All That I'm Eating

Recipe ideas for budget meals, everyday cooking and a little indulgence. Travel inspiration and restaurant reviews too.

Salmon Nicoise Quiche

By 6 Comments

This quiche is full of vegetables and that is a great way to disguise the fact it’s actually got double carbs in. Potatoes AND pastry; who doesn’t love that? My salmon nicoise quiche is a great way to take leftovers to another level. I made the nicoise salad, so everything was prepped and cooked, and then assembled the quiche the next day. Served alongside some mustard flecked dressed lettuce, this is a perfect lunch for me.

Delicious served warm from the oven you can slice this nicoise quiche into portions and freeze them individually, ready to be defrosted and warmed up another day. read more

Green Summer Vegetable Lasagne

By 19 Comments

It is important to note that this recipe is not shy on calories. There’s cheese, double cream, lashings of olive oil, layers of pasta and plenty of veg. My green summer vegetable lasagne is quicker to make than a traditional lasagne (there’s no baking) and you can use the sauce with any pasta if you so choose. I like to think that all that green veg negates the calories and I happily ploughed through a whole plate of this. Bear in mind, I am very greedy and although the recipe below says it’s for two, it would definitely stretch to three or four! read more

Chargrilled Broccoli, Potato and Pesto Salad

By 11 Comments

chargrilled broccoli, potato and pesto salad

It was one of those evenings. You know the ones, where you look in the fridge expecting a sudden moment of inspiration and the fridge just stares blankly back. I’d put something down on the meal plan but for one reason or another didn’t manage to cook it; sometimes I forget to buy an ingredient or I use it all in another meal forgetting to save any for later in the week. My potato, chargrilled broccoli and pesto salad came out of seemingly nowhere. This meal’s saviour turned out to be a little pot of pesto; it transformed a sorry looking collection of vegetables into a rather tasty meal.

ingredients

You will need (for two):

  • 2 large handfuls new potatoes
  • 1 small head broccoli
  • Small handful green beans, sliced diagonally
  • 3-4 tbsp pesto (fresh from a deli or homemade if you like). You could use a vegan pesto to make the meal vegan
  • Small handful pine nuts
  • 2 handfuls washed rocket

method

Start by scrubbing the potatoes and then chopping them into halves or quarters depending on their size and how you like them. Leaving them a little larger just means they will take a little longer to cook. Put the potatoes into a pan of cold salted water and bring the pan to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer until cooked through.

Chop the broccoli into small florets and pop them in a steamer over the potatoes for 1-2 minutes until bright green but still crunchy.

Get a griddle pan onto a medium/high heat and tip the broccoli in. Keep the broccoli moving occasionally but allow it to get chargrilled at the same time.

Re-use the same steamer and pop the green beans above the potatoes for the last few minutes of the potato cooking time.

Drain the potatoes and green beans and put to one side.

Put a small frying pan onto a medium heat and add the pine nuts, moving them round the pan often until they are toasted.

Mix the broccoli and pesto into the potatoes and beans and then serve up with the rocket and top with the pine nuts.

The chargrilled broccoli adds such a great flavour to this salad, if I was having a barbecue I’d definitely try the broccoli on there before mixing into the salad. This is a really hearty and filling dish and would be a great side but I enjoyed it just on its own. A few halved cherry tomatoes, some leftover chicken or salmon would be delicious additions and would probably leave you enough for lunch leftovers the next day.

Runner Bean and Tomato Stew

By 14 Comments

runner bean and tomato stew with crusty bread

It’s bean season at the moment. There’s runner, French, broad and all manner of other beans popping up in the veg box, at the farmers’ markets and in friends’ gardens. I love a perfectly cooked and simply dressed bean salad; a little drizzle of oil, a squeeze of lemon and a little seasoning. However, from time to time it’s nice to do something different and this runner bean and tomato stew is a much slower way of cooking with green beans.

Ingredients

You will need (for four servings):

  • 1 onion, sliced
  • Olive oil for cooking
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • ½ tsp cumin
  • ½ tsp dried chilli
  • 8 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
  • Large handful runner beans, sliced into finger sized pieces (you can use other beans here, French beans would just need halving)
  • 2 tins borlotti beans, drained and rinsed
  • 150ml vegetable stock
  • Salt and pepper
  • Few sprigs fresh marjoram or oregano

Method

Get a large frying pan onto a low/medium heat, add a little oil and the onions and fry gently for 15-20 minutes until well softened and just starting to turn golden.

Add the garlic and the spices and cook for a few more minutes.

Tip the tomatoes into the pan, turn the heat up to medium and leave the tomatoes to break down and soften for around 15 minutes.

Add the runner beans and vegetable stock to the pan and continue simmering for another 10 minutes.

Stir the borlotti beans into the pan and cook for a further 10 minutes.

Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. Pick the leaves from the oregano and stir these through just before serving.

Serve alongside some crusty bread.

The lightly spiced tomato sauce works so well with the softened runner beans and hearty Borlotti beans. Using fresh oregano makes such a difference to this dish as you get such a wonderful punchy flavour. I ate most of this with a spoon and then tore off hunks of bread to mop up all the spiced juices from the bottom of the bowl. A fantastic stew, perfect for this time of year; a dish full of summer flavours.

Smoked Chicken Caesar Salad

By 8 Comments

caesar salad with green beans

There’s something about an iceberg lettuce and I feel it is sometimes a little overlooked. When it’s properly crunchy it’s so refreshing and I think rather delicious. My Smoked Chicken Caesar Salad is a recipe which is perfect for the hot weather we are having at the moment. I didn’t make the dressing myself but a homemade dressing would be fantastic. Personally I didn’t fancy all that whisking, I much preferred the idea of sipping a well iced beverage outside. As green beans are in season at the moment it would have been rude not to add a handful.

Ingredients

You will need (for two):

  • 1 smoked chicken breast (or pack of smoked chicken)
  • Handful green beans
  • ¼ iceberg lettuce, washed and shredded
  • Large handful mixed salad leaves
  • Good quality Caesar dressing
  • Parmesan
  • Crusty bread

Method

If you can get your hands on some smoked chicken from your butcher I find it always has a great flavour and a delicious texture. I have seen it in supermarkets too which would be good to use. Dice or slice up the smoked chicken and put to one side.

Tip the green beans into a pan of salted boiling water and cook for two minutes then drain. You want them to retain some bite.

Layer all the ingredients up in a bowl, drizzle over the Caesar dressing (I am pretty liberal with mine!) and then add some shaved Parmesan over the top.

Serve with a nice crusty bread.

I made an extra serving of this and had it for leftovers for lunch the next day. A few of the salad leaves looked a little sad but as the flavours had had time to mingle together it had a great flavour.

Where’s the bacon? Well, because I used smoked chicken in this recipe I don’t feel that bacon is really necessary but you could add some if you so wish. I also didn’t add any croutons as I prefer to share some warmed bread which you can rip in to and mop up those last bits of dressing in the bowl. Crisp leaves, flavourful chicken, savoury Parmesan and sweet green beans; all rounded off with rich Caesar dressing, this is simple food at its best. Using some hot smoked salmon would be delicious in this recipe, especially with a little sliced cucumber.

Wild Garlic and Crispy Fried Salami Potato Salad

By 17 Comments

Wild Garlic and Crispy Fried Salami Potato Salad

Meals that are made from a few simple ingredients are invariably some of my favourite dishes of all. A quick scramble around the cupboards and fridge pulling ingredients and ideas together always feels more satisfying; like you’re getting a meal for nothing. My evening meals are always planned in advance so it’s lunchtime where I get my Ready Steady Cook hat on. Sometimes however the scrabbling approach doesn’t yield any particularly tasty sounding results; ham and chocolate spread tostadas anyone? This time however, the combination of ingredients I had resulted in Wild Garlic and Crispy Fried Salami Potato Salad and it was brilliant.

Ingredients

You will need (for two):

  • 400g potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
  • Handful green beans, topped and tailed, halved
  • Small handful wild garlic
  • 12 slices Italian salami (I used finocchiona which has fennel in), roughly chopped
  • 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • Juice 1 lemon
  • Salt and pepper

Method

Start by putting the potatoes into a large pan of salted water. Bring the pan to the boil and cook the potatoes until they are cooked through, cooking time depends on how big you have chopped them. If you have a steamer add the green beans to the steamer over the potatoes for the last few minutes of cooking, or boil separately for a few minutes.

While the potatoes are cooking put the wild garlic (after a thorough rinse) into a pestle and mortar with a pinch of salt. Bash everything up together well until you have a thick paste then add the olive oil, a pinch of pepper and the lemon juice.

Get a frying pan on a medium/high heat and add the salami. Dry fry until crispy, plenty of oil will come out of the salami.

Drain the potatoes when they are cooked (and the green beans if you have cooked them separately) and mix with the beans, salami and wild garlic oil.

The grassy and faint garlic whiff from the wild garlic is so good with the slightly fatty salami. The fennel in the salami works really well but any salami would be delicious; it’s a different flavour to something like bacon. The potato breaks down after it’s cooked so the wild garlic oil nestles in the little nooks and crannies and turns everything a wonderful green. The beans add a little freshness and the lemon finishes it off with its zesty acidity. A meal as good as this from a few leftover ingredients and a bit of a rummage in the hedgerows; perfection. Something else equally as potato filled and garlicky are my wild garlic gnocchi if you fancy trying something veggie!!
If you want to have a go foraging for wild food, take a look at my beginner’s guide.

New Potato, Green Bean and Iberico Salad

By 13 Comments

When I go out and there is a charcuterie board on offer I struggle to turn it down. I find cured meat fascinating and it’s one of my absolute favourite indulgences. One of my top five would have to be Iberico ham. I can’t get enough of it although my waist and bank balance would probably encourage me to eat a bit less. I like to make an expensive ingredient go as far as possible so this Spanish inspired potato salad is an attempt to do exactly that. read more

Purple French Beans with Steak

By 10 Comments

Purple French Beans

I planted eighteen broad bean seeds under their little cloches back in March and I had eighteen successful broad bean plants come up giving me lovely green pods all of July and early August. I planted eighteen French purple bean seeds under their little cloches and I had two plants come up. I’m not sure it was my year for these little chaps.

Fortunately the two little plants that managed to battle the elements (and the neighbours heavy pawed cat) were rather heavily laden and so I had enough to make a meal. They are such a dark colour and look so lovely in the garden it was a shame to pick them. The plant is also a fantastic purpley green.  read more

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