Soupy Winter Nights

This week was all about embracing imperfection while still getting a delicious outcome. Be inspired by true recipes but don’t be afraid to end up with something same same but different sort of thing.

“Minestrone” Soup

V1. To tell you this is an actual minestrone soup would be a lie.

I simply cooked some osso buco in the pressure cooker, added some tomato sauce to the stock and boiled some extra vegetables and gnocchi in the broth and voila!

Something delicious to keep me warm in these cold days.

V2. Although I did not photograph, I kept some additional stock and meat left over and simply boiled some sweet potato and beans in it instead of gnocchi and seasoned with some herbs for a second winter soup.

Creamy Tuna Gnocchi

One of my most fond early teenage meals was a tuna pasta bake. This dish took me back to that day without the effort of making an entire pasta bake.

Leftover gnocchi from the “minestrone”, peas, canned chilli tuna, spring onion, spinach and cream.

mmmm

Rice noodle ‘pad thai’

Once again, if you asked someone if this was a pad thai, they’d probably say, “Have you gone insane?” but that was kind of what I was aiming for.

Rice noodles, veg, sausage and a sauce made with tamarind paste, roast tomatoes, oyster sauce and garlic.

Not the best, not the worst. Sometimes we have meals like that.

Hot meaty ‘Caponata’

Once again, this dish was inspired by something specific and the outcome not the same.

Caponata is meant to be served cold; but as it is winter and I wanted something warm and hearty I made this dish which ended up more like a tomatoless eggplant and osso buco ragu. It was absolutely delicious and packed so much deep flavour even though it realistically only took me 30 minutes to make.

I served it with an ube mash, it was available and I had never tried to cook with it so I thought I’d give it a go and it turned out great!