There were times, during the pandemic, when I did everything in my flat — it was my living room, gym, office, pub, and social hub to boot. But as things have begun changing again, this time back to something resembling pre ‘March 2020’, I’ve found myself untethered to the place, and always out and about. This has been one of those weeks where I’ve been out, a lot, catching up with people. It’s weeks like this that make Scraps more of a puzzle than anything else — what did I cook? Did I cook anything? Was it any good? When you haven’t got time or the free evenings to justify a big shop, you really end up digging deep to figure out what to cook for dinner.
As I’ve not been around much, all I can show you is what I did cook on my one night in, and share the other quick recipes we rely on in a pinch. It’s a scattershot edition for a scattershot week.
1. A no-brain, no-recipe, endlessly-customisable pasta
I saw this Thomasina Miers recipe in the Guardian for a pasta that looked incredibly simple — the only caveat being that it had tinned crab in it. I absolutely love any excuse to buy crab, because it has the most amazing texture, but it’s not the kind of week where I can just waltz into Sainsburys like a fancy little lord and buy some crab. Because if I go all that way I may as well get bin bags, and then I should probably get more fruit, and next thing you know I’m £40 down and also even if I wanted to do all of that, did you see that torrential rain the other night? Absolutely not.
What I did have, though, was a tin of very good sardines. I picked these up in Borough Market ages ago at a stall that exclusively sold tinned fish, and figured I could flake the fish into the pasta instead of the crab that Miers used for a satisfying meal.
Only spent 45 minutes deliberating on what Harry’s House song to put on the newsletter this week.
What I like about this dish is it’s simplicity; you can cook the sauce in the time it takes to cook the pasta. Garlic and dried chillies sizzle in olive oil while you boil the pasta, and when the garlic cloves start to turn golden, flake in the sardines. The great thing about this is that you can drizzle in the flavour-packed oil from the tin, too. Parsley and lemon (both zest and juice) round it out with fresh notes. I did this on Sunday, when I wanted something fast and unfussy, but it would be so easy to beef up with other flavours; you could cook down some shallots in the aromatics, or use up spinach, chard, or kale by adding it in near the end. Capers would be good. Olives, too. Take this endlessly adaptable recipe and see what happens if you add some tomato paste into the pan, cooking it until it turns from deep red to a rusty caramel colour.
2. The Recookables: Gochujang noodles
This is a Bon Appetit recipe that we have wanted to make for a long time and, credit where credit’s due, Rob made this earlier in the week and my contributions amounted to: toasting the sesame seeds and occasionally barging into the kitchen to see what was going on.
A lot of really simple recipes I see in both the New York Times and Bon Appetit is about making a flavour base with store cupboard stuff (this recipe uses gochujang, a fermented red paste, as well as tahini, soy, sesame oil, and so on) and adding hot noodles to it. We added some cooked prawns for protein, too, and a generous squeeze of lime juice to cut through the rich sauce. But it was so good. This is something I’d come back to when using up leftover roast chicken, and I think the sauce would be good poured over some crispy pork mince, before serving it with rice. Once you have the store cupboard ingredients, then you' can recreate this in a few different ways. Next time, we’re going to make double the sauce and keep some in the fridge, so we can toss it through instant noodles at lunch time.
3. Notes on a last-minute slaw
It’s not much to look at, but this slaw (I am refraining from calling it coleslaw as I think that’s when it’s mayonaise based? Maybe?) came together one lunch time this week when I needed to make some lunch. I had roasted a couple of chicken thighs and defrosted some pitta breads, and made a quick garlic yogurt, too. The slaw was just very finely shredded cabbage and carrot, with salt, sesame oil, coriander, and parsley. Proper fridge-drawer stuff.
And it tasted good, very crunchy and fresh. Then I picked out a jar of sushi ginger from the fridge – the pickled slivers that are great in noodle dishes or just served with a bowl of steamed rice. I shredded the ginger and added it to the slaw with a trickle of the pickle brine, and it took it to the next level. It was funky and fiery and really fresh. With some shredded chicken and a pitta bread it became a pretty decent lunch, but I also had some with some leftover meatballs and rice a couple of days later, too.
The cheffiest thing you can do sometimes is to just do less, I guess.
