http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/moroccan_plaited_loaf_51517

To go with it I made some soup – I was havering over whether to call it “Moroccan” or “Spanish” and decided on neither.  Fry two large onions, a green pepper and a red pepper in some olive oil until soft.  Add a chunk (10cm or so) of finely chopped chorizo sausage, a few peeled carrots and three or four garlic cloves and stir about a bit until browning.  Add a heaped tsp of harissa paste and some smoked paprika.  Then add two tins chopped plum tomatoes and water to taste (enough to make it soup rather than stew – unless it is stew you actually want) and simmer until the veg is fully cooked.

Very nice with the bread and associated dip.  Omitting the cheese from the bread and the chorizo from the soup makes it vegan without losing much of the flavour (perhaps add a little more paprika).

The arm in the background belongs to J.

So I put the whole bag into a big bowl of cold water and soaked over night. The next morning I boiled them hard for 10 minutes and then simmered for about an hour until they were very soft. Then I made:-
Humus – take about 200g chickpeas and about 100g light tahini, 2 peeled garlic cloves, the juice of one lemon and a little olive oil. Put in a food processor and whizz until smoothish. If needed add a bit of the cooking water from the peas to loosen it a little. This freezes well.
Vegetarian Tagine – Fry a large onion and a large pepper in olive oil until soft. Peel and cube a small butternut squash, add to the pan and fry for a minute or two. Add as many chick peas as you like, and then one can of chopped tomatoes and (my secret ingredient) one can of ready made ratatouille (this is super good as a store cupboard staple and goes down particularly well in a vegetarian lasagna). Stir in one finely chopped red chili (I like to add at this stage because frying it with the onions makes me cough), some cumin, a handful of chopped dried apricots and enough passata or tomato juice to make a stew consistency. Simmer for about half an hour until the squash is cooked.
Falafels – same basic mixture as for the humus, but without the lemon juice (so extra cooking water to moisten). Mix in a bowl with enough plain flour to make a dough and a handful of fresh coriander. Roll into smallish (or mediumish) patties and fry in a little olive oil.

The bag of chick peas with the addition of some cheapish veg, olives, couscous, flatbreads and yoghurt made enough tasty, healthy vegan (minus the yoghurt) food for about eight people.

So I have taken to making my own lemonade, using stevia to sweeten it a bit. Stevia is a natural sweetener made from a leaf and available as a granulated powder resembling sugar (but three times as sweet). It smells odd, though not unpleasant – vaguely like coffee – but that goes away when added to food and doesn’t taint it at all.

Take a bag (five or six) organic, unwaxed lemons. Cut them in half and squeeze the juice into a large jug. Take all the skins, score with a fork (to release oils from the skin) and put them in the jug too. Cover with boiling water up to the top of the jug. Don’t put in the fridge but allow to cool naturally. Next day, squeeze the now soggy skins into the jug one by one and discard. Pour the liquor into a clean jug though a fine sieve. Stir in stevia powder to taste (careful not too much). I like this diluted about 50/50, which you can do by adding massed of ice. Serve with a sprig of mint. No sugar, no calories, all taste….

Anyway – I filleted it (not very expertly) and it made 10 good potions, plus one raggedy bit for Schrodi and a lot of meat on the bones.  The 10 fillets I froze, then the carcass made lots of stock and leftover meat to take off the bones.

From the leftovers I made:-

Fishcakes – peel and boil about 1lb potatoes.  Lightly fry a large onion (spring onions are better when in season and can be used raw).  Cook the potatoes until soft and floury, drain, and allow to steam dry for a minute or two – add a large knob of butter and mash with salt and pepper until smooth (ish – for mashed potatoes I am going to eat neat I will use a ricer but not needed for this).  Break the salmon into small pieces, removing any bones and mix into the potato with the onion.  Chop a largish handful of flat leaf parsley, add to potatoes and mix everything thoroughly.  Take golfball sized pieces, flatten into mini cakes and fry in butter or olive oil until golden brown – turning a couple of times.

Chowder (my take on it) – Chop and boil about 1.5lb potatoes in skins (ideally the red skinned ones are nice for this).  Cook in a steamer until soft with 2 large carrots cut into small strips.  While this is cooking – fry one large onion and one large leek in a frying pan.  When soft, add two large handfuls of frozen sweetcorn and stir until defrosted.  Add about 2 pints of stock off the salmon bones, plus any salmon meat that is leftover.  At this point – I had a pack of smoked salmon which had been left over and frozen at Christmas.  I snipped this into pieces with scissors into the broth, and at this point, also added a small bunch of chopped parsley.  Finally – add the potatoes and carrots and bring to a simmer for five minutes or so.  I generally then finish with half a pint or so of milk – enough to make a stew with loads of juice for mopping up with bread.  Adding more milk and stock turns it in to a real soup.  Of course – we had most of it as stew, and then the leftovers as soup the next day.  Prawns would be good in this too but as R doesn’t like them and Tora does, it is rare humans ever eat these in this house.

The frozen fillets will make things like salmon and broccoli mornay, crispy oriental salmon with stir fry noodles, cheesy fish pie, salmon and dill quiche etc. 

So all in all a good buy….

R’s favourite is lentil.  This is how I make it – it takes 10 minutes to make, 40 minutes to cook and feeds 6 normal people or 4 hungry ones.

Take one packet (1lb) red lentils and rinse in a sieve under the cold water tap.  Put in a pan.  Peel and chop one large onion and 5 large carrots and add to pan.  Pour over 3 pints of cold water and add two stock cubes (or make with homemade stock).  Bring to boil stirring occasionally.  Reduce to simmer and cook for 30 to 40 minutes until lentils cooked and vegetables tender.  Whizz until smooth with stick blender.

Freezes well and you can make it without the blender by grating the carrots instead of chopping them (soup is very thick this way).

Some of my other favourites are mushroom, broccoli (or cauliflower), French onion, minestrone and cock-o-leekie.  None of these take more than 15 minutes prep time and they are all pretty tasty (even though I say so myself).