peeled & chopped
1 big head of broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup brown lentils, cooked (without salt)
1 medium aubergine, chopped and lightly fried

Method:
Brown the bones with some oil and melted butter in a hot pot or pressure cooker. 
Take the browned bones out and then start to brown the onions. 
Add the chopped carrots and celery at this stage to make a mirepoix.
Once those look nicely fried, add the bones back in and then also the rest of the roots (potatoes and turnips). 
Add enough water to almost cover the vegetables. We used a pressure cooker, so these ingredients only took 20 minutes to get cooked. A stove might take one to two hours.
Once the pressure is released from the cooker, take out the bones and discard them.
Add the broccoli, cooked lentils and fried aubergines.
Put the pressure cooker on for one minute (it takes a few minutes to get up to pressure as well). Don't over do the broccoli or else it will turn into green mush.

Enjoy this hearty meal with a piece of buttered, crusty fresh bread or with grated Parmesan on top.

Mediterranean Couscous Salad

Great for a hot summer's day.

Ingredients:

A punnet of baby tomatoes

A big aubergine / egg plant / brinjal sliced & chopped

A yellow pepper, sliced

Half a cup of dry couscous

3 leaves of sage

5 leaves of mint

3 leaves of rocket

Olive oil

Flax Seeds

Greek yoghurt

Salt

Pepper

Method:

Get out a nice big roasting pan and put all your veggies in there. Sprinkle over the herbs (chopped), a bit of salt and pepper. And coat with olive oil (stir it up).

Roast this on 180 degress Celcius for 45 minutes.

While that is roasting, just cover your couscous with water and let it soak it up. You can also lightly salt it.

Add flax seeds to your couscous.

Serve the hot veggies around the couscous and top with Greek yoghurt and garnish with a spring of mint.

My Tiramisu

I read about 6 recipes and then combined them into this:

Ingredients:

1x tub marcapone (250g)

1x 250ml double thick cream ( I only used about 200ml whipping cream because its thinner)

150g sugar

A tot of rum (or amareto or marsala wine, something to that effect)

1 1/2 cup strong coffee (I wanted decaf so I used a good brand of instant decaffeinated coffee)

2 tsp cocoa powder

1x big pack boudoir / finger biscuits

Method:

Let the marscapone and cream reach about room temperature or the cheese will lump up when you beat it. Beat with half of the sugar and the cream. Castor sugar dissolves faster and better, so use that if you can, but I didn't.

Then make your coffee and add the rest of the sugar there to dissolve, stir it and let it also cool a little.

Get a dish that can fit in 2 layers of your biscuits, try see how they fit when they are dry first.

Dip the biscuits for about 2 seconds into the coffee until they have liquid all over them and shake it off before putting it in the dish so that it doesn't leak liquid everywhere. 

First layer: Half of the biscuits dipped and laid down next to each other to cover the bottom of the dish.

Second layer: Half of the creamy mixture spread over the biscuits. Sprinkle over 1 tsp cocoa powder.

Third layer: Do another coffee-dipped biscuits layer. 

Fourth layer: The creamy mixture again sprinkled with the last of the cocoa.

Put it in the fridge to set for about 2 hours to set.

Cut into pieces and scoop out. 

To serve more easily you could also make little mini-tiramisu's in ramekins or dessert glasses. 

Enjoy.

Quick Pea and Bacon Soup

This s the first time I ever tried this type of soup which is closely related to the pea and ham soup. I thought that the ham might as well be replaced by anything porky such as gammon or bacon. It really is easy to make and required very little preparation time.

Ingredients:

1 onion

2 cups split peas

125g bacon

6 cups boiling water

3 tsp stock powder

A dash of cayenne pepper

Method:

I half fried the bacon and used the oil to fry the chopped onion so I didn't add any extra oil. When the onions where browned I added the bacon (now chopped) back in with all the split peas and water. I only ended up adding the stock powder at the end- I think that extra salt might influence the cooking of legumes, but I'm not sure about the credibility of that...

Cayenne pepper is probably my most favourite spice and even ends up in dishes that aren't supposed to tingle the tongue (not that it dis in this case, it just adds another dimension to the taste).

Simmer that all on a medium heat for half an hour to an hour. The split peas should be cooked by now (test a couple). Reduce it for about 5 minutes and while the soup is still hot add it to a blended and blend it before it cools (and becomes all thick and starts challenging your blenders motor). If necessary, add it back to the pot to reheat and enjoy it garnished with some cheese, such as feta on the top, a dash of cayenne pepper and perhaps some toasty garlic bread.

A Note on The History of Pea Soup

While pea soup seems mostly an English sort of dish, it was being sold in the streets of Athens as far back as 500 - 400BC and cultivated by the Romans as well as the Greeks!

Split peas are cheap (and could, in olden day England be seen as a sign of poverty), easy to store and if kept dry, can last a decent while. This made them a common meal for sailors- accompanied by salted pork.

It also used to be referred to "pease pudding" or "pease porridge" back in the 1700's in England because of it's consistency, as mentioned in the 1765 rhyme:

Pease porridge hot,

Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot

Nine days old

It's consistency also inspired the London Fog, or London Particular to be called "Pea Soup". The smog caused by the burning of coal covered urban areas in a thick layer and claimed a substantial amount of deaths particularly in the early 20th century until the Clean Air Act was put into place in 1956, prohibiting the domestic burning of coal in urban areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup

Ginger Juice Syrup

Today I made ginger juice syrup with left over stumps of ginger that are hard to peel (you don't NEED to peel them for this). Wash them and then add them and equal amounts of water and sugar. Dissolve this over the heat in a saucepan. At a half-sticky/half-watery consistency, remove this from the heat and add to water to make a tasty 'juice-concentrate'.

If you want to make real syrup to use on flapjacks and whatnot, bring it to a gentle boil until sticky. Hmmm. I think this is the best use for this. You get the most out of the taste.

leaves or You could use this sugar-water in a saucepan idea for any flavourings you like... try adding mint, lemon juice... or both. Or pineapple sage.