Pages

Monday 21 July 2014

Recent Meals #7

Fragrant Fish Tagine
Source: BBC Good Food
Who Cooked It: Simon
What We Changed: We reduce the quantities to make it suit two people, and fit into our small tagine. We also use smoked river cobbler fillets instead of tilapia, regular olives instead of pimento-stuffed, and sweet potatoes instead of regular.  
What We Omitted: Nothing
How Easy Is It? Well, you need to own a tagine, which isn't a typical item in everyone's kitchen. Other than that, it's not terribly complicated.
Verdict: This is one of Simon's favourite recipes, and I really enjoy it as well. We used to make it with unsmoked river cobbler, until we were substituted smoked river cobbler in one of our Asda deliveries last year. We decided to go ahead and make the meal with smoked fish and it added a wonderful element to the dish. It might not be the most photogenic meal, but it does taste good.

Bacon Fried Rice
Source: Dine & Dish
Who Cooked It: Rachel
What We Changed: We reduced the quantities slightly as we were just serving the two of us, and added bird's eye chillies. We used regular carrots instead of baby ones, and less bacon (and we cooked it ourselves--I've no idea if you can even get precooked bacon in the UK). Next time we'd probably use three eggs, as we like our fried rice to be more eggy than this. 
What We Omitted: Nothing
How Easy Is It? This may well have been my first attempt at making egg-fried rice and I found it surprisingly easy. It's not terribly complicated, and a good way to use up leftover vegetables. 
Verdict: We love regular egg-fried rice, so this meal was a hit for us. We'll definitely be making it again. 

Mexican Red Lentil Stew
Source: Kalyn's Kitchen
Who Cooked It: Rachel
What We Changed: Tesco must sell magic lentils as we never need to soak ours--we just simmer this stew until the lentils have softened. We use fresh chillies instead of chilli powder, regular tinned tomatoes instead of roasted, and either Chipotle or Habanero Tabasco instead of Green Tabasco. We usually add in at least 1 tsp of smoked paprika to make up for the lack of roasted tomatoes. 
What We Omitted: Nothing
How Easy Is It? Pretty easy. Chop up some vegetables, chuck everything in and let it simmer. This recipe doesn't require a lot of effort, and it's cheap. 
Verdict: We make this recipe a lot, and it's definitely become one of our favourites. It's always nice to discover a relatively cheap recipe that's packed full of so much flavour.

Smoky Sweet Potato Burgers with Roasted Garlic Cream and Avocado
Who Cooked It: Simon
What We Changed: We serve these on regular white burger buns, but I think we may use more cumin.
What We Omitted: Onion powder
How Easy Is It? Not overly easy--there's a lot of preparation involved, starting with roasting the garlic and sweet potato, then making the burger patties and the sauce, then finally griddling the burgers. The recipe calls for a skillet, but trust me--griddled burgers are the best.
Verdict: This is one of our all-time favourite recipes, and I think the only reason you haven't seen a photo of this one yet is because we always start eating before we remember to take a picture. We often serve this when we're entertaining guests because it's cheap (no meat!) but packs a lot of flavour, and the burgers look surprisingly glamorous and colourful for, well, burgers. 

Spicy Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayonnaise
Source: Skinny Taste
Who Cooked It: Rachel
What We Changed: We used precooked black beans and white buns. I don't think we froze these for quite two hours, but they turned out fine. Also, we griddled them instead of grilling.
What We Omitted: Nothing
How Easy Is It? Relatively easy. You have to make sure there isn't any excess liquid on the beans, and food process the vegetables, and remember to prepare these a couple of hours before you're ready to eat, so it's not something that can be just thrown together, but it also doesn't require any particularly unusual ingredients or multi-tasking.
Verdict: I'm honestly not sure why this recipe sat on my Pinterest board for so long, because it's definitely our kind of meal. We really liked these burgers, and the only thing holding us back from making them again is that we need to buy more chipotles in abodo from Lupe Pintos.

No comments:

Post a Comment