On The Plate: August – marking a midway point

Not that you can really see ‘em as I grit my teeth to face another crisp mid-winter day, but believe me, I am grinning! Why? Well mainly because August marks a mid-way point through the winter season.

There’s a lot to love about winter and I guess while we are all grinding through these challenging times, it’s important to seek out and be mindful of any small acts that make us smile.
Making a warming meal to share with family is one priceless yet often underrated joy. Yes, I know that with everything else going on at present it’s hard to find the positives, but we must! Sometimes it just seems too darn hard to muster the energy and inspiration to fling yourself into action stations in the kitchen, but choosing great produce, not too many ingredients, maybe even making the double the quantity and freezing half – just to have on hand for that mid-week night when you simply can’t find the energy to fire up the stoves. So, let’s have a half-time calibration and call on a few cheat’s tricks to keep it all simple, and FUN!
Keeping some staples in the cupboard such as tinned cherry tomatoes, cannelini beans, chickpeas, jars of sugo, and a range of good tasty sausages, some portions of bacon in the freezer, will enable you to bring together a hearty, one-pot-wonder to feed a couple of people, or a family sized dinner. The sausages I like to keep handy are good, well textured pork and fennel and some spicy chippolatas. Both types can be a key ingredient in a hearty hot pot with root vegetables, garlic, a splash of red wine, or, can be squeezed out of their casings and sautéed to make a hearty sauce for pasta.
Various types or shapes of pasta are always in my cupboard from the tiny rissoni or ‘orzo’, to penne, wide ribbons of egg fettuccine and always, always No 12 spaghetti for bolognaise!
To make my one-pot sausage and vegetables dish, I partially pan fry the sausages first, using a deep sided pan with a lid – it’s part of the simplicity to cook this in the one pot! I remove the sausages and slice them into bite-sized pieces. Using a medley of vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, onions, capsicums, zucchini- all roughly chopped bite-size and added into the aforementioned pan according to the length of cooking time they’ll require to be cooked through – holding their shapes and not too mushy. To this I generally add a can of cherry tomatoes, or crushed tomatoes if that’s all you have. (Even the slightly ‘past best for the salad bowl’ fresh tomatoes can be added in). Olive oil, garlic, some chilli to your liking, and if you have it some finely chopped parsley or other herbs are a great garnish. If you’re a green thumb with a home veggie garden the addition of spinach, silver beet leaves or green beans make for an even healthier dish. Rerun the chopped sausages to the pot to cook them fully.
I realise this is a very loose recipe or instruction, but I’m hopeful that you’ll simply ‘have a go’. And I also hope you’ll enlist others in your household to get involved in the chopping, sharing stories and gossip over how each has managed to get through another day of social distancing, keeping your ‘cool’ during the chaos of these times? For a more ‘formalised’ O-P-W dish, I’ve been inspired by a recipe clipped from the newspaper recently – a vegetarian curry by Ella Mills – just perfect for a winter night with the fresh ginger and curry powder to fire up the belly!
Maybe you could put out a household challenge to see who can be the most imaginative or creative in cooking up a winter’s night storm to warm your hearts at the mid-way mark! Remember it’s about facing some fun and all pulling together!

Spinach and chickpea curry

INGREDIENTS
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 bunch spinach
1-2 stalks celery
3cm piece fresh ginger
400g can coconut milk
1 tsp each ground coriander, curry powder, ground cumin, brown mustard seeds
2 x 400g tins chick peas
1 punnet cherry tomatoes (or 1 tin of cherry tomatoes)
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup plain yoghurt
pinch of chilli flakes

METHOD
Drain and rinse chickpeas. Wash and drain spinach – spin leaves in a salad spinner, or pat dry slightly with paper towel. Peel and crush garlic cloves; peel and finely chop the ginger; chop cherry tomatoes in halves; chop onion, celery into dice – about same size, certainly not smaller than, the chick peas. Heat coconut oil in a heavy based pan and gently sauté onion, celery and garlic until all softened. Season with salt and pepper. Add ginger, then mustard seeds, spices and stir – for a minute or two – the fragrance of the spices will be evident. Add cherry tomatoes (if using canned tomatoes, include juices); chickpeas, spinach and stir gently until spinach is wilted slightly. Add coconut milk, bring to boil, the reduce heat to simmer 10-15 minutes, without a lid. Add lemon zest and juice, swirl yoghurt into the pot, and when serving sprinkle with chilli flakes. Serve with naan breads or other flatbread.