Eating well all week undeniably takes time and effort. Much as magazines and certain celebrity chefs would like to tell us that it’s possible to put a healthy, balanced and brilliantly tasty  meal on the table in less than 10 minutes, most of us just aren’t that speedy in the kitchen (and nor should we be. As Kathryn has so eloquently put it, eating well is a choice of personal priority, and if you want to eat well it often means making a bit more time to cook and shop, and spending a bit less time on something else).

Having said that, the more you cook the more patterns and opportunities you see. That old adage of “work smarter, not harder” isn’t just for, well, work.  That mirepoix of carrots, celery and onion for tonight’s stew, well that’s going to be showing up again later in the week for a soup so why not chop double the quantity now? That brown rice that take’s a while to cook – throw in an extra handful and you’re much closer to an easy lunch for work, especially if you doubled that lemony dressing too.

If you watch for them, the kitchen is bristling with these little opportunities to double up.

At the moment one of these steps is for me is sauteing more vegetables that I need to use for the dish that I’m making.  I use this cycle of cook – eat – repeat in our house for all kinds of wintery dish.  Chopping a handful or two extra veg is easy enough and the cooking time isn’t really altered but by the time you’ve finished one meal you have a head-start in your fridge for later in the week.

A bit extra of vegetables that soften down well (such as courgettes and leeks) are perfect to save for scrambled eggs such as these courgette scrambled eggs .  Or more often that not I end up making a sort of shakshuka or pisto style dish with the eggs cooked in a tomato-based sauce.

These pictures are more of a template than a recipe.  Most vegetables that saute well can sit happily in a tomato sauce (leeks, onions, shallots, mushrooms, french beans, fennel, celery, cauliflower, asparagus, spring onion, aubergine, courgette, peppers).

A sort of shakshuka made with leftover veg

1. Pour a little olive oil into a deep-sided pan and turn the heat up to medium

2. Add your leftover cooked veg (I had a fennel and onion mix) and heat until just warmed through

3. Add a can of chopped tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes.  You might also add some additional seasoning at this point – harissa, chilli flakes, black pepper, ground cumin and coriander are all tasty and easy

4. Taste your tomato sauce and add more seasoning if you like

5. Crack your eggs into small bowls.  I use one or two per person depending how hungry we are and what else we might be having alongside. Make a little dent for each egg in your tomato sauce and gently pour in the eggs.  Reduce the heat to a minimal simmer, cover the pan with a lid and leave the eggs to cook. Without a lid the tops of your eggs just won’t cook but that’s OK – just finish your eggs under the grill.

6. Cook until the white of your eggs are just set, so usually between 10 and 15 minutes

Serve straight away while the yolks are still gloriously runny.  Nice additions include a slice of granary toast to dip in the yolk, a sprinkle of parsley for freshness, a handful of dark green leafy salad or a sprinkling of feta cheese.

You know my feelings about oats. They are far too modest to say so themselves, but how many other foods are wholegrain, low GI and more than usually endowed with cholesterol mopping soluble fibre?  And so versatile in the kitchen too.  I’m always pleased to find another excuse to include them in my week and hence my delight at having these spinach, cottage cheese and oat pancakes as a new savoury oaty option.

I know some people pooh-pooh cottage cheese but if you buy the normal stuff it’s actually rather nice and creamy. I think it was all the extra low fat cottage cheese (very watery and lumpy) and those strange additions like prawns and pineapple that did for its reputation. That, and all those flavour free, soul-destroying diets of the 1970s and 1980s.  But if you’re still sceptical about the merits of cottage cheese then give this Baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa a whirl as a stepping stone to moving on to these pancakes (honestly, I dare you not to like them).

Those savoury oat, spinach and cottage cheese pancakes combine both of these ingredients and are literally a case of blitz and cook.  Credit where it’s due to the awesome Shauna for spotting the sheer simplicity of this recipe. We like these as brunch and making a savoury twist on the original fruity recipe makes it really easy to fit in some extra portions of fruit and veg alongside the pancakes (today a heap of salad leaves and some roast cherry tomatoes).

People with problems absorbing lactose be aware that cottage cheese has much more lactose in it than hard cheeses.

Many more ideas for including more oats in your diet over here, plus a whole host of cheese and egg recipes.

Becoming mindful teaches you that the nothing is the same twice.  Each breath we take is different and though it might seem the same each cup of tea that we drink is subtly different in multitude of tiny of ways.  Same for those regular meals that we cook week in, week out.  So what has this got to do with leftovers and frittata I hear you ask? The same is true for portion sizes also. Cooking and eating mindfully includes deciding how much is enough today. Not the amount that’s usually enough or what worked last week but what seems enough today, at this particular one-off mealtime.

With these two lovely new chickens taking us up to five girls in total, we’re regular frittata eaters in our house.  The recipe I’ve posted below is for the amount that I always make. It’s a variation on this ever adjusting Parsnip, Red Onion, Kale and Gouda frittata which in turn is from this basic frittata recipe. I am forever indebted to Kathryn Elliott for pointing out the simple beauty of a frittata for those days when you don’t have anything planned. So long as you have some eggs, an indiscriminate assortment of vegetables and a few scraps of cheese then you have dinner.

A 6 egg frittata isn’t the right portion for two people every time. Sometimes it’s just perfect, other times it’s a bit too much.  Which leaves the happy accident of leftovers for breakfast or lunch.  Sometimes enough for two people, sometimes enough for one and sometimes none at all.

This post is for Helen’s Breakfast Club Event, hosted by Monica at SmarterFitter.  As I’m a big fan of Monica, Helen, breakfast and leftovers I thought I’d join in!

I’ve travelled just enough to know that here in the UK we don’t get sent the best fruit. I’m not blaming anyone – if you have the sun it’s reasonble that you also get the pick of the fruit. But I’ve seen enough Mediterranean markets to know that we get sent second pickings.   I wouldn’t bother – our homegrown brit-fruit is delicious – but in the  hungry gap at this time of year I crave a bit of variety and start to look around at what’s organic and hasn’t travelled across too many borders to get here. Hence these slightly too hard figs.

A little warmth brought them out of their skin a little and softened them up quite enough to make a decent breakfast, squidged onto ricotta-spread toast.  It’s as streamlined a breakfast to prepare as you could wish for; a portion each of fruit, dairy and decent quality low GI carbohydrate in the time it takes to make toast and jam. It’s super quick because the toast and fruit both go under the grill (broiler) together, which saves washing up too.

I’ve had good results with gently warming under-ripe pears, plums, nectarines and peaches in this way too.  It won’t save terrible fruit, but works for those that are just a little bit jet lagged or unyielding.  Thin slivers of apple could also work without the grilling, and in the summer mushed up raspberries on ricotta and toast eaten in the garden is a fine way to start the day.  If you really want to bring a taste of Italy to your breakfast you’ll not regret investing in a tiny pot of Honey Miele di Tartufo which in our house adds truffle-scented enchantment to anything it touches.

For three years in a row I have tried to grow my own brussels sprout ‘rubine’, the beautiful crimson flecked cousin of the common green brussel, and for three years I have failed. Brussels sprouts need care, love and attention right from sowing the seeds in March, through planting out the baby brassicas in early summer (protecting them from our cheeky chickens and the slugs until they are strong enough to stand alone), and then onwards to the first frost for that all important flavour boost. After three years of failure  I thought that it was just not meant to be.

My humble thanks and admiration then go to Marks and Spencer for putting in a lot of effort themselves into figuring out how to grow these little beauties so that I could buy them. Apparently it has taken them a few years of practicing too.  Happily I can finally chuck out my sprout seeds and stick to the simpler but still exciting stuff like funny coloured courgettes and oddly shaped carrots.

The red sprouts don’t taste particularly different to the usual green varieties but unlike many purple veggies they do keep their colour when you cook them.  All brussels sprouts are a great source of Vitamin C for people eating and shopping sustainably through the British Winter and the purple colour of these particular sprouts is because they have a high anthocyanin content, a group of antioxidant molecules with potential anti-cancer properties (that old nutrition advice to eat a rainbow has some pretty sound science behind it).

I was so excited to finally get my hands on these little chaps that I thought this was time to make good the final stage of my brussels sprout acceptance journey from being a long-time sprout hater; eating a raw sprout. Long time readers will know that I was planning to reach this last sprouty frontier way back in 2008, but somehow it never quite happened.

Anyway, if you’ve been holding off trying them raw (like I have), then don’t. There’s nothing scary about them – they just taste like raw cabbage. That raw brassica tang is lovely with the sweet, nutty gruyere cheese and creamy almonds I used in my little salad, and I bet they would make a brilliant winter coleslaw with dried cranberries and a mayo and yogurt dressing. What’s stopping you?

p.s I keep forgetting to tell you that I’ve made Facebook page for Mostly Eating.  It’s another way of following the blog (links to all new posts appear on there) but in addition I’ve been posting a small selection of links to other recipes and nutrition articles on there.

Scrambled eggs are home-cooking at its most glorious. Quick, delicious, comforting, frugal, familiar.  And almost never nice when eaten out, with catering establishment incarnations ranging from watery through to bouncy. And then there are those diet police versions, throwing away yolks and with them a whole load of flavour, protein, Vitamin D, iron and beta carotene.

This meal is a regular in our house thanks to our girls. Cooking the eggs like this is a good way of enjoying your scrambled eggs while introducing a little healthy monounsatured oil and vegetable.  We use olive oil to cook the eggs and then a little knob of butter to finish them off with that silky texture. Zucchini are mild enough to let the taste of the eggs shine and cutting them into thin ribbons lets the vegetable meld into the soft scramble, rather than introducing unpleasant lumps.  I add the merest hint of a mint for a little whisper of freshness (any more and it will be overpowering).

Anyone who is a gardener has an abundance of courgettes this month.  Even I have one plant, despite drastically reduced home growing this summer in deference the aforementioned house move.  If I can recommend one piece of equipment to you it would be a julienne peeler – thin courgette strips have myriad of uses and a peeler is a doddle to use and clean, plus much less dangerous than a mandoline (I don’t think my cuisipro peeler is available any more, but you’re looking for something along these lines).

More ideas to use up zucchini / courgette

• Baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa
• Ricotta, courgette, lemon and mint summer sandwich
• Chicken with courgette, halloumi and honey
• Spaghetti with courgette, lemon and goats cheese
• Aubergine, courgette and tomato stew with quinoa and feta

I don’t seem to be able to make up my mind what to call them. I’m starting to prefer using the word zucchini instead of courgette –  wonder if this is down to the hours spent hanging out in this multicultural space, or a nod to the fact courgette were probably my most hated vegetable as a child, whereas I really rather like them now. You’ll have to excuse me for the to-ing and fro-ing between the two for now.

This wintery saute has been on regular rotation this autumn, in fact pretty much every week there’s been a good savoy cabbage available.  It’s ready in less than 15 minutes (including prep) and uses only one pan, a chopping board and knife. There’s plenty of plant based matter here and carbohydrate from the chestnuts and protein from the chickpeas.  And you don’t even need a pan of boiling water.

I’ve said before that you can make a stir-fry right from your store cupboard – pretty much all of the ingredients here in this saute are pantry friendly with the exception of the cabbage.  The end result isn’t at all fancy but it’s healthy and tasty and strikes the right balance of autumnal sweetness and spice without being overfilling.

Savoy cabbage, sweet chestnuts and the subtle lemony warmth of nutmeg are decidedly comfort food territory. The chickpeas (garbanzo) might not be the obvious pairing with chestnuts and cabbage but add substance, nutrients and texture to your meal without competing overpowering the other
flavours. We like this saute topped with a poached or fried egg to turn it into a more substantial meal.  I have mine with a drizzle of truffle oil and hubby likes his with a splash of soy sauce.  A dusting of grated parmesan might also work well.

Related recipes
Chestnut, parsnip and orange soup
Italian lentil and chestnut stew
Brussels sprout stir fry with egg, chilli, ginger and garlic
How to make a quick stir-fry from your store cupboard

Cooking pasta by the absorption method (risotto style) was all the rage in the food blog world a couple of years back.  A recent revisit has uncovered that it works really well with wholewheat pasta, especially when its combined with the bounties of summer (the sweetest tomatoes, fresh green beans and grassy pea shoots).

The absorption method is a pretty handy way to get a soft, savoury pasta sauce without the calories and fat of your alfredos and carbonaras. The starch released by the pasta is captured in the cooking liquor giving the pasta a silky quality and taking it a step beyond summer’s simpler pasta salads.  The aim here is to cook the pasta just as you would cook a risotto, gently adding liquid and stirring regularly.  The only real potential for error with this technique is if you add the liquid too quickly and on too ferocious a heat, creating a pasta with a soggy outside and hard uncooked centre. This is even more important to watch out for  when you’re using wholewheat pasta but that’s OK, treat this as a chance to slow down for a while and line up a cup of tea or a podcast or a book or just sit and stir.

This year has bought us a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes (red alert and gardeners delight for you garden geeks).  I’ve been making oven dried tomatoes using Wendy’s method which produces something soft and sweet more like a sun blush tomato, not one of those nasty leathery sun dried offerings.

There’s no need to buy pea shoots especially if you don’t grow them. They do have a lovely fresh grassy note but are expensive to buy and not always easy to get hold of.  Any other tender green leaves that you have in the fridge will do such as rocket, baby spinach, watercress.

A word about the stock

There’s something about the mention of a frittata that brings to mind Summer, maybe because the word itself is so utterly Mediterranean?  Don’t let these temperate thoughts distract you though – a frittata is actually a perfect quick supper dish whatever the season and a great way to get in a couple of portions of vegetables in one dish.  So while just a few months ago we were cooking courgette, broad bean and feta frittatas, for the past few weeks the same basic recipe has taken on a much more wintery note with variations like this parsnip, kale and red onion frittata.

Potatoes are the traditional starchy addition to frittatas and tortilla but unless you have the pre-requisite “handful of leftover boiled potatoes” lingering in your fridge (we never do), including potatoes can add an unwanted extra stage to the cooking.  Parsnips are quicker to cook and much tastier than spuds and more importantly allow the frittata to keeps its allure as a one pan supper.

I’ve used Gouda which has a caramel sweetness that complements the parsnips and red onion beautifully but most types of cheese that you might have in your fridge would work.  All types of wintery leafy green can be substituted including chard, savoy cabbage or even thinly sliced brussels sprouts.

The quantities below provide a good sized meal for two people with no more than a green salad needed on the side. Smaller portions are ideal for a lighter meal and leftovers are very good indeed cold (perfect for a packed lunch). We’ve taken the leftovers with us for a long car journey before now, wrapped in baking parchment and with a thermos of pumpkin soup on the side (yes, the food at British motorway service stations really is that bad).

Other parsnip recipes on Mostly Eating
Chestnut, parsnip and orange soup
Spring chicken cottage pie (not strictly a parsnip recipe, but delicious with a half potato / half parsnip topping)
(raw) Parsnip, chickpea and goats cheese salad

Pan-friend parsnips with cottage cheese and seeds

There’s a recipe that keeps popping up and I’ve been trying to ignore it, because surely something that simple isn’t going to make a decent dinner?  It’s called pisto, a kind ratatouille that is a regular feature in Spanish home kitchens. Having given in and tried it, I’m now completely sold on the idea.  It’s not the pisto alone that has entranced me, but the traditional serving suggestion; the familiarity of rice with a homely, tangy tomato sauce and topped with a perfect runny egg. Pisto is a new stock item on our list of easy weeknight suppers but don’t let me limit your ideas.  For starters I’m sure this would make a perfect weekend brunch.

As a meal this is environmentally sustainable, nutritionally well balanced and stress free to make. What’s not to like?

It’s so darn easy
This is not an instant dinner (a misleading term if ever there was, as we discussed last week) but it is a forgiving sort of a meal to make, with very little active input required and little that can go wrong. Ximena Maier of Lobstersquad explains the attraction of making pisto “What I like about it is that it has a very relaxed rhythm. You only have to follow the order of ingredients, and throw them in the pan as soon as they´re chopped. There´s no anxiously waiting for something to be just right, no stressful wild chopping while something may burn. Things will happen while they must, and a minute up and down isn´t a big deal.”   In fact if you have a rice cooker then cooking dinner becomes a very leisurely affair indeed. 

The eggs are gently cooked in little dents made in the pisto with the back of a spoon.  This results in all of the gooey loveliness of a poached egg but with none of the scariness of egg poaching for the uninitiated (though there are many reasons why it is worth learning how to poach an egg if you haven’t already).

Nutritional balance
Pisto with brown rice and an egg is the very model of a well balanced meal.  Vegetables predominate the dish and are there in a range of colours which intimates that you are about to eat a good variety of vitamins and antioxidants. Eggs provide low fat protein and are cooked without the addition of any extra fat. The carbohydrate source is wholegrain. The total amount of fat used in the recipe is small and monounsaturated in nature.  And there is synergy between the ingredients too with the brown rice, egg and vegetables combing to give a reasonable hit of iron and the added benefit of vitamin C from the peppers which enables your body to better absorb these vegetarian iron sources.

Flexibility and Flexitarianism
I’m bound to offend some (Spanish) people with my messing about with the basic pisto recipe (then it’s not pisto, right?) but another very pleasing quality about using this as the inspiration for a meal is that you can adjust it a little according to what’s in the fridge.  If you want to make your pisto more seasonal and local you can; as it is mid Winter here I compromised with canned tomatoes in place of the traditional raw but used imported organic peppers.  An official common variation in Spain is to use eggplant (aubergine) instead of courgette but a carrot works just fine too.  And if you’ve got half a bag of spinach or another greeny leafy veg in the fridge then why not chuck some of that in too (I also keep frozen spinach which you can just chuck straight in from the freezer).

Brown rice is my accompaniment of choice but try experimenting with other wholegrains like buckwheat groats or quinoa. 

This is definitely a no meat required dish adding to its sustainable
credentials but the flexitarian among you might enjoy a bit of chorizo sausage for an occasional variation. 

Built in portion control
The sauce, rice and eggs are all introduced separately providing ample portion control opportunities. Looking for a light lunch? Reduce or skip the rice and just have one egg. My husband, who spends his evenings running and weekends cycling up huge hills needs more calories than me so he tends to have the pisto, rice and eggs with some crusty bread on the side.

Cook once, eat again later
Once you’ve made a big batch of the sauce the leftovers will sit happily in the fridge for about a week or freeze giving you a really easy dinner option on some busy weeknight when cooking is shaping up to feel more of a chore than a pleasure.

I’d really encourage you to make extra of pisto sauce ready for another day as it is really handy thing to have in the fridge.  You don’t need to eat it with rice and eggs; how about using it as a pasta sauce or adding a can of chickpeas for a vegetarian stew?  If you want to save some for another day stop just before the stage of adding the green leafy vegetables (which are best added at the last minute) and put aside any sauce that you don’t want to use today.

Other people making pisto
Pisto Manchego With Eggs from Marth Rose Schulman’s New York Times column as raved about last week
Winding down on a friday evening : Pisto from lobstersquad
Serious eat highlight a summery version of pisto to made with grilled vegetables
Not pisto, but I’ve also written about some healthy eating habits I picked up on holiday in Spain