Hello February, hello really cold, goodbye to the first month of the year -yes, it has only been a month, although the feeling has been more like quarter- and there is still an eternity left until Easter: cheer up, we will survive. To do it with joy and well fed comes our monthly proposal to cook for a while and live on income for the rest of the week. “This means that you foodies don’t like to cook”, they have told me more than once with a tone of “we have been deceived” and a touch of contempt in a certain social network where people think above their possibilities.
Actually, we would like nothing more than to be able to spend the whole day between pans watching how they make their heavenly chup chup and shelling peas or cleaning anchovies while listening to Bach (or Rosalía). But since, realistically, this is not going to happen until we retire and there is still a bit left for that, and it is not the reality of the majority of our readers, for the moment we are looking for -and above all, offering- alternatives to reconcile a healthy diet with work, parenting, friends, leisure and the rest of what has been the daily management of this SME that is life.
Clarifying this, let’s go with the food: today we are going to prepare an express stew with desalted cod crumbs, an inexpensive product that we can get a lot of out of in almost any format. We can combine them with other less tasty fish to prepare meatballs or hamburgers, shred them and mix them with béchamel to make croquettes, cannelloni or stuffing for roasted potatoes -on cauliflower cooked to the point and with a final gratin they are very good- or with mayonnaise and pickles to fill eggs, sandwiches or toast as an appetizer. It also comes to the fore in potato salads, with escalivada or any roasted vegetable: if you are going to desalt it at home, set aside a little and prepare a delicious Valencian esgarraet.
Adding paprika and garlic to the rice and vegetable stew will achieve a chorizo flavor without having to add the sausage in question; so it will also be suitable for vegetarians, vegans and people for whom the consumption of processed meats is not recommended for health reasons. Don’t you have this problem and your mother has sent you a good string of homemade sausages from the town? Well, get on with it. I like to combine it with pumpkin because I think that its honeyed texture is great for it, but the grace of this stew is that it accepts any vegetable and is perfect to give way to that half pepper, three carrots and four young garlic that threaten to languish in your drawer (and the result is delicious).
This is one of the dishes of the week that we can freeze and eat at the end, since brown rice perfectly resists this process. The bean stew or the head of loin with apple also freeze perfectly, while the cabbage and carrot salad will last perfectly for three days in the fridge -although its texture will vary, losing water in the process, which is not bad- so we can Put it on priority one. The vegetable cream has potatoes, so if we choose to freeze it we will have to bring it to a boil again for a couple of minutes over low heat so that it recovers its original texture.
We still do not include breakfast, snacks or snacks in the weekly organization, since these are not necessarily cooked. Yogurt or kefir, milk or vegetable drink with oat flakes to drink hot or cold -as is or with a little 70% chocolate, grated coconut, cocoa or raisins, dried apricots or chopped dates, raspberries or blueberries-, fresh cheese or quark , roasted and sliced turkey or chicken breast, hummus or any other spread that we have prepared here or seasonal fruit such as orange, tangerine or kiwi. If you leave some of your basics -in each house they are different- prepared in a tray inside the fridge your morning sleepy self will appreciate it a lot. Ingredients such as avocado, hard-boiled eggs, fresh cheese, cucumber or cherry tomatoes to eat on toast or in a sandwich will make the decision faster and easier. The cabbage and carrot salad that we propose as a side dish is also perfect for the first meal of the day. The more appetizing -for you-, easy to prepare and healthy what you have on hand to snack on, the more difficult it will be for you to end up gulping down anything you buy along the way.
Dinners
- Beans with spinach and cod + coleslaw
- Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry with Provencal Herbs and Lemon + Roasted Pumpkin with Butter and Hazelnuts
- Carrot, potato and avocado cream with sesame + whole wheat toast with chickpea, beetroot and blue cheese spread + cherry tomatoes
- Brown rice stew with vegetables, paprika and garlic + cheese omelette
- Chickpeas with green beans and tomato sauce + top of loin with apple
Foods
- Chicken and Broccoli Stir Fry with Provencal Herbs and Lemon + Roasted Pumpkin with Butter and Hazelnuts
- Beans with spinach and cod + 2 hard-boiled eggs
- Brown rice stew with vegetables, paprika and garlic + chickpea, beetroot and blue cheese spread + crudités
- Head of loin with apple + roasted sweet potato + coleslaw
- Cream of carrot, potato and avocado with sesame + chickpeas with green beans and tomato sauce + frigate fritters in oil (can)
Preparation
- Put four natural yoghurts on a fine mesh or cloth strainer -or a cheesecloth or a clean cloth- and leave them in the fridge on a bowl for about four hours so that they lose part of their water (it is important that it does not touch the bottom).
- Turn on the oven at 190 degrees and put in one or two trays 12 carrots, 6 medium new potatoes, 4 sweet potatoes, the white part of two leeks and 1 or 2 large violin pumpkins -1.5 kilos with the skin in total, roughly – cut in half lengthwise.
- Put a 1.2-kilo loin headboard in a baking dish, seasoned and seasoned with provence herbs. Add three golden apples cut into eighths and 350 ml of white wine, cover with baking paper and place in the oven.
- After 15 minutes, turn the carrots (if the leeks are fine, turn them now as well).
- About 20 minutes after we put them in the oven, turn the potatoes and sweet potatoes and make a square or diamond-shaped cut in the pumpkin (if the leeks are thick, turn them now).
- About 30 minutes after putting them in the oven, the carrots will be ready (and so will the leeks if they are thin). Remove the hard parts and take to a pot with 1.5 liters of water or vegetable broth. Bring to a boil over low heat.
- It is time to remove the baking paper from the headboard and add sauce every 10 minutes, adding more wine or some liquid if necessary (if our oven is very powerful, wait a little longer to uncover it so that it does not dry out). It will take about an hour or 70 minutes to be fully ready. When it is ready, let it rest for 20 minutes before portioning and storing together with the proportional part of sauce and roasted apple.
- About 50 minutes after going into the oven, the potatoes and sweet potatoes will be ready. Reserve the sweet potatoes for the garnish and, when they no longer burn, peel the potatoes, chop them and add them to the pot where the leeks and carrots are. Bring to a boil for about 10 minutes, add the flesh of three small avocados and curry to taste. Crush and, when tempered, save. Serve with sesame and a slice of fresh lime.
- An hour or 70 minutes after going into the oven, the pumpkin will be ready. At the time of serving and once reheated, season with salt, pepper, a little butter and some chopped hazelnuts.
- Peel and chop six garlic cloves and five onions. Put the minced garlic in a casserole with a little oil over medium heat, stir for two minutes and add the onion. Watch and stir occasionally while browning over medium heat.
- Cut two cucumbers, four carrots and one bell pepper into sticks. These crudités in a tightly closed silicone jar or bag will last well for three days in the fridge: at that time the process will have to be repeated with the rest to accompany the spread for the rest of the week.
- Cook eight eggs for nine minutes in water with vinegar -it softens the shell and makes it easier to peel- and cut the cooking with ice water. Reserve to serve in one of the passes of the beans with spinach and cod.
- Separate 1/3 of the sauce and add to the same casserole 1 kg of frozen spinach. Cover and let them thaw. When they are almost thawed, add the desalted cod crumbs, 100 grams of tomato sauce and about 100 ml of water. Let everything cook for about 10 minutes. Add the beans with their cooking liquid and let it cook chup-chup for five more minutes, over a very low heat and stirring with light movements of the pot by its handles (so that the legume does not break). Top off with a couple tablespoons of chopped almonds.
- Add about 600-800 grams of diced vegetables to half of the reserved sauce: pumpkin, parsnip or turnip, artichoke stems left over from another recipe, broccoli stem, a piece of leek, mushrooms or any other mushroom, carrot …any worthy vegetable that swarms through the drawer will be well received. Brown them (adding a little more oil if necessary) stirring from time to time. Add 500 grams of brown rice, paprika to taste, a little garlic powder and cover with water. Bring to a boil for the time indicated by the manufacturer, adding water if necessary and testing to adjust the salt and seasoning. It has to be a brothy but bound stew (when it cools it will thicken). Serve with fresh parsley -or mint- chopped (if you have it on hand, it is not mandatory but a point of freshness is great).
- Boil for 3 minutes and drain well one kilo of frozen round beans. Mix in a casserole with the remaining sauce, 800 grams of drained and washed chickpeas and fried tomato to taste. Stir for a couple of minutes over high heat until the flavors are integrated and that’s it (a little cumin is highly recommended).
- Crush 400 grams of chickpeas with a 500-gram bag of beetroot and its juice, 200 grams of blue cheese, with patience and the necessary ice water to achieve the texture that we like (water in little streams, so as not to overdo it). It’s delicious with sour apple.
- Finely chop three white onions. Mix one with about 600 grams of cabbage -without stem- cut very thin and 6 grated carrots. Put a little salt, give a massage and let rest on a strainer.
- Put a large broccoli in small trees -cut the trunk into thin slices and add it too- in a large pan, put a little water in the pan and cover for a couple of minutes over high heat to generate steam. Repeat the operation. When there is no water left, add oil, onion and a little salt. Sauté for a couple of minutes and add two chicken breasts in strips, seasoned. When they turn opaque, add Provencal herbs, juice and lemon zest to taste. Finish cooking and remove from heat quickly so they don’t overcook.
- Mix the salad vegetables with the raisins, nuts, evaporated yogurt, mustard, salt, pepper and a splash of vinegar or lemon to taste. If you want to add oil, you can, but for me the creaminess of the yogurt is enough.
#Batch #cooking #February #cook #afternoon #eat #week