Jottage from Lancaster - Pasta with New Potatoes, Green Beans and Pesto

Heather has been home with Tristan for a few days and so I began thinking about what we would have to eat a few days beforehand so that I would have all the necessary ingredients to hand to save us having to make any emergency supermarket trips. The list turned out to be a double column on A4 paper. For some reason I seemed to think that 12 fully-grown adults would be staying for a month instead of 1 adults + baby for 5 days. I did make some adjustments as I went round Booths following my list, but somehow still ended up with 4 tins full of various biscuits - which weren't on my list at all.

Having bought all this stuff I then had to remember which bits belonged to which recipes. One thing I did remember was that I had bought walnuts for a pesto. I'm not very keen on pine nuts, nor olive oil so pesto is one of those foods that I usually avoid. But Hugh suggests using walnuts as an alternative to pine nuts, and I always have rape seed oil to hand instead of olive oil. And I knew that Heather and Tristan loved pesto so it seemed worth a try. I chucked the ingredients into my blender and ended up with a lovely mush to which I carefully added the rapeseed oil to stop it being too oily. This somehow was very satisfying to make - not least because I had just decided to grow a few herbs on my windowsill and I had a new basil plant which would block the view if it wasn't checked.

One of the nice things about this recipe is that it is easy to make and seems quite a simple dish, but actually it's very satisfying. You have to cut the potatoes up into small sticks like chips so that they cook at the same time as the pasta, then you throw in the green beans, mix in the pesto and that's it but for a sprinkle of parmesan. 

I made up the pesto full quantities but used less of the pasta, potatoes and green beans as there were only 3 of us, but Tristan had the pesto on some macaroni the following night and there's a little bit left for me for lunch today. Considering how cheap it was to make anyway, it has done us well over the past few days. Definitely a recipe to return to.

Jottage from Lancaster - mayonnaise

I love mayonnaise. I know that it's sometimes called 'white death' as it is so full of calories and oil and cholesterol and all that stuff we shouldn't be eating. In my Atkins diet spell I had this feeling that I could eat as much of the stuff as I wanted to as it had no carbs - one reason I think that the sensational weight loss of my first few weeks faltered and died very quickly one I learnt the tricks of finding my way around the diet and sabotaging it. 


Then I read an article that said that eating veg was so important for our health that it was better to add things to make them palatable - even oil or mayo - than not eat them at all. We all know by now that some oils are really good for you so by now I felt that eating mayo had turned from white death into a top health food. But there was a little matter of calories - having too many of the wretched things is something I need to avoid. So then I turned to Hellmann's. Even Hugh says that he uses 'good quality mayonnaise' from a jar so I felt quite justified in buying Hellmann's Extra Light Mayonnaise - all the mayo-ness and fewer cals. But since my HFW encounter I have been more wary than ever of eating anything I can't pronounce so I went to find out just what was in the Hellmann's stuff. This is the list I found:


Water,Modified Maize Starch ,Spirit Vinegar ,Pasteurised Free Range Egg & Egg Yolk (3.7%) ,Sugar ,Salt ,Vegetable Oil ,Glucose-Fructose Syrup ,Citrus Fibres ,Flavourings (Contain Lactose) ,Stabiliser (Xanthan Gum) ,Colours (Titanium Dioxide, Beta-Carotene) ,Preservative (Potassium Sorbate) ,Lemon Juice Concentrate ,Antioxidant (Calcium Disodium EDTA)


Whereas I can pronounce most of it, and some of the ingredients are actually what you would expect to find in mayo (vinegar, egg yolk, salt), I am not so sure about modified maize starch or glucose-fructose syrup. So I reached for River Cottage Everyday and found a mayo recipe and made up a batch. I know just what's in it (wine vinegar, rapeseed oil, free range egg yolk) and overall I think I would prefer to eat a small quantity of what I can pronounce than slather on a list of ingredients which are put together by someone who doesn't even know how to place a comma.

Wobbly, gorgeous home-made mayo. Simply the best!