Chickpeas with Tomato Sauce

This is a recipe I adapted from an ebook recipe from Slow Cooking for Vegetarians, which has some great recipes I want to try. I didn't make it in a slow cooker, I made it on the stove, and I cheated on the herbs - I just used some mixed dry herbs and a tin of canned tomatoes with chillis rather than fresh chillis. But it turned out delicious anyway. All you need is a can of chickpeas - I used about 250g, I think, which was half the can, a can of chopped tomatoes, some chillis if they aren't included with the tomatoes, and some herbs. I fried the herbs and tomatoes in some olive oil for a few minutes, whilst the chickpeas were boiling in a separate pan for about ten minutes. Then I drained the peas, added the tomato mix to the saucepan, added some extra water (this step was probably unnecessary, to be honest) and simmered it until the liquid had evaporated off. It was served on top of rice and very delicious. I'll be making it again soon to use up the other half of the chickpeas, and I'll take a photo next time.

Vegetarian Chilli con Carne

Since the success of the vegetable stew, made with a chicken casserole spice mix, I have been buying packet mixes far more often. They're useful because the recipe is printed on the back and very easy to follow with few, uncomplicated ingredients, and despite the fact that they usually include meat, the actual packet mix is normally vegetarian. During my weekly shop I discovered that the Schwartz mixes were 2 for £1, so I had a sift through to find the ones marked vegetarian and came home with a chilli con carne mix and a shepherd's pie mix.

A recipe AND an ingredient all in one!

Tomato Sauce From Scratch

We've got a bumper crop of tomatoes this year (also a bumper crop of courgettes - more on that later) so I decided it was time to bite the bullet and try making some tomato sauce from scratch.

It was surprisingly easy! I had found a recipe from somewhere, although as usual I couldn't tell you where that was, and it only involved five ingredients. I'm a big fan of recipes where I can count the ingredients with one hand.

These were not the actual vegetables used, but a representative sample

Rice a la Greque

When my rice cooker arrived, naturally the first thing I wanted to do was play with it! I looked through the recipe book (forty-two recipes, many of them delicious and surprisingly complex) and cooed over how exciting it was. I read the instruction manual from cover to cover. Then I made... plain brown rice.

Well, sometimes the meals have already been planned and you just have to go with it.