As much as I love to cook and bake, I find it really hard to motivate myself to get out the pans and bowls if it’s just for me. Partly because I detest washing up with a passion. Partly because I do not want to eat a whole tray full of brownies. Ok, maybe I might want to but it would not, I daresay*, be the best idea for me to do so.
So on days like today, when I get off work a little early to have time to do my homework last minute eat before French class, it’s usually a case of, “what do I have in the fridge, which can be somehow transformed in five minutes into something that I would want to eat, using the least number of utensils and pans possible?”
Today, I had half a box of mushrooms, some milk, ketchup, wholegrain mustard and half a loaf of soda bread that I made on Saturday. I can already hear my mum getting excited (it sounds something like “oh oh oh!”)
Introducing, our family recipe “devilled mushrooms”…
I readily admit it may not look too impressive, but this is such a delicious, quick and easy supper. This recipe actually made it into the first edition of the family cookbook (yes, we have a family cookbook, and yes, there are numerous editions as it has been modified and added too over the last six years) but due to my dislike of mushrooms until my famous 2008 revelation, I had never actually made this. Mum and Jen made this up one Saturday lunchtime years ago and liked it so much it got repeated.
What you need:
125g chopped mushrooms
1 oz butter
1 tbsp flour
4 fl oz milk
1 generous splash of lea & errins sauce (I substituted a tsp wholegrain mustard)
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
chopped parsley (optional)
2 slices bread
What you do:
Melt the butter in a small pan and fry the mushrooms gently; Stir in the flour to make a roux.
Stir in the milk, ketchup, lea&perrins and bring to the boil, stirring constantly
Meanwhile make the toast (you don’t need instructions right?!)
Butter the toast and top with the mushrooms and chopped parsley
The soda bread recipe was an impulse baking moment: I was reading old cooking magazines and found Angela Nilson’s recipe for “The Ultimate Soda Bread” in the BBC Good Food magazine from March 2007. Well I am still trying to use up the last of the buttermilk from the red velvet cupcakes so this seemed like a good option. And although this is the first time I have made soda bread so I can’t definitively claim it is “ultimate”, it is pretty yummy.
I can’t find the recipe online but this one is similar. Just ignore the oats.
And lastly, these flowers on my kitchen table have been giving me much joy as they have exploded like crazy things in the last few days. I thought you might enjoy them too. (Notice the two bananas just crying out to be made into banana bread. Please ignore the reeeeeally dirty windows)
*that was especially for you, Jen.
