Tuesday 3 June 2008

Cooking for One

As I mentioned, the bloke's away in the desert somewhere, so I'm on my own. This doesn't mean I give up cooking and eat takeaway or baked beans on toast. Not that there's anything wrong with baked beans on toast; I probably will have them at some point this fortnight. Also cheese toasties - I'm especially partial to cheese on toast with pineapple or sweet corn, and Indian hot lime pickle. Salt, fat, sugar, chilli, carbs, what's not to love? A side salad, or just some sliced cucumber, is good for contrast.

Actually, when the bloke is away, my thoughts turn to the stuff he won't eat. So I made an eggplant dish. I did this on Sunday - really simply, just layered eggplant, fresh tomatoes and onion in a baking dish, drizzled over a random uncooked sauce that I made in a coffee mug, and topped it with grana padano towards the end. The sauce was just crushed garlic, tomato paste, red wine, and dried oregano and basil. While this was baking, I cooked up a half packet of pasta, dressed it with a good pesto, and some sauteed mushrooms. I got the pesto from Choku Bai Jo - it's made with olive oil, parmesan and pinenuts, unlike most supermarket brands.

So basically I cooked enough for a lot of meals, and it can be varied to avoid boredom. I have a lot of precooked ingredients in the fridge, ready to microwave for a quick after work dinner. So far I've had simple pesto-mushroom pasta with steamed broccoli; and baked eggplant with crusty bread and cheese. On Monday night I also cooked up some baby red silverbeet in agrodolce style, with a few pinenuts and currants for a slightly middle eastern twist. I ate some of it with some of the pasta and broccoli. Other ideas that I may use include pesto, mushroom and tuna pasta with frozen baby peas; silverbeet frittata; pasta with eggplant and tuna... I also have salad makings, if I get bored of the broccoli. So I'm going to eat well, but in a slightly lower effort style.

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