Winter comfort in a bowl of pasta

Its cold today, really brrrr cold.  The type of cold you need a hot bath when you get home to warm your toes after the 10 minute walk home from the bus stop.  The ground thought it was cold too.  The pavement sparkled like it had little tiny diamonds.

I had my bath, had a quick browse through my twitter feed and I fell upon Nigella Lawson's picture of what she is eating tonight.  Truffle risotto.  It looked so comforting that it inspired me to cook something really comforting and warming.

I needed to boil some pasta to beef up another dish for my work lunch box (I love taking in home cooking that can quickly be microwaved at work - a bit of comfort in the office that usually starts conversations as my colleagues smell my food!)

In a frying pan I put in some chopped bacon to start and then added some peppers and mushrooms that needed using up.  Chopped an onion, garlic, added a generous handful of chopped kale and lightly fried together. 

To finish I added some soft goats cheese to make a sauce and added the pasta to the frying pan.  I like the pasta to really mingle with the other flavours for the last five minutes. I also love the pasta to just get a little browned.

All the ingredients for this meal (apart from the pasta) were left overs from the weekend.  Kale, well we always have some kale on hand at this time of year.  One of those excellent, hardy, winter veg.

What I got was a really comforting, curl up by the fire kind of a meal.  Exactly what I wanted and I didn't even need to season it. 

Ingredients
Bacon (chopped, 3 slices)
Onion (one onion chopped)
Garlic
Kale (4 medium pieces of kale, roughly chopped)
Capsicum Peppers
Mushrooms
Goats cheese (with added chives, soft cheese)
Pasta

Mashed Potatoes & Peppers

Tonight as I was making some mashed potatoes with some fried onions and bacon bits, I thought I'd add some sweet peppers I've got growing on some plants in my flat.  I lightly fried the peppers, onions and bacon bits and as I was mashing up the potatoes at the end thought I'd add a generous portion of chilli flakes.  As this was a real winner in my home I thought I'd share it with you.

Ingredients:

Potatoes (for mashing)
Margarine/Butter (for the potato mash)
2 chopped onions
5 chopped garlic
2 sweet chillies
3 slices of bacon
Chilli flakes (I leave the quantity up to you)

Method:

1.  Peel, chop and boil the potatoes until soft.
2.  Chop the onions, garlic and sweet peppers.
3.  Fry the onions, garlic and sweet peppers on a low heat.  When they are done remove them from the heat.
4.  Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry.
5.  Drain and mash the potatoes with a good dollop of margarine or butter.
6.  Add the bacon, onions, garlic and sweet peppers to the mix and mix well in.
7.  Sprinkle some chilli flakes into the mix.  Mix in and taste.  Add more chilli flakes if you need more heat.
8.  Enjoy!!  Great for a cool autumn evening.

Stuffed Pepper

I had a lonely pepper in my fridge yesterday and not many more veg in the fridge except for some fresh garlic (by fresh I mean never been dried) and some goats cheese.  Wanted to do this pepper some justice, I thought I would try a stuffed pepper.  I've never tried stuffing peppers before but it turned out amazingly well so I thought I would share this one:

Ingredients:

Sweet pepper of your choice (there are loads of varieties, but choose one that has a shape that is easy to stuff)
40g goats cheese (or as much as to fill the cavity of the pepper)
garlic cloves
Ground black pepper to garnish (or you could try ground chilli if you prefer)
 
1.  Cut your pepper in half and fill with the goats cheese (or soft cheese of your choice)
2.  Squash in as many cloves as you would like, or your pepper accommodates
3.  Grind some black pepper over the top
4.  Roast in the oven for about 20-30 mins on about 140 C (but keep checking it to make sure its melting nicely and not too quickly and adjust the temperature accordingly)

The smell of these when they were ready was simply divine and eating them even better still.  The only downside?  I ate them too quickly!!