The Recipe Room

If you have a little bit of extra time, you can, like I have done here, prepare a potato mash and add hummus to it for extra flavour. In this dish of Hake with potato and hummus mash, I have mixed the hummus and potatoes for an extra yummy and healthy mash that goes well with fish.

Just like Japanese soy and Italian green pesto, I always make sure I have a bowl of hummus at home. Lazy as I am, I always buy it ready-made, but if you have a blender, you can easily put this together at home yourself. If you’d like to try, here is a Moroccan hummus recipe that you will love!

This Middle Eastern dish is made of chickpeas, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and tahini, a sesame seed paste, blended all together to form a paste. It is great as a meat substitute as it is very high in protein and a good source of fibre. It also contains loads of other goodies and is truly scrumptious, so eat away!

Hummus paste is great for sandwiches as a spread or added as an extra ingredient and flavour to something else. I even know people who eat it with a spoon!

A simple and typically easy dish to spin together is a noodle dish, which requires basically no work. All you need are the ingredients such as vegetables and a sauce and “Voila!” – you have a tasty dish for the evening. If you want more protein, I also recommend this recipe for duck fillet stir fry with noodles.

And if you make some extra, you could stuff it in your lunchbox for the next day. That’s often what I do because I barely manage to crawl out of bed in the morning, always pressing “snooze” and waiting until the latest possible moment, with no time to spare for thinking of what food to bring for the day.

In this recipe I used corn, red onion, mushrooms and broccoli, and I steamed the broccoli before adding them to the noodles. It could not be easier!

When you steam broccoli, you preserve most of its health benefits, so I try to do that as often as possible. When steamed, they have a cholesterol-lowering benefit which always is welcome, although luckily, I´m not worried about that. Even so, it’s important to be aware of what you’re eating to avoid health problems in the future.

Also, broccoli works as a great detoxifier, as it washes out the system and eliminates unwanted contaminants.

Pesto is an all-time favourite of mine and one of my must-have sauces at home. There is both a green and red variety, but I prefer the green one because it is so versatile. Here is a dish of pasta with pesto, broccoli and Feta cheese that I make a lot – often in the morning before I rush to catch the bus to Uni!

A typical pesto is made by first placing garlic and pine nuts in a mortar and reducing it to a cream. After that, you add washed and dried basil leaves and grind it to a creamy consistency. Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino cheeses are then added together with some olive oil. However, if you don’t want to go to all this trouble, you can find pre-made pesto in most supermarkets. The most common one is pesto alla genovese.

You may believe that pesto is only used as a sauce for pasta, but think again! These pesto cod and chips use it as a dressing on top of seafood. Play around with pesto, and you never know what new delights you might discover!

What we need:

• 200g of tricolour pasta
• 2 tablespoons of green pesto
• 1 large red onion
• 1 large red pepper
• 1 dl of broccoli florets
• A small tin of green beans
• 10 black olives
• 100g of Feta cheese
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

Tip! If you want to make your life easier, you can even use frozen vegetables instead of fresh.

How to make it:

1. Wash and chop the onion, pepper and broccoli into pieces.
2. Pour 1 litre of water into a saucepan and bring it to the boil.
3. Add the pasta and cook it according to instructions on the package.
4. Pour the olive oil in a frying pan.
5. Place the vegetables in the frying pan and let it all fry for a few minutes until the vegetables are soft.
6. Add the green beans.
7. Chop the olives into halves and add to the frying pan.
8. Drain the pasta when ready.
9. Add the pesto to the hot pasta and mix carefully.
10. Add all the vegetables from the frying pan.
11. Grate the Feta cheese over the pasta and stir once or twice.
12. Serve hot or store it in a Tupperware for later use.

Time needed: 15 minutes
Serves: 2
Level: Easy

One food item that I always try to have in the fridge is mango chutney. It is really versatile; it can be an accompaniment, a side dish sauce, an actual sauce in a stir-fry or  a topping just to add an extra flavour to something. I usually use it to sweeten something that might be too spicy on its own. It is good with strong cheeses too; try it for yourself – only your imagination sets the limit! (Also sample this pear and mango chutney.)

Chutney is a South Asian condiment, and there are many different kinds. They can be made from virtually any vegetable or fruit, herbs, spices or a combination of them. Often it is fruit, vinegar, and sugar cooked down to a reduction, such as in the case of mango chutney. Chutneys are usually sweet or hot; and both usually contain various spices, including chilli, but are set apart by their main flavour, such as mango or tomato.

If you have a little more time and energy than me, it is reasonably easy to make mango chutney at home, but I just bought a ready-made one. Here is a really simple stir-fry dish which is put together within minutes. I hope you enjoy it!

Broccoli and bacon make a great combination. I especially like broccoli salad with bacon because of the contrast with the leafy green veg and crispy meat. In this recipe for pasta salad with broccoli and fried bacon, I add pasta to the mix, as well as a few more veggies for good measure.

I am aware that pasta salad is considered a summer food, but being the eternal optimist, and having seen the latest weather forecasts for London, I believe we soon enough will be visiting the park for a spring picnic. One can only hope!

It is not important whether we have to eat it inside huddled on the couch or, with better luck, on a picnic blanket in the park. Regardless of the weather, a pasta salad is easy to make and is a quick and cheap lunch to bring to University in a plastic box. Plus, it stays fresh for 1-2 days in the fridge! Make a large bowl and you are set for lunch, dinner AND picnic time!

What we need:

• 500g of Penne pasta
• 1 large red onion
• 200g of broccoli
• 200g of Feta cheese
• 100g of black olives, without pits
• 200g of sliced bacon
• 100g of sun-dried tomatoes
• 3 large ripe tomatoes
• 1 cucumber
• 3 pinches of ground pepper (to taste)
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 and ½ decilitre of crème fraiche (sour cream or natural thick yoghurt for cooking)
• 2 cloves of garlic

How we make it:

1. Boil the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Drain and put in a bowl for later.
2. Chop the onion into thin slices.
3. Chop the tomatoes and cucumber into squares.
4. Chop the olives into halves.
5. Put all the chopped vegetables into a large bowl.
6. Fry the bacon in the oil. Take off excess fat with paper and let it dry.
7. Once cool, cut the bacon into slices and place in a bowl.
8. Grate the Feta cheese over the salad and add the sun-dried tomatoes.
9. Mix all the ingredients and carefully put the pasta in the large bowl.
10. Add the pepper according to taste.
11. Pour the crème fraiche into a small bowl and press the garlic cloves into it. Mix carefully and pour into a salad bowl. Mix with all the ingredients.

Serves: 3-4
Time needed: 20 minutes
Level: very easy