Month: June 2023

Hands-free Black Bean and Brown Rice Casserole

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Where last week’s recipe was flighty and fancy, this Hands-free Black Bean and Brown Rice Casserole is more sensible and functional — not exactly dinner party fare but highly amenable to that evening slump in energy and inspiration when you require dinner but wish to neither think nor try. While my blog is not generally a perky resource for busy people with many mouths to feed — it’s merely a collection of recipes that I love — I aim, at least, to be practical about the outwardly impractical. This recipe, however, is pure pragmatism without qualification. You plonk a bunch of long-life pantry ingredients in an oven dish, bake for an hour, and there’s your dinner.

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Lemon Vodka Pasta

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You might well ask, how can I possibly wring further mileage out of the pairing of lemon and pasta when there’s already the Pasta with Lemon, Garlic, and Thyme Mushrooms; the Lemon Rosemary Fettuccine; and the Lemon “Parmesan” Spaghetti recipes on here for starters? It’s not just a case of if you get it you get it, but to me each of these recipes has their own personality, narrative, energy, and — importantly — flavour — and I could probably come up with another ten recipes combining lemon and pasta and argue for each of their relevance. But still, you might well ask, and I shall answer: what sets this Lemon Vodka Pasta apart is its spirited spin on the French beurre blanc sauce, where wine and vinegar are evaporated down before having butter whisked in. Here, the strong and sour components come from vodka and lemon, further adulterated with cream to give the emulsion a helping hand.

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Blackberry White Pepper Gingerbread

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In my ongoing battle to bargain with my brain to do small, unremarkable tasks, I’ve found that I have better success with my to-do lists if I scatter the jobs across the page — like sprigs of basil adorning a plate of pasta al pomodoro — rather than simply listing them one after the other. It’s stupid, but it generally works, which means it’s possibly not so stupid after all. Frequently, one of those untethered tasks is the phrase “vibe with food” which is my designated time to sit on the couch and try to invent or mentally develop and coax recipes into existence. Alas, because this task is non-urgent and fun it tends to get shunted (the system is sound but not bulletproof) but on my most recent attempt at vibing with food, two ingredients bobbed in my head: ginger and blackberries, and like Homer Simpson’s “dental plan/Lisa needs braces” reverie, through the repetition of both words I eventually thought: what if I put blackberries in gingerbread?

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stovetop buffalo cauliflower mac and cheese

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This may be a common way of visualising the various events and diary-dates of one’s life and not worth commenting on but when drifting through my memories I tend to recall most sharply what I ate and what I wore — that night was the Chorizo Wellington, that evening was the vintage black velvet jumpsuit, that party was the Lemon Prosset when I tried to make a double batch and it didn’t quite set, and so on. And so, it is with earned confidence that I can claim I’m very sure I’ve never actually had buffalo sauce, or any buffalo-adjacent dish in my life, and it is with unearned confidence that I present today’s recipe for Stovetop Buffalo Cauliflower Mac and Cheese. Does dousing something in buffalo sauce make it, well, buffalo? Possibly not. But, does this taste good? You already know!

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