Firstly, the image above isn't the one I'm going to talk about. It's just that it looked so good I thought you really ought to see it. It's lasagne with pesto from Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest spinach, walnuts, pesto and loads of ricotta. It was fabulous and has definitely earned its place amongst our regular dishes.
What I really want to talk about is one-pot rice dishes.. I don’t
mean risotto, I mean the type of thing you throw in a pot and leave to bubble
away on the cooker or pop in the oven. There are a couple of Delia Smith
recipes we do again and again – Basque chicken which has olives and oranges and
chorizo from her Summer Cooking and
its Winter Cooking equivalent,
Moroccan baked chicken – plus the store-cupboard standby I call ‘emergency dinner’
which is brown rice, borlotti or some other beans, frozen spinach, bacon or
chorizo plus anything else that is lying around. Obviously the trouble with any
of these is that meat is a key ingredient. What could I do to make vegetarian
alternative to these? The obvious answer is just to miss out the meat.
So that, this week, is what I did. I made Delia Smith’s
Moroccan baked chicken without the chicken. So, brown rice, olives, onions,
lemon juice, chickpeas, seasonings. Sounds good, doesn’t it? But you know what?
It tasted like something was missing. And not just the chicken – I think it was missing the rich
fattiness that comes with the chicken.
Is this a thing you can replicate without meat? Maybe more
olives would do it. Or something like aubergine. I’ve looked through the books
I have and can’t find a recipe that does exactly what I want it to do. But
there are other ones that do something slightly different that may fit the
bill. I think this may be one of those areas where instead of trying to
replicate a meat-dish experience I should be embracing the veggie
possibilities. Watch this space…
Here's the entire menu for Week 5.
Claire Watts and her family are cooking vegetarian for a year. You can find out why - and why 'cooking vegetarian' doesn't always necessarily mean 'eating vegetarian' here.
Claire Watts writes and edits books for children.
She's currently working on making something beautiful with fairy tales.
Find out about her Snippets project and how you can help on her Patreon page.
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