figure out my 21 meals

4. Enchiladas
5. Stir fry
6. Potatoes vegetables and something from the freezer (veggie sausages/ kievs etc)
7. chips and something from the freezer
8. Pasta and tomato sauce
9. Pasta and pesto
10. Couscous and roast vegetables
11. Couscous (veggie) sausages and peas
12. Home made soup
13. Vegetarian sushi
14. Pastry squares
15. Veggie burgers
16. Curry from the jar
17. Spinach and sweet potato curry
18. Fried rice
19. Pizza
20. Fried veg and potato
21. Leak and potato casserole

I first had, and found out about, this meal at the wonderful Lehka Hlava (Clear Head) Restaurant and Teahouse in Prague. It is possibly the best vegetarian restaurant in the world. Once I tried their quesadillas I was hooked- I’d order them every time and they were always better than I’d remembered.

I reverse engineered the recipe at home:

Ingredients

Quesadillas:

6 ready-made corn tortillas
2/3 cups of grated mature cheddar cheese
freshly ground black pepper
1 onion, finely chopped(optional)

Dips:

Sour Cream
Guacamole
Salsa

Guacamole

2/3 ripe avocados
1 deseeded chopped tomato
1 small onion, chopped
handful of fresh coriander
juice of half a lemon or a lime
1 small chilli, chopped and deseeded
1 clove garlic, crushed

Salsa

4/5 deseeded chopped tomatoes
1 small onion, finely chopped
handful of coriander
1 small chilli, chopped and deseeded
juice of half a lemon or a lime
salt and freshly ground black pepper

method

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
2 Place one tortilla on a baking sheet, sprinkle on a third of the cheese, grind on black pepper to taste.
3 Cover tortilla with a second tortilla.
4 Repeat this process twice until all the tortillas have been used.
5 Place quesadillas into the oven until the cheese has melted suitably (5-10 minutes)
6 Eat with dips.

Guacamole

Pop ingredients into blender and blend until it reaches the desired consistency- some like lumps others don’t.

Salsa

Mix ingredients together well and serve.

This is one of our absolute favourites, but is a beast to put together as we never have the ingredients in the house. Before the soup comes the mission to source the stuff for it, which usually involves a cycle ride to the big supermarkets on the outskirts of town to get the lemon grass and the tofu.

Ingredients

vegetable stock fresh, cube or concentrate, made up to 750ml
1-2 tsp of any sort of Thai curry paste
1 stick of lemongrass , bashed to bruise it
1 lightly bashed bird’s-eye chilli
1 small sweet potato , peeled and cubed
2 shallots , peeled and quartered
8 button mushrooms
1 block of firm tofu , cubed
8 cherry tomatoes
1 lime , juiced
a handful of coriander

Method

Bring the vegetable stock to a boil with the curry paste, lemon grass and chilli, add the sweet potato and cook for 5 minutes. Then add the shallots, mushrooms and tofu and cook for 3 minutes. Add the cherry tomatoes and cook for a further 2 minutes. Stir in the lime juice and coriander.

We originally found it here and haven’t looked back:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3986/hot-and-sour-vegetable-soup-with-tofu

A recent addition to my 21 meals. A bit time consuming, with all the stirring, but super tasty.

This recipe I use is from Tiffany Goodall’s From Pasta to Pancakes: The Ulitimate Student Cookbook which is an amazing little cookbook.

Ingredients

250ml/9fl oz water
2 vegetable stock cubes
50g/2oz butter
2 garlic cloves peeled and chopped finely
1/2 red onion, peeled and chopped finely
75g/3oz arbono rice
1/2 glass of white wine (optional)
75g/3ox mushrooms, sliced
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
handful of rocket leaves

Method

1 Boil the water in a pan then crumble in your stock cube. Reduce the heat to low and keep the stock simmering while you make the risotto.

2 In the frying pan, melt the butter over a low-medium heat.

3 Add the garlic and the onion. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 5 minutes until the onion is nice and soft.

4 Increase the heat to medium-high and add the rice.

5 Stir well so the rice soaks up all the delicious melted butter, onion and garlic. Next add the wine, if you’re using it.

6 When the wine has been absorbed by the rice add a ladleful of stock and a pinch of salt. Stir all the time to stop the rice sticking to the bottom of the pan.

7 Add the mushrooms and stir. Once each ladle of stock has been absorbed, add another.

8 This process should take 15-20 minutes. Keep tasting your risotto until it becomes deliciously creamy but still with a little bite to it.

9 When all the stock has been absorbed stir in the parmesan and serve immediately. Some rocket leaves and grated Parmesan would be ideal as an accompaniment.

My personal version involves only one garlic clove, and half the parmesan.

So I read this thing somewhere that said that we generally have about 21 meals that we cook regularly.

I say ‘we’ but I know that doesn’t apply to me. I think I have about 7 meals I cook on a regular basis and in recent times the range has shrunk down to about 3 :-/.

I’d like to have 21 meals I can make at a pinch, which are easy and cheap. I like the whole idea of having a meal rota so that we know what to buy each week, and have something different to look forward to every night. I’d like to eat veg that is not broccoli once in a while. Whether or not it works out in reality is another matter but I want to give it a go.

I’m going to try to list 21 things that I can make in an hour or less and write up a recipe to put into 21 day cook book…