Tag Archives: ingredients

Too Many Carrots

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I’m currently cooking with one half of my brain and blogging with the other. Or, to clarify, in case this conjures up pictures of more activity than is actually happening, I’m waiting for a timer to go off, wondering about what else to cook and thinking about recipes. At the same time, having missed a post last night, I’m typing a post while I have a few minutes and feel warm enough to do it. We are still economising on heating, which means I don’t get to the keyboard as much as I would like, as I’m still determined not to take the laptop into the living room.

We have not been doing as much menu planning as we should, and I’m faced with a problem of what to make with carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes and onions. We’ve already had vegetable stew and vegetable soup in the last few days. Julia did something Chinese with chilli, rice and prawns on Monday but I’m struggling to be inventive. We would have had fish pie but we are trying to clear the freezer for Christmas and all the fish is currently frozen as we aren’t very good at forward planning and anything takes days to defrost at the moment. I could, I suppose, bake pieces of fish in foil. They will defrost like that, but I’m not sure that they go with root vegetables. In the hands of a Masterchef contestant, with a carrot puree here and a parsnip foam there, and probably a sweet potato pickle and a fondant potato, I’m sure my list of ingredients would be wonderful. In mine, not quite so much . . .

We could have the good old standby of pasta with stuff in it and pesto poured on – we have prawns and mussels in the freezer and they take no time to defrost – but it doesn’t seem much of a meal in winter.

Julia just rang as I was juggling pans. She’s on her way back from a meeting and wanted to know if she should go to the chip shop on the way past.

So, tonight’s menu is fish and chips with peas. Tomorrow we will be having mixed vegetable hash with corned beef (it could be eaten tonight, but I’d rather have chips) and I’m currently using the vegetable water from parboiling the hash vegetables to make a carrot, lentil and garlic soup. It was going to be carrot and lentil, but the garlic paste jar looked about empty so I used it all, and the resulting smell from the pan is rather garlicky.

In fact the chips just arrived so I’ll eat now and finish this later.

Looks like a curry…

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If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.

Douglas Adams,  Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Most people are familiar with the Duck Test. but how many people can tell the difference between a stew and a curry?

For instance, I cooked a spicy dish of beef and vegetables tonight, what was it?  I ate it and I’m not sure.

It included carrot, sweet potato, parsnip, onions, mushrooms, ginger, chillies and lentils. With the exception of parsnip I’ve had them all in curries before – either from Indian or Chinese restaurants.

So was it a curry?

The ingredients don’t seem to be a reliable indicator. You can make curry without using curry powder. You can serve either dish with a variety of breads and rice, though the jury is out regarding potatoes.

After giving it an evening of thought, and discussing the nuances of potato cuisine, we’ve come up with the following guidelines (which probably don’t apply outside the UK).

If you serve it with dumplings it’s a stew.

If you use a recipe (no matter how vaguely remembered) it’s probably a curry.

If you use the random ingredients you happen to have to hand, it’s probably a stew.

As a result of this discussion I’ve also identified  a possible gap in the market for a takeaway stew restaurant, but that’s a discussion for another day.