Erzatsz lunch

We're at the stage of kind of needing to go grocery shopping, but having enough food in the house to make it not worth the effort. What we lack, however, is ingredients which obviously fit together and provide an equally obvious meal. Instead, today's meal came from a selection of somewhat random items, all of which need to be used up. It tasted good, anyway!

Cauliflower cheese
Half a cauliflower - cut into smallish pieces, place in a greased dish, bake for the time it takes to make the sauce.
The sauce is the slightly faffy bit. Melt a couple of tablespoons of margarine - start on a high temperature but turn down when it actually starts to melt, otherwise it'll separate instead. Take the melted margarine off the heat and stir in three or four tbsp of cornflour until you have a smooth paste. Slowly stir in soy milk until you have a liquid with no lumps. Put back on a high heat and stir constantly until it thickens. Add grated cheezly - I think I had a little under half a block. Stir until that melts.
Pour the sauce over the cauliflower, sprinkle peppers and tomato on top if you feel like it. Bake for half an hour or so, until brown on top.

Tapas potatoes
Cut three or four smallish potatoes into little chunks. Mix in a couple of crushed garlic cloves, large sprinkling of paprika, small sprinkling of cayenne pepper. Douse in olive oil, place in oven at 200C for 50 mins.

Flavored couscous
Half-fill a bowl with couscous. Add coriander and mint, squeeze on the juice of half a lemon or lime. Fill the bowl with boiling water and leave to stand for 10mins or so.

Parsnip curry, a nice surprise

We bought a large bag of short-dated parsnips the other day, too many to roast for one Sunday dinner, so they needed using up. I'm not quite sure whose idea parsnip curry was initially, I'm happier about claiming it having happily eaten a couple of helpings, on the other hand I should probably give the significant other credit if it is due. I've never made or seen a recipe for parsnip curry before, so it took a bit of thinking about - I figured mild and creamy would work best. This was a relatively small meal - we stretched it out to two helpings each but that was with extra rice and poppadums (and a naan bread for the one of us who isn't vegan - the Co-op do vegan ones but I hadn't had time to go there, they aren't my favourite thing anyway though).

Start with what appears (from checking the label and what is left in the bag) to be three quarters of a kilo of parsnips. You might like to do more if you don't have any extras around. Peel and chop the parsnips and boil for 20 mins or so.

Strain the parsnips in a colander. Heat some margarine (or veg ghee if you can get it) in the bottom of the saucepan, briefly cook a sprinkling of coriander and cardomom seeds in this, add two or three crushed garlic cloves (less if you aren't keen, more if you love it or have a vampire infestation in your house). Stir the parsnips back in after a few seconds. Add a tablespoon or two of ground cumin.

Crush or grate a sachet or so of creamed coconut (you could probably use a tin of coconut milk if you have it, the creamed stuff keeps better and is cheaper though) over the parsnips and stir in. Add warm water (obviously not if you used coconut milk!) and stir in until the coconut dissolves and everything is covered. Simmer for half an hour or so.

Pasta with peppers and chickpeas

This one definitely comes into the erzatz-but-tasty category - I came back from a trip yesterday and launched straight into a day and a half of being constantly out at work, so needed to cook something nice from limited resources to sustain me for an evening working at home!

Ingredients:
-Half a pepper (yellow in this case)
-Three small cloves of garlic
-Cooking oil (I use sunflower)
-Tomato puree
-Water
-Chickpeas
-Pasta
-Splash of balsamic vinegar (optional)

Put the pasta (about a coffee mug per person) on to boil, adding a splash of oil and a pinch of salt
Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan, cook the pepper in it for about five minutes and the garlic for a bit less
Add the chickpeas in with the pasta*
Add the tomato puree and some water to the peppers and garlic
Add the balsamic to the veg sauce bit
When the pasta is cooked, mix everything together.

*If you use frozen chickpeas, rinse them first with cold water to seperate them and take the freezer taste away. They will defrost while in the boiling water. Duh.