Chorizo side dishes (aka fridge surprise!)

Last week meals were mainly fridge surprise, overspent the previous week so was determined to use up what was in the cupboards, along with a *lot* of food leftover from our Fathers Day meal. I had some chorizo, plus some beautiful long red peppers to use and made the following two simple dishes:

Grilled Red peppers with Chorizo and Smoked Cheddar (from Aldi reduced to clear 50p!):

In a pan I fried off about 2 inches thinly sliced chorizo salami, with a small diced onion, piled into halved and deseeded peppers, grated over a good layer of smoked cheddar, seasoned then grilled for about 12 minutes, until the cheese had melted nicely and browned, was delicious and most surprisingly was even loved by the mr anneskitchen! Apparently reminded him of old fashioned pepperoni pizzas..!

Next up was stir fried Broccoli, with chorizo and new potatoes:

With the remaining chorizo and odd ends, I quickly blanched a few broccoli florets, then fried the remaining sliced chorizo, a small diced onion and 2 sliced cooked new potatoes, until golden, added the broccoli and heated through, made a delicious and colourful side dish!

Recent cooking

I'm back at last! With the recent excitement of my engagement and a lack of free time cooking had taken a bit of a back-burner lately, though I am back now and hoping to make up for lost time! With regards to the questions as to whether I will be making my wedding cake - my mum has already asked if she can make it, so I will be merely assisting with the decoration! Mum always makes an old Good Housekeeping fruit cake recipe, which is delicious so that will be one of the tiers...I think chocolate is a must for the other layer!

Whilst there hasn't been a huge amount of cooking going on, I have made a couple of nice things lately - most recently was cappuchino bars, from BBC Good Food 'The Collection' book, which I received for my birthday. Picture came out a little fuzzy but will make again:

Next up is a new breakfast favourite of mine - Egg and Mushroom wraps. A little different but delicious, I work shifts and this tends to be my breakfast when I am on the 'late shift', keeps me going until my late lunch break! Basically fry 2-3 thinly sliced chestnut mushrooms in a small amount of butter in a hot pan, add 3 chopped cherry tomatoes, whisk in a bowl 2 eggs, a splash of milk and some of your favourite chilli sauce, stir into the browned mushroom mixture and scramble together until cooked through, tip into a tortilla wrap and fold as desired, enjoy!

Next up, I bought on special a couple of weeks ago some new 'Jamie Oliver' Lasagne sheets, I must admit I normally just pick up the value lasagne sheets but I am switching to these in future as we both noticed a big difference in the finished lasagne, silky, tasty pasta without any pre-soaking required. Delicious!

(I finally found a use for my silicon 'tin' - the sheets fit perfectly!!)

More pasta - this time some pretty 'Trecce dell' Orto' which my dad picked up for me recently, which had different flavoured twirls; beetroot, spinach, curcuma and sepia (cuttlefish ink - sounds vile but actually was very tasty!) I made up a simple carbonara sauce with some very tasty bacon bits from Aldi's and it coated the pasta beautifully:

Lastly, I wanted to wish congratulations to Miele and the team at Forever Better on their recent win in the Which? awards for Best Domestic Appliance Brand at the Which? Awards 2010. Many thanks for the cute mug with my logo on and the cupcakes!