Smokey Chipotle Carrot and Butterbean Soup

Isolation time means more cooking and baking (of course), and I got my two children to help me out with this, and served it with some home made cheese scones. It's a relative quick and easy recipe. If you don't have chipotle paste to hand, you can substitute with a mixture of tomato paste and spices (see recipe notes below).

Spicy Roasted Chickpeas and Feta

This is a quite simple, throw some stuff together and roast it recipe, so it's minimal effort. I modified this recipe from a chicken based dish I found over on the BBC's good food site. I quite liked the idea of trying out roasted chickpeas and I would definitely recommend it as it turned out great. They become quite crunchy on the outside but are soft in the middle which adds an unusual (in a good way!) consistency to the meal. The recipe called for harissa pasta which I didn't have, so I found a substitute recipe online. It was very spicy however so if you like things less spice, tone down the chilli content. Finally, props go to Pete as on the day I planned to cook this, I was very ill, and he cooked it for me and even let me annoy him half way through to take a picture for the blog.

 

Penne all'Arriabbiata

A simple, quick, and tasty dinner. The trick to this sauce is to cook the chillies whole in the sauce as it imparts both heat and a lovely flavour of chilli. You can then either remove them once the spice has reached your desired level or - if you want it even spicier - you can remove from the sauce and slice before adding back to the sauce. I used regular medium chillies from the supermarket and it wasn't spicey enough for me, but you might want to keep an eye on the sauce if using other hotter chillies e.g. birds eye. I also made this sauce for two portions and it was very sauce-y, so you could always use this amount for four portions (for example).

Dal Makhani; Spicy Lentils with Kidney Beans

Had one of those days recently when I got home and had nothing in the house except store cupboard ingredients. I felt like cooking some lentils so I had a little look online and found this Pakistani recipe, which as ever I tweaked slightly. It was perfect, and delicious. I had never thought to use kidney beans in a curry recipe, and it made a nice change from the usual dal I make (which I'll have to upload onto here sometime...). You can make it with dried coriander but fresh is better, and I have to admit I sent my boyfriend to the shop down the road to get it, which defeated the point of cooking with what I had in the cupboard, but oh well! I've since found out that the correct name for this is 'Dal Makhani', and it is supposed to be cooked with black lentils. I used red lentils though, and it was amazing. I wanted more but only made two portions, which I regretted afterwards... I've also since seen much more complex recipes for this, but I like the simplicity of this recipe, using very few strong flavours, so I've not tried them.

Spicy Cajun Plait

Definitely one for the weekend this as it does take a few hours to make (although actual time in which you actively need to do anything is much shorter). I made this in my bread maker but its reasonably straightforward to make dough without one so I've included alternative instructions for making it by a hand. We ate this still warm from the oven, dipping it in salsa and sour cream dips, and slathering it with cream cheese. It was awesome.

Slutty Spaghetti (aka Puttanesca)

This is one of my favourite recipes of all time. There are recipes for this all over the place, but I first came across it in one of my favourite vegetarian cookbooks - Linda McCartney's 'Recipes from around the world' which I found in a charity shop a few years ago and was one of the best £1.99 I've ever spent. It's quick and takes around 15 minutes from frying the garlic to serving with pasta. It also happens to taste amazing; not for the faint hearted, it's full of very strong flavours, and I always go massively over the top with the garlic and the chili. Words can't do it justice. This recipe serves 2, but I'll happily admit when I'm home alone and cooking for one, I often just have the whole sauce with my pasta because I can't get enough of it. It's my ultimate comfort food!