April and May on our plates

It has been a while since I shared any pictures of what we’ve been cooking and eating at home recently, so I thought I would look back through my albums and share some with you all.  Following on from my post about cutting out cheese temporarily for health reasons, this has now been extended to a lot more things, specifically wheat, sugar, and yeast.  It has been a challenge recently, but I hope I will get to the point where I am happy to share more with you.

So here’s some of the food we’ve been making and eating during April and May…

Sorrel, fresh garlic and white asparagus frittata

This was inspired by watching an episode of Two Greedy Italians where they met an elderly lady who knew all the wild herbs and plants growing around her mountain home.  She picked some wild greens and made a kind of frittata, popping the cooked greens through a mouli first to remove the tough bits.

I don’t think my sorrel had many tough bits, but being rather short in both supply and knowledge of wild greens, I wanted to try out the idea anyway.  It was great fun mouli-ing the sorrel and then mixing into my beaten eggs.

We’d not tried white asparagus before, but it was available in our organic grocery – I sliced peeled the outside, sliced them in half, blanched them and then laid them on top of my fritttata.  Topped with a dollop of raw basil pesto (this stuff is amazing and I live off it at the moment) it was pretty tasty.

Lemony garlic baked chicken with rice, asparagus and leftover aioli

On my list of what’s great for me to eat at the moment is lemon, garlic and rice.  So I decided to make something that was heavy on these ingredients, and so we simply bunged chicken thighs, lemon juice and the squeezed lemon segments, garlic, olive oil, herbs and seasoning into a pan and roasted it in the oven.

The asparagus were added to the roasting pan shortly before the chicken was done.  In order to make the brown rice as flavourful as possible, I emptied the roasting tray (leaving Mr Rigg to shred the chicken off the bone) whilst I mashed the soft lemon segments to get all the flavour out, before mixing the rice through the hot dressing.

This pile of goodness was topped with some leftover homemade garlicky aioli.  Yum.

Braised lentils with chicken, sun-blushed tomatoes and aioli

This was my birthday meal – normally I would have probably requested Mr Rigg’s delicious homemade pizzas, but trying to avoid both wheat and yeast at the moment I wanted to find a meal that sounded special but not miserable.  I chose this dish from Skye Gyngell’s A Year In My Kitchen.  This is a book that I have mainly to look longingly at the beautiful pictures and delicious sounding food, but until now hadn’t actually made any of the recipes from.

It was scrumptious and can be highly recommended!  A really nice combination of the soft lentils, crispy skinned chicken, intense tomatoes and garlic mayonnaise.

Cheshire new potatoes, salad, soft-boiled egg and crispy bacon

Possibly our favourite meal at the moment, it’s a lovely reminded that summer is headed our way as this is the kind of meal we liked to eat in the warm weather – potatoes, salad, and usually barbecued sausages.  Sometimes we fry the egg (if we are feeling lazy), but this time we soft-boiled the egg then carefully removed the shell – this was a bit of a faff and only for special occasions I feel!

I would love to have poached eggs with this, but they usually end up in a disaster, so at the moment when we are trying to make eating as hassle-free as possible fried eggs are our top choice.  The Cheshire new potatoes came from Abbey Leys Farm Shop and were bursting with flavour – because I’m avoiding dairy we have been using only extra virgin olive oil along with salt and pepper to season them, and you know what, it isn’t half bad.  This goes for mash potato too.

My BLT on spelt sourdough

Simple enough – crispy bacon, sun-blushed tomatoes and baby spinach with a smear of raw basil pesto sandwiched between two sliced of spelt sourdough bread.

Spring pizza with garlic oil, asparagus, peas, broad beans and crisp pancetta

When it comes to pizza Mr Rigg and I can be a bit favouritist, usually going for our favourite topping of fresh rocket and torn Parma ham atop a margarita pizza.  I wanted to try something a bit different using some peas and broad beans (organic but not English) that I found at Unicorn grocery back in April.

The homemade pizza dough was spread with garlic oil and topped with pancetta and asparagus before going in the oven.  I blanched the peas and broad beans and popped these on once the pizza was cooked, before topping with a few slithers of Parmesan.  I think we still prefer our favourite rocket and Parma ham topping, but I’m committed to working on some new topping ideas.

Super-dooper scrambled eggs

I am used to making scrambled eggs with lots of melted butter and more butter spread on my toast.  As I should currently avoid butter (sob!) I have had to think of ways around this.  I intrepidly set out to try making scrambled eggs using olive oil instead…it works!  I don’t know what I was so afraid of.

So I make my scrambled eggs using olive oil instead of melted butter, I have them on spelt sourdough or rye sourdough toast, spread with raw basil pesto (instead of butter) and top with some garden herbs (usually chives) and my seed mix of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and linseed.  It’s pretty tasty and I don’t miss the butter too much.

Red and white quinoa salad with cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, avocado, seed mix and raw pesto

This is my go-to- salad that I invented when I discovered this long list of food items I should currently avoid.  I mix red and white quinoa (surely that must be better than just picking one, and it looks pretty!), make a dressing from garlic and finely sliced spring onions with lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and extra virgin olive oil that I mix through the quinoa once it’s cooked.

Then I top it with whatever salad vegetables I have at home, which is usually some cherry tomatoes and diced avocado, plus I love the intenseness of the sun-dried tomatoes.  Finally I add a generous dollop of my favourite raw basil pesto, and sprinkle over a mixture of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and linseed.