Stuffed peppers with tomatoes and anchovies

I like my flavours big and strong. So I adore garlic. And I loooove anchovies. Especially ones which have had time roasting in the oven to get insanely salty. If you like these things, then this is a perfect and delicious mid-week store cupboard meal for you. Or perfect as part of a bigger spread as well, and they are extremely good if left in the fridge over night as well so nice for lunch as well if you make too much. It's probably one of the easiest recipes on this whole blog.  Plus it's cheap. And did I mention this is delicious? Make this! (Sorry for the blurry photo!)

It's also pretty healthy, as far as dinners go with no carbohydrates or anything along those lines. It's just veg, stuffed with veg (well, a tomato) with an anchovy on top, and it is really as simple as it sounds, but the first time I made it, I really couldn't wait to make it again and had it three days later. Gorgeous! 

I'm in the habit of keeping a few tins of anchovies in my cupboard, as they're great in pasta puttanesca as well, but also on pizza. And they don't go off! And they're like 70p! So maybe pick some up the next time you do a shop, just in case the mood takes you...

Stuffed peppers with tomatoes and anchovies (serves 2)

• 3 peppers (not green)
• A handful of tomatoes - depending on size, around 4 or 5.
• Four cloves of garlic
• A tin of anchovies (about 8)
• A drizzle of olive oil
  
• A side salad, to serve
• Crusty bread, to serve

Garlic coating the inside
of the peppers

Pre-heat your oven to hot - 230C should do it. First up, remove the skin of the tomatoes by blanching them - boil your kettle, and pour the hot water over your tomatoes in a heat-proof container, like a pot. You just need to leave the water as is, not over a heat or anything, over the tomatoes for two to four minutes, then drain it off. Run the cold tap over the tomatoes, which will make the skin pucker and then use your hands or the corner of a knife to lift the skin.

Slice your peppers in half through the centre, like the picture, and pull out the seeds with your hands. Crush four cloves of garlic (or very finely chop) and put about half of it inside your peppers. Now slice the tomatoes in half, using a sharp knife and depending on the sizes of your peppers - we buy ones that are cheaper as they're all sizes - divide those up and use your fingers to press them into the peppers. Spread the remaining garlic over the peppers, then lay the anchovy fillets over them in a cross shape.

Then drizzle with olive oil, pepper (not salt) and put in the oven for 10 minutes at 230c, then turn it down to 200 and let it go for another 20 minutes.  Serve with some nice crusty bread to mop up the juices, and a green salad - I like rocket and basil - on the side with a balsamic dressing which offsets the saltiness. And maybe a beer if it's been a hard Monday.

Credit where credit is due: Leon - Naturally Fast Food (Book 2)

Quesadilla and chunky salsa - quick weekend lunch!

I used to work in this café in the town I grew up in on the coast of south west Ireland which would be pretty quiet during the winter and absolutely heaving with tourists during the summer. I remember once a coachload of German tourists all ordered the same thing - a toasted panini and we only had one grill! That was interesting, to say the least.

We had a kind of a tex-mex thing going alongside the brownies, bagels and soups, and I got a taste for this particular chunky salsa I used to make in buckets and now I'm devoted to it. It's more of a salad, than a salsa and I love it - it's the perfect foil to spicy jalapeno and greasy fried quesdailla - five ingredients: tomato, white onion, lime, coriander and salt. It is utterly delicious on plain salted tortilla chips as well and takes two seconds to make. I don't purport to know ANYTHING about Mexican food by the way - my idea of Mexican is basically peppers and onions covered in fajita spice with chicken. I don't even like beans, for god's sake. But this is really yummy, I promise - just no guarantees about it being authentically anything other than being delicious thanks to the combined wonders of cheese, butter and carbohydrate.

Chunky basic salsa

• Handful of coriander (finely chopped)
• 2 tomatoes
• Half a white onion
• Half a lime, juiced
• A decent amount of table salt

 

Chop the tomato cleanly in half, then slice into three or four thick vertical slices without disturbing the semi-circle shape of the tomato if possible, then turn it round and slice again making chunks - a sharp knife here helps or you'll end up with tomato mush and water! Do the same with the onion half, and mix together in a big enough bowl that you'll be able to thoroughly encorporate the salt, lime juice and coriander. Use your hand to make sure all the flavours blend, if you can be bothered - and taste as you go. More salt than you think you need is often the secret.

Quesadilla with cheese and jalapeno

Below are the ingredients per quesadilla - this is a really nice open recipe, so feel free to experiment. Avocado, roasted chicken strips, mince, quorn...or substitute the cheddar with feta and make it with spinach and sundried tomato! And work from there. This is my favourite though.

• 1 tsp of soft-ish butter
• 1 tortilla wrap
• 1 or 2 handfuls of grated cheddar or similar
• 4 or 5 jalapenos, depending on how much heat you like

Get a large frying pan good and hot, and have your cheese pre-grated at the ready. Smear a tsp or equivalent of  spoonful of butter on the underside of your wrap, then using your hand, put the tortilla in the pan and move it around so the butter coats the pan and wrap nicely as it melts. It'll sizzle pretty loudly if you're doing it right. 

Rapidly sprinkle your cheese over roughly one half of the wrap, quickly add your jalapenos, then fold the wrap over and press down with a spatula. The cheese will melt, the tortilla will crisp, flip it over until it gets lovely and dark but don't let it burn and don't panic if some of the cheese oozes out.

Slice it up like a pizza and serve it with some sour cream if you have some. So bad for you. And yet so good. And it really only takes about 2 minutes to make one. Enjoy!

Soda farls (with tomatoes, eggs and bacon, or whatever you like)

Let this be some Monday inspiration for you to carry you through the week to the weekend where you can settle in, have a cup of coffee and weekend papers, with some delicious brunch. 
This is a lovely recipe for soda farls, put up by Niamh, who runs the blog Eat Like a Girl. As soon as I saw this post, I knew I had to make these, not least of all because bread is definitely one of those things which people tend to be extremely wary of, and for a good reason, really. If nothing else, you get all psyched up having decided it's time to do bread, then reading the recipe realise there's about four hours of letting it sit around, while you're standing there in your apron, all ready to go! Plus activating the yeast can be a pain. 

I love Saturday morning breakfast 

My only proper experience of trying to make bread was an overly-spongy, oily foccacia which my boyfriend loved, because anything coated in oil, garlic and rosemary is guaranteed to hit SOME taste buds, but it was hardly a triumph and it took much too long. Boo to that! 
Whereas this recipe doesn't even need yeast! Make the dough, put it into a hot floured frying pan for about eight minutes, and you're done. Hot, fresh bread with your breakfast that 10 minutes prior was a heap of flour. Now that's a sense of smug achievement for you! 
I've included this one here with some roasted tomatoes, which I stuck in the oven as soon as I arrived back from Tesco, even before I started weighing out the flour, plus some scrambled eggs and some bacon. Yum yum.  For two people. 


Soda farls (with tomatoes, eggs and bacon, or whatever you like) 

• 115g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 75mls buttermilk, or 75ml normal milk with a 1/2 tsp of lemon juice
• Pinch of salt

Before you do anything else, get on your tomatoes. Pre-heat the oven, and cut them in half and sprinkle over a pinch of dark sugar, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, a pinch of oregano and maybe some harissa dry spice rub (that's what the rose-petal looking flakes are in the photograph), if you have it to hand! Put it in the oven on 180C, and keep an eye on it. If it starts to get too dried-out looking, just turn off the oven but leave them inside. They'll stay warm. 

Now onto the farls! Sieve the flour and bicarb into a mixing bowl, and add the salt. Make sure it's combined, then make a well in the centre and gradually add the milk, a little at a time, mixing all the while. You miiiiiight need a little extra splash of milk if it really won't come together at all, but you want it to just about stick into a ball. Knead it very briefly, for 20 seconds or so, then roll into a ball in your hands and put on a floured work-top. Push the round of dough out into a circle shape about 1cm thick (it will rise when you cook it) and cut into quarters.

Put a frying pan on a medium heat with a sprinkling of flour, and put the farls in, turning occasionally until they're goldeny-brown on each side. Once the farls are in the pan, get your scrambled eggs on (scrambled eggs must be cooked slowly, on a low heat, with butter!) and after a bit, your bacon. At the end, serve all together, with a big mug of black coffee (alright, tea if you must) and the weekend magazines. Then mooch around all day. Perfect!

Lovely smell at this point, as you can imagine! 

Credit where credit is due: Niamh of Eat Like a Girl