It's been quite icy lately in the UK so I hope you're all wrapped up warm and being careful on the roads when you do go out. I don't know about anyone else, but my old car takes ages to defrost in the morning so I've taken to covering the rear-window with a proper plastic frost sheet, and covering the windscreen with some massive sheets of bubble wrap that have been in the back of the car since we moved house I think. I admit I did feel pretty damn stupid the first time I did it, but then I was laughing the next morning when it took a fraction of the time to get going for work, which equals more time staying wrapped up warm in bed! Yippee!
Anyway, speaking of staying warm, I'm home alone tonight as Tom's gone off to the climbing wall, so faced with the prospect of cooking for myself I had planned on just slobbing it with some simple pasta with leftover veg and Philadelphia cheese - I don't know why but I can never think of what to cook when it's just me eating - but as I started frying up the mushrooms and garlic and boiling the spaghetti I realised that I wasn't far off one of the Ravinder Bhogal recipes that is on my list for the Cooking Challenge. So the Philadelphia went back in the fridge and I ended up with my very improvised (I only glanced at the recipe really to use as a guideline) and not at all exact version of her 'Zesty Angel Hair Spaghetti with Garlic and Chilli'. Although it was completely fudged, it actually turned out quite nicely and even looked quite pretty :)
All I did was this:
1. I just cooked some spaghetti as per the pack instructions (I wasn't going to go out and buy angel hair as it's supposed to be a cheap recipe), and in the meantime, fried up some leftover mushrooms and a load of smoked garlic (about 3 or 4 normal sized cloves - mine were huge so only used 2) that my mother brought me from France for Christmas (she knows me so well).
2. I then squeezed out the juice of one already zested lemon that I'd had wrapped in clingfilm in the fridge since I baked a lemon drizzle cake a while ago and hadn't figured out what to do with it yet (I just love using up leftovers!), and then added a small amount of chopped red chilli to the mushrooms and garlic to cook.
3. Once that had had a little while to infuse the oil, I added the lemon juice and let that cook for about a minute while I drained and rinsed the pasta in cold water, then adding it to the pan of garlicky, lemony, chilli oil (it wasn't very oily to be fair but then again I didn't take note of the measurements from the recipe so I probably used too little), making sure it was all mixed in well so that the oil coated the pasta completely.
4. I then just popped it on a plate and topped with some grated Parmesan cheese (maybe a little too much this time ) took a photo and flopped down on the sofa, whacked the TV on and tucked in!
It took absolutely no time at all, and really didn't involve many ingredients (I just added the mushrooms as they needed using up) so I think it's one I'll be doing again, although I'll try to follow the recipe a bit more carefully next time.
That brings the current count to:
Recipes completed: 6 Recipes remaining: 66 Weeks remaining:46ish
We're not doing badly, eh? And I didn't even plan to cook much 'proper food' this week because of trying to save money :)
Anyway, I'd better finish up now as the battery on the laptop is about to go and I've got washing in the machine that needs to be hung up to dry (ah, domesticity...).
'Til next time,
Lettie xx
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