Seasonal Eating III: of Carrots, Cream, and Contrived recipe attempts. (by both meanings of the word, I'm pretty proud of that title).

  If there's one thing that I remember vividly about the last two weeks of my seasonal eating journey (aside from how busy I was and why that's led me to do a fortnight post not weekly), it's the sheer amount of carrots I consumed. Month two of seasonal eating has been easier than the beginning, because I have a staple set of recipes I can fall back on, but also harder because I eat very similar things, and I miss ingredients I haven't cooked with in ages. (For example take a good old spag bol...tomatoes aren't in season so I haven't made that since the first week when I had to forfeit and grab some tomatoes regardless).

So what did I buy over the last two weeks? Well I didn't need all that much the last week, mostly some bits to top up my fresh food (milk, fruit etc), but I did venture into cauliflower territory since they're in season now.  The general shopping list looked a bit like: (and since this is an amalgamation of two weeks, I'll put individual prices instead of the cumulative price for you. I shop at Aldi by the way. )

[]Milk (£1.65 for 4 pints)
[]Cheese (£2.69 for the biggish block...I really like cheese)
[]Cauliflower (95p)
[]Bread
[]Carrots (28p)
[]Apples (89p)
[]Sausages (£1.29)
[]Pasta (41p)
[]Eggs (£1.55 for 6)
[]Single cream (99p)
[]Also added in were some biscuits and teacakes that I got, irrelevant to seasonal eating, and entirely linked to my need to dunk something in my cup of tea.

I'd had a conversation about pasta/spaghetti/rice with a friend, because I hadn't needed to buy any so far, but I had to this fortnight. The bottom line is: I know they can't possibly be local made, but without one of either three ingredients, I genuinely don't know what I'd eat. It was experimental enough when I decided to commit to no potatoes and no tomatoes (that's pasta and jacket potato off the table...ie my student staples), but also cutting out rice, pasta and spaghetti was a touch too far for my culinary expertise, considering I'm learning on the go around my educational commitments too. I've so far only had to buy some pasta, and I'm eating from rice and spaghetti I already had before. 

That being said, if anyone does know any dishes they love that cut out these ingredients, you can leave a comment and let me know, and I'd love to be able to learn more recipes!

 So, onto the actual food part of this, what did I eat?

Pasta Bake:

Need I say anymore? Pasta + Veg in a cheesy sauce (made from flour, cheese and milk, though it didn't make the right texture sauce so maybe don't take my  recipe for it, BBC Good Food has a decent guide)  + about 10 mins under the grill = delicious. I also had a pack of four garlics (my local Aldi doesn't sell them individually) so I mashed up my garlic and spread it on bread with butter to make homemade garlic bread.

I mean, look at that golden crispy cheese. Yum.

 

Cauliflower cheese with...literally anything. 

The second dish I made a lot of was variations of cauliflower cheese, with either a sauce using cream, or the same semi successful cheese sauce I mentioned in the last recipe. I sometimes added carrots to this, sometimes I didn't, and I had it on the side of sausages, or a pork chop at various points.

For the eagle eye'd among you that spot those chips on the side, I had them in a freezer draw from before I started eating seasonally, and needed to finish them!


So we've guessed I enjoy cheese, and a cheese sauce, but I decided to take it up a notch:

So aside from carrots, I also experimented with cauliflower cheese a lot, trying to take these two ingredients and elevate them, which led me down the internet googling different recipes till I found this one.

Now I'm a student, so I didn't swing for all the fancy ingredients, but I gave it a good go. I left out the thyme, and used my aldi cheap pasta instead. I used bread instead of ciabatta (which did taste a bit weird I'll admit so maybe they had a point with the bread) and ignorede parsley completely. I then replaced parmasen with regular cheddar (I had brought a big block after all). Lastly, I used my chicken stock instead of veg stock (couldn't be bothered to buy new stock), and used a red onion (because I had them in)

So basically...I used the cauliflower, cream, chilli flakes, garlic and seasoning the same...and changed most everything else. (I was making the same dish I swear aha). The end result:

 

Gotta say, I did enjoy it, and had leftover's for lunch the next day. I also had leftover breadcumbs because I made them msyelf and had absolutely no idea how many slices of bread was enough (pro tip: three is WAY too many), so I decided to use the crumbs, apple, and cream to make a new dessert I'd never heard of called an Apple Brown Betty, using this recipe.

In what you're probably realising as true Ani fashion, I did not follow the recipe completely. I used granulated white sugar (it's what I already had) instead of brown sugar, bottled lemon juice, and no lemon rind, and ignored the cinnamon. I should note here, my breadcrumbs were made of brown bread, which perhaps was not the smartest choice for either recipe. I did not really enjoy the dessert, which is probably my own fault for making up so much of the recipe. I did finish it though, in the interest of no waste in this kitchen if it can be helped.

And what about the carrots?

So carrots featured hugely too, since I had a lot of them, and I enjoyed preparing these various ways from roasted, to battered (in a flour and chopped garlic batter then fried...it didn't taste all that great, but there's experimenting for you), to boiling and adding to a cheese sauce. I had so many in the fridge I even took to munching on a couple with my sandwhiches for lunch just to have them not go bad.

Above: garlic and oil basted carrots and cauliflower roasted in the oven to go on the side of a homemade burger.

Above: battered and fried carrots on the side of a sausage sandwhich.

And the final star of the show: the Cauliflower.

So I've mentioned a few dishes so far that used cauliflower: the cream pasta, cauliflower cheese, and just roast cauliflower with my burger or meat. The final recipe that sings out the use of a cauliflower is Gobi Parantha (Gobi meaning Cauliflower). If you saw my first installment of seasonal eating, I made onion parantha which is an Indian dish I grew up eating, but you can also add chopped or grated cauliflower to the mix and make Gobi Parantha, which I ate for the first time in ages, and immensly enjoyed. You can see my Instagram reel for how to make Onion Parantha here.

So that's how Carrots, Cream and Contrived recipe attempts kept me alive these last two weeks, and how I hopefully shall make better use of my improvisations in the coming weeks. As I write this, we've a broken freezer, so it's anyone's guess what will be on the menu the next few days, but I shall hopefully do a better job of  keeping the recipe links. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to delete a few dozen food photos off my phone now this has been written up.

Till next time, 

Your friendly neighbourhood Mischief Weaver,

Ani. :)

 

PS: There was one more recipe I tried, and it actually turned out great, but I cannot find the original recipe I used on the internet, so for now, I'll leave it off here.

PPS: for anyone curious about the title name, it'll do well to remind I am an author first (quite literally, I had my first works published online at age 10 on my first blog (no it's no longer up so you cannot see it unfortunately, if you'd like to see the story, I have it floating about somewhere so leave a comment and maybe I'll repost it here), so I'm an author first before nearly everything else), and I enjoy hiding messages in the double meanings and connotations of words (if that convinces you at all to have a read of my work, all the better). The dictionary definition of Contrive (pasted from Apple Dictionary)

contrive | kənˈtrʌɪv | verb [with object] create or bring about (an object or a situation) by deliberate use of skill and artifice: his opponents contrived a cabinet crisis | [with infinitive] :  you contrived to be alone with me despite the supervision. • [with infinitive] manage to do something foolish or create an undesirable situation: he contrived to flood the flat three times. 

and this describes well my experiments with new recipes where I used my own judgement to make up bits I didn't want to buy ingredients for, to varying amounts of success.