Cooking for one (Mark Two)

PasturesNew

Yesterday I'd bought a chicken breast joint as it'd turned foul/wet outside ... this morning it was sunny!! Oh well - decided to go out car booting to just one and then come home and cook my dinner anyway. So I did that, arriving back home about 10ish.

Picked up four tiny tartlet tins from the boot - 50p for a set of four, so I thought I could always find a use for them for something. Too small for yorkies ... might do for quiches, but they're a bit dainty whereas I like to make a "good sized serves one" quiche, not poncy little uns.

Chicken's on.... yorkie mix is in the fridge .... cabbage has been cut into halves, swede I decided to just chop ¼ off it and I used 3 carrots in with the chicken and got 1 carrot to go with the veg - cabbage/swede/carrot will be steamed together. Also made stuffing and got peas out... will do Bisto. No spuds ... CBA to do roasties, might make some mash later, might get some out of a packet, might just go without as there'll be enough food on the plate without.

No idea when I'll be eating ... probably before 3.

Hollyharvey

I've got a chilli in the slow cooker for dinner tonight. PN mentioning chilli yesterday made me want it . The whole place smells lovely with that cooking.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs on toast, and I don't fancy lunch right now. I'll probably give lunch a miss now.

I've just cleaned the fridge there isn't any fresh food needing using up in the near future, so I'm really pleased about that .

PN I've got some of those tartlet tins. I kept them from my parents' house when we were clearing it out. Dad used to cook a lot when he retired and liked to serve things for him and mum in individual dishes, so I kept all of those and my brother kept a lot of the larger ones as there is four of them.

Farway

PasturesNew wrote: »

Nuke it, I've been doing it for years. Turns out perfectly every time.

For a whole pie .... quantities would have to be bigger than I usually make, so I'd give it: tablespoon of butter/marg into a big mug, melt that. Toss in about the same amount (by eye) of flour and use a fork to wiggle it all about to make it smooth. Splash in milk and wiggle it round with a fork until smooth. Nuke a bit (30-40 secs) ... then it's a question of continuing to add milk, wiggling it so it's still smooth and nuking it (which thickens it). Until it's done. 2-3 mins tops.

I just do it by eye when I make it ... adding more flour, or milk, or nuking it, depending on what I'm looking at and if it needs more liquid, more solid, more 'cooking off' (because you do have to get the flour taste 'cooked off' as they call it).

Thanks, will try that way. I did look for cheat mix in Morries, expecting a "just add boiling water" type, like gravy, but no, just same mixing over heat and cheapest was 40p. I can do better than that, so the nuke it is

One unexpected gift from Morries, I found a tin of Ambrosia custard in the car park :j undamaged so those ISIS folk not been at it, I hope. Better than YS in my book

moneyistooshorttomention

Lunch was a healthy one today:). Big bowl of salad (veg. of various descriptions/avocado/fresh lemon juice squeezed on top) topped off with nutritional yeast (for "cheese" flavour) and some seeds toasted with a bit of soya sauce. Then bit of sprouted bread with fruit spread and finished with almond milk to drink (yep....being experimental with plant milks now).

Feels virtuous:)

EDIT; nearly forgot - also had some of my aubergine "bacon" with it.

PasturesNew

Dinner scoffed. Yorkshire was too big to fit on the plate, mainly because I'd already put the veg on there... oh well.

Chicken, big yorkie, stuffing.
Swede, carrots, cabbage, peas.
Bisto.

It was like a Xmas Trial Run Day!

Took a photo, it looked (and tasted) better in real life:
https://s26.postimg.org/wjy9o1vy1/Dinner.jpg

I still need to find "the correct dish" to make the Yorkshire properly - they do need the right size/type of dish to get a perfect look .... and it's not the dish I used, which was only used as "the closest I've got right now to the ideal dish"

u2migsc1m

Farway

Looks nice dinner PN

My fish pie turned out very well, all scoffed now

It was a first, made lots of pies in my time but never a fish one, and especially rewarding because it turned yesterday's disaster into dinner

Used the PN nuking sauce method, but added some English mustard and nuked onion on completion

Here's the result

PasturesNew

Farway wrote: »

Used the PN nuking sauce method, but added

Looks awesome

I used to make sauce in a saucepan years ago - lot of faff... and saucepans tended to make way too much. I've been nuking ALL white sauces for well over 30 years.

I don't cook for others, but during a parent's final weeks, a sibling visited their house and, if you've ever been present in sudden/unexpected/final week situations you realise that you've no time to think of food... it's a real after-thought - and after a hectic day I offered to make mac cheese for my sibling. The lip curled in complete disbelief ... and I was watched as I knocked it up before her very eyes.... and she tasted it ... and her grim face fell away into a huge beam as she said "I NEVER thought that'd work!"

So long as you keep the roux lump free, which is easy with just the tines of a fork, it's 100% guaranteed every time. Just lots of "little and often" as you add milk/de-lump it/nuke.

Most people never have the need to make tiny quantities, or think in terms of nuking all foods ... so they don't have the time/need to try it ... and perfect the technique.

I always say of any cooking, you cook things 3x to get them perfect:

1] Follow a recipe and see what happens
2] Do that again, adjusting it depending on what happened last time
3] Now you're a pro and you can just knock it up as you know how you like it and what to expect.

Many things "just work" first time....

PasturesNew

I've just made a cheesecake. Well, the base, I'll knock up the other bit in a couple of hours, but the base is in the fridge.

Yet again, of course, I didn't have "the perfect sized" dish, so improvised with a single portion deep pie dish ... this gives a "cheesecake in a bucket" effect as the cheesecake won't come close to the top/ridge.

But it'll still taste the same

It'll be a lemony one, because I've opened the lemon already (last week) ...

Used 3 biscuits, so it is a small 'un.

Farway

I could cheat and put some lemon curd on a digestive

candygirl

I can't stop eating silverskin onions today :eek::rotfl: