Quick and Easy Meals

What attracted me to it? Besides the fact that it’s touted as a greener way to cook and looks as though it has quick and easy meals to make?

The Title:

ONE: POT, PAN, PLANET BY ANNA JONES

Now I love recipes that can all be chucked into one pan. My husband does the washing up in our house, since he retired and he loves the one pan idea of cooking because it means a lot less washing up.

I love also that it’s helping the planet too and encourages the using up of food that might be thrown away.

From the website &Keep:   

• Award-winning cook Anna Jones blazes the trail again for how we all want to cook now: quick, sustainably and stylishly.
• In this exciting new collection of over 200 simple recipes, Anna Jones limits the pans and simplifies the ingredients for all-in-one dinners that keep things fast and easy.
• These super varied every night recipes celebrate vegetables and deliver knock-out flavour but without taking time and energy.

Check it out HERE!!!

 

From the Guardian newspaper:   

I found this on the Guardians website, it is from 2014. The recipe is on there should you care to have a look.

The base is made from cauliflour, which may sound gross to you. It reminds me of a quiche I made from a recipe that had a caulifour base and my husband had no idea, he thought it was the usual shortcrust pastry that I make. I must say though, it did take longer than making pastry, which literally only takes minutes.

Mind you making anything for the first time takes longer than subsequent times as we all know because the recipe is unfamiliar. The more you make something the easier and quicker it gets.

Yes I know you can buy ready made pastry, I discovered it a few years ago and have bought puff pastry but only because puff pastry is a pain to make.

      

• This is not a run-of-the-mill pizza – the base is made from cauliflower, oats and ground almonds, and makes a crispy, hearty and delicious vehicle for the mozzarella, tomato and fennel that sit on top of it.
• I’m not trying to pretend it’s a normal pizza and that you won’t ever want a delicious margherita again – you will. But this base is so very easy you could eat it any night of the week with glee. Sounds weird, tastes genius. Give it a try.

A video from YouTube

I decided to add an Anna Jones video of soup making for those that prefer to see recipes made.

I’m going show you how to make my winter soup three ways. I’m gonna show you a basic master soup recipe that you can then add-on and change into three different delicious soups throughout the week Soup is amazing this time of year it’s warming it’s really cheap, the ingredients are available in any shop your local corner shop and it’s super nutritious So for me there are 5 elements to any basic soup. We start off with the base, the onion carrots, garlic.

They are going to be the flavours that we build upon. Then we’ve got the herbs, I’m using thyme today, then we move on to the spices. I’ve got cumin and fennel here they add a bit depth and then we’re moving on to the hero, the main event. This is the backbone of the soup affordable hearty veg. We’re using sweet potato and squash today and the fifth element the last bit is the backup flavour, we’re going to use some spinach today that sits behind the hero and to bind it all together we’ve just got some lovely vegetable stock so I’ve got my base already chopped up.

The Ingredients!

I’ve got one large onion or two smaller ones a couple of carrots and a couple of cloves of garlic I’ve got my pan on a medium heat. A little drizzle of olive oil and then I’m gonna pop in all of my base.

The next thing is some thyme, we just want a small bunch and I’m just going to pick the little leaves just like that off the stork. So let’s think about the spices tablespoon of cumin and a tablespoon of fennel seeds So we’re just going to leave that sweating for about 10 minutes until it’s really really soft and sweet and the onions are sort of translucent in colour.

Right so onto the main event of the soup I’m using a couple of sweet potatoes and I’m using about half a butternut squash You always need to be really careful with your fingers when you’re chopping up squash. I’m using squash and sweet potatoes here but you could really use any vegetables that you’ve got in your fridge and I’m just going to chop these up about the same size. Come over and have a look in here.

Cooking

I’m just going to check on my base.

You can see there all the sweetness has come out of those vegetables and we’re ready to put our hero veg in. Now that may look like a lot but it’s going to make six bowls of soup so it’s going to go quite a long way. So we’re going to give that a good stir.

Pop in a bit of sea salt and a good pinch of pepper and then we’re just going to top up with some hot vegetable stock. So we’re going to leave that to simmer on a medium heat for about 20 to 30 minutes until all the veg has cooked through. So this has had about 20-25 minutes and you can see this is just right the squash is lovely and soft, the sweet potato has started breaking down and you can see all those lovely flavours have started mingling together.

So the last thing we’re going to do is add the backup flavour, I’m using spinach but you could use broccoli or some peas, you could use broad beans, you could use some asparagus.

So that’s our basic soup ready.

3 Different Ways

Now I’m going to show you how to take it 3 different ways for 3 completely different meals.  The first thing I’m going to do is just ladle out about a third of the soup and I’m going to keep this a bit chunky so it feels a bit more like a stew and blitz up the other two thirds just using a hand blender, until it’s really nice and smooth.

1st Soup

So that’s perfect. Start off with the first soup I’m going to top it with a thyme and chilli oil so in here I’ve got a bit of chilli, I’ve got a bit of thyme a little pinch of salt and I’m just going to bash this up to get all the flavours going. Pop a bit of oil in here and you can just see there, that there’s all the thyme bashed up with the chilli and that’s all being released into the really delicious oil. You can use a really good oil here because this isn’t going to be damaged by the heat and I’m just going to top this with some of this delicious chilli and thyme oil.

It’s a really really simple soup but that extra virgin olive oil, the thyme and the chilli, is going to really lift this into something completely different.

2nd Soup

Now we’re onto the next soup and this one’s a chunkier soup. I’m just going to bring this over here. It’s still nice and warm I’m just stirring through a small handful or about 4 tablespoons of cannellini beans, they’re lovely and buttery and they’ll really up the protein content of this soup. So it’s really really going to fill you up.

So you can tell already that those feel like two completely different meals, this feels like a really hearty stew and this is a more refined and delicate soup. What I’m going to do to top it off is add a few crispy sage leaves that have been fried in a tiny bit of olive oil.

3rd Soup

Now for our final soup! I’m going to add a few tablespoons of brown rice in here. It’s really important, if you’re using leftover rice, that you make sure it’s really super hot. Either heat it up in the microwave or you could pop it into your soup and just boil it away until it’s really really nice and hot.

The brown rice adds some extra fibre and carbohydrate. It makes this soup a little bit heartier, so this is a really good one to have for dinner if you’re feeling really hungry So I’m just adding a little bit to the soup and then you finish this off with a little bit of natural yogurt.

You could use coconut yogurt or soy yogurt if you don’t like dairy. So there you have it one, two three really delicious different soups from one super simple basic recipe.

What do you think?

A bit of variety in this post for you. Did you enjoy it or think it’s a bit busy? Do you enjoy cooking and do you think the kitchen is the heart of a home?

I find the lovely smells wafting through the house always bring the family to congregate in the kitchen. It also seems that any gathering ends up with most people in the kitchen, chatting and sampling as things come out of the oven.

Just as it should be!

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