Tag: courgette

Moroccan meatballs with egg

I was on a roll with making food from my 400 and Under collection of recipes. I always look out for recipes that provide less than 400 calories per serving because that means we have some leeway with having a glass of wine, say, while still keeping our calories down and, therefore, still (theoretically at least) sticking to a diet. The thought of Moroccan spiced meatballs with egg in a delicious tomatoey sauce seemed too good to be true – a rich and delicious supper that would only add up to (according to Good Food Magazine, where I found the recipe) a mere 377 calories per serving.

It’s diet food! And it would be delicious. Who wants to live on cottage cheese and celery when you can have a gorgeous steaming bowl of meatballs? Meatballs in a tomato and chickpea spiced sauce with a lovely egg cooked in there…….I had everything I needed so I started by chopping a small sweet white onion and a small red onion. That’s because the recipe said one onion… and these were more midget sized onions.

They went into the frying pan to soften while I started on the meatballs themselves. I did have one problem – I had no ground cinnamon and I needed that for a real Moroccan hit. I love the smell of cinnamon (and having made this recipe once, the next time I will add more cinnamon) I did have, however, cinnamon sticks and a large pestle and mortar…

Quite therapeutic to bash and grind the cinnamon into a soft and fragrant powder. But possibly easier to buy it ground…..? I did manage to get some ground cinnamon but there were lots of bits of the stick left. Anyway, I did, in the end, after lots of pounding, finish up with half a teaspoon or thereabouts which I added to 250g of lamb mince.

(Having made the dish I have to say that I would, when I do it again, add more than half a teaspoon of cinnamon because I so love that rich and exotic taste and smell. If you aren’t as keen on Middle eastern flavours then just stick to the recipe)

I added 50g of fresh breadcrumbs (I made them by whizzing up a breadbun I had)

and added an egg, salt and pepper.

By now the onions were beautifully soft and once they cooled slightly, I stirred them in, mixed them round and started to make meatballs. The Bear was called into action… my poor Canon camera gets so much abuse with my sticky fingers but I really couldn’t subject it to meatball mix.

They had to be cooked in the fat left in the frying pan, turning them gently until they were browned

That only takes about 8 minutes – don’t worry, remember they do go back into the pan when you have made the tomato sauce. Take them out and put them to one side.

The recipe said use a courgette, thickly sliced but I only had baby courgettes, so I reckoned three of them would be the equivalent of a normal courgette… so they got sliced and gently fried for a minute or so

Before adding in a couple of cans of chopped plum tomatoes

… a teaspoon of Ras-el Hanout – a Moroccan spice blend that you can buy in most large supermarkets nowadays. You can make it yourself if you can’t find it – click on that link and it takes to a description and a recipe.

… and two teaspoons of honey

Once the tomatoey mix was soft, a tin of chickpeas was added and the stirred round

and then the meatballs put in

After that, the recipe said to make four hollows in the suace and crack eggs into them… I couldn’t really manage – maybe my sauce wasn’t thick enough? – anyway, I broke the eggs in and pulled the sauce away from underneath so the raw egg dropped down into the sauce.

The pan was covered for 5 minutes or so and left on a low heat to set the eggs……

And it was delicious! The cinnamony richness of the meatballs was perfect with the spicy tomato, chickpea and Ras-El Hanout spices and the beautiful egg was the perfect addition in terms of difference in texture and taste.

This is definitely something we shall be cooking again… and it was on our diet! Less than 400 calories per serving….if you stick to one serving that is….oh, it is delicious!

As Good Food doesn’t have a link to the recipe – here it is

Ingredients:

1 onion finely chopped; 3 tbsp of olive oil; 50g fresh breadcrumbs;  250g of lean lamb mince;  1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon; 5 eggs; 2 garlic cloves, sliced; 1 courgette thickli sliced; 2x400g chopped plum tomatoes; 2 tsp. of honey; 1 tsp ras-El Hanout spice blend; 400g chickpeas, rinsed and drained.

Fry the onion in 1 tbsp oil until soft, leave to cool. Mix with the breadcrumbs, mince, cinnamon, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp salt and lots of pepper then shape into about 24 meatballs. Fry in the remaining oil in the pan for about 8 minutes until bgrowned. Lift out and set aside.

Add garlic to the oil in the pan and fry till softened. Add courgettes, fry gently for about a minutes then add tomatoes, honey, Ras-El Hanout, seasoning and a couple of tbsp of water. Stir and cook until pulpy

Stir in the chickpeas and the meatballs. Make 4 hollows in the sauce and break in the remaining eggs. Cover and cook for 5 or so minutes over a low heat till the eggs are set.

Serves 4 Preparation 40 minutes, cooking 30 minutes

Per serving – 377 calories, protein 26g, carbs 20g, fat 22g, saturated fat 7g, fibre 3g, sugar 8g, salt 0.94g

Broccoli and Stilton Pastryless Pie

At long last the days are becoming brighter and the weather seems to be improving. Today at work I had the windows open as it was getting rather hot, sitting behind glass with the sun shining in. It’s time, I think, to start freshening up food…. making it lighter and more summery.

Time, in fact, to make something like a pastryless pie.

I often make this because it is perfect with a light, dressed green salad for supper and also because it is absolutely ideal to take to work for an easy packed lunch.

A pastryless pie is, in effect, a quiche without pastry. The quiche filling is baked inside strips of ham. What that means is that if you are baking it to share with friends then anyone with a wheat intolerance or coeliac disease doesn’t have to miss out.

If you are trying to cut carbs from your diet, well, it isn’t exactly Atkins because there’s plenty of vegetables in there but it does, at least, avoid pastry.

So then… what do you need?

I had some broccoli in the fridge and that, along with a lovely piece of Stilton cheese would make a lovely pie.

I had half a dozen free range eggs, a small pot of cream, a packet of sliced Serrano ham, 200g of Emmental cheese (which I love for its sweet nuttiness) a courgette, a handful of cherry tomatoes and few baby salad potatoes.

For those of you who don’t have access to Stilton or Serrano ham or, in fact, anything else I have listed, just remember I am putting those ingredients in because that’s what’s in my fridge.

As long as you have eggs, cream, some ham (some kind of air dried ham, sliced thinly) some cheese and some vegetables you can make this.

Now, because you are making what is really a quiche filling, it is going to be runny. And you don’t have a pastry shell to pour it into. I told you we were wrapping some air dried ham around it but that isn’t going to stop the filling from running out, so this is what to do

You can buy silicone paper cake liners from most places now – one of these popped inside a springform cake tin makes the ideal liner to keep all your lovely ingredients from seeping out when you bake it.

Open your packet of ham and drape the slices round the edge.

You don’t need to completely cover the sides and you don’t need to cover the base. What you are doing is making what will turn out to be a lovely, savoury, lightly crisped ham edging. It helps keep it in one piece when you cut it.

The bottom of the pie will be lined with a layer of steamed and sliced potatoes – it makes for a firmer base. Either slice them and steam them now, or use left  over cold salad potatoes. Because I am using broccoli, I steam that at the same time.

See? Just a thin layer of little slices of potato.

Followed by a lovely layer of broccoli florets

I found a courgette in the fridge and if you use a julienne cutter, you get a glorious tangle of shredded courgette. When this cooks it disappears into the gorgeousness of the creamy, cheesey, eggy filling so even for avowed courgette haters… this would slip right on past them. Another vegetable chalked up!

Scatter those shreds over the broccoli layer

And as it is a broccoli and Stilton pie, now is the time to slice that piece of Stilton you saw earlier.  You could crumble it if you want to, and scatter it across but I thought how pretty and symmetrical it looked to arrange it in thin slivers.

I had half of a red onion left over from something else I’d made so I thought that, sliced finely so that it would cook through while the pie was baking, it would add an extra hint of savouriness.

 That was scattered on top of the cheese.

That’s the vegetables taken care of, the next thing is the delicious cheesey, eggy mix.

6 beautifully golden fresh free range eggs need breaking into a bowl and whisking round with a fork.

A small (150 ml) pot of cream gets poured in and whisked around again.

And pour it in……

Give the springform tin a gentle shake from side to side to make sure the eggy mix falls down around those lovely vegetable layers.

I had some sliced Emmental to use up as well, so that was shredded and scattered over the top.

Little cherry tomatoes (there were only 4 or 5 left) were quartered and added to the top layer before the ends of the ham were folded over.

You can see when you do this that the egg and cream mixture seeps between the slices of ham and then you realise just what an excellent idea it was to use the paper liners…

Into the oven with it at 160 or so degrees C for approximately 30 -40 minutes.

You can tell when it is done when the top looks golden and if you give it a gentle side to side shake the pie quivers just a little bit… and if you press it with your finger it feels soft but firm…

The only thing to do now is to free it from the springform tin, peel back the paper liner and slide it onto a serving plate

The hardest part is waiting for it to cool slightly so you can slice into it….

With a green salad it truly is the perfect lunch or supper.

Tasty, easy to make, easy to take for lunch… cunningly packed full of vegetables in the midst of that delicious filling… just the thing for the summer months!

Pastryless Pie!

Pastryless pie 002Sometimes, even in the best planned kitchens, there are leftovers. Sometimes, the best planned kitchens ENSURE there are leftovers! I knew I had to drive North, leaving the Bear to fend for himself and though he is perfectly capable, he has a very busy week and might just have trotted off to buy a sandwich. What he needed, I thought, was a Pastryless Pie – he could cut slices and take it in with some salad leaves. Far better for him than a shop bought sandwich. And he gets some greens into his diet.

I suppose the Pastryless Pie is really a kind of frittata, a sort of mutant child of a Spanish omelette and a vegetable quiche. Without the pastry, obviously. Now before you shudder and dismiss it….. Look at it… a beautiful, softly quivering slice of gorgeousness! 

And really, not much work at all. No tricky pastry to deal with, so no trauma with blind baking and red hot ceramic baking beans bouncing round the kitchen when you try and take them out of the pie crust and manage to drop the corner of the baking parchment… no comedy style lurching around as you stand on a baking bean and it rolls around underfoot…… oh sorry, I was letting a personal trauma affect me there.

So back to the pie. The ingredients vary but the constants HAVE to be eggs and cream or milk and some cheese. Because there isn’t any pastry, you can imagine that putting the quiche like filling in without a liner would make things very messy. You can buy cake tin liners which are one of the greatest things ever. I got these at Lakeland but I assume they are available everywhere

Liners 001Liners 002

You also need a tin to put it in. I use a springform tin (That’s one where there is a clip that you fasten and it tightens the sides round the base. It makes everything very easy to get out as the pie or cake remains on the base and the sides lift off.)

Anyway.. onwards…..

Pastryless Pie

Ingredients
Ingredients

First of all, select some ingredients.

6 eggs

140 ml pot of cream

100g  cheddar

100g Emmental

Packet of Parma ham, or proscuitto – maybe 6 or 8 slices

Cold boiled potatoes – just a few

A small courgette (ooh those hidden vegetables…muahahaaahahaaaa!)

Some steamed broccoli

Sweetcorn if you like it (although it is in the picture, it didn’t actually make it into the pie because when I peeled the husk back and cut the kernels off, they looked all pale and unripe)

Sweet potato – I had some spicy roasted cubes left, so they went in.

Leeks – not the two of them – when I started chopping I actually only used half of one.

Little tomatoes

Now before you say that you don’t like this or that,  just carry on reading then go and look in your fridge. Maybe there is something there you like better?

Pop the liner into the tin andCooking 038 then carefully peel apart your slices

 of proscuitto or Parma ham. Drape it round the sides and leave a bit hanging over the top. You don’t have to completely cover the outside.

Then prepare the rest of your vegetables – slice the potatoes (not too thin) and break up the broccoli florets into small pieces. I shred a courgette as it sort of disappears into the filling, which is handy, seeing as some people object to them. As I say, what the eye can’t see, the mouth can’t whine about .

In a bowl, whisk the eggs and the cream together with a bit of salt for seasoning. Grate the cheddar into it – it goes all lumpy, but that’s a good thing. When it bakes it all comes together wonderfully.

I bought Emmental presliced, for no other reason than when I went to get somethat was all there was. Turned out to be a good idea actually – I took it out of the packet and just sliced it.  See the picture? From the top left – shredded courgettes, left over cubed spicy roasted sweet potato, sliced Emmental, cold boiled sliced potatoes, finely chopped leeks, sliced tomatoes and the broccoli. Now you start to put it together. Put the oven on to pre heat at 160 degrees

Cooking 040

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 Potatoes on the bottom so there is a bit of a base to the whole thing. Then the broccoli and the sweet potato in a rather fetching pattern – think of the slicing of it… oh, so pretty!

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 Cooking 043

 Scatter in the leeks and courgette – look at the lovely greenness!

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Now pour in your lumpy eggy, creamy (or milky), cheesy liquid, giving the pie a gentle shake so it settles evenly through all the vegetables. Scatter the sliced Emmental over it and the little tomatoes, which you have cut into quarters.

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See the ends of the ham? Flip them over, just like this. Then put it in the oven.

Turn around and walk away for maybe 30 – 40 minutes. Have a quick look after 30 minutes… it is browning nicely? Does it need to be turned? I have a terrible oven that cooks unevenly so I have to keep turning things so they get an even colour.

When it is looking evenly browned, using oven gloves (no burned fingers please!) gently shake the tin – it should be firmish. Give it a prod, if you like – it shouldn’t be rock solid, it should have a nice, gentle give to it. Does it smell nice?  Does it look a bit like this?

Pastryless pie 001

Let me tell you, that smells gorgeous.  There’s a bit of a delicate wobble to it but there are no evil runny bits.

Pastryless pie 003

It’s quite pretty, really. And even people, (I shan’t name names as he may be reading this) who have to be dragged kicking and screaming towards broccoli, (The Bear’s only flaw) manage to scoff this.

So, you see how easy it is? A bit of chopping. A bit of layering. A bit of mixing and that’s it.

It slices well and is good to eat the day you make it or to take to work or school in a packed lunch. You can put in vegetables that you have left over from other meals and, presumably, they would be vegetables that you would like seeing as you cooked them anyway. How very moneysaving! How very tasty.