Chicken Garden Pasta

Serves 2
Cooking and preparation time: 20 minutes


150g /6 oz fusilli pasta (or other short pasta shapes)
125g /4 oz shredded cooked chicken
250g /8 oz small tomatoes, quartered
25g / 1oz feta cheese, crumbled
150g / 6oz runner beans, sliced
half juice of lime or lemon
1 tbsp of chopped/torn basil
1 tbsp olive oil
freshly ground pepper and salt

1. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil, add pasta until al dente (about 10 minutes depending on pasta shape and brand).
2. Meanwhile shred chicken, quarter tomatoes and crumble the feta cheese into a bowl add juice and season.
   
3. Five minutes before end of pasta cooking time add the sliced green beans to the boiling pasta water.
4. Drain pasta and beans.
5. Lightly toss in chicken and tomato mixture with oil and basil.
6. Check seasoning, and serve.
   

Bean and Bacon Risotto

Very loosely based on a basic risotto recipe:

• onions and broad beans from the allotment
• no butter (watching that waistline!)
• a wee grating of parmesan
• no garlic or celery (I was being lazy, besides the beans and bacon provide plenty of flavour)
• bacon grilled separately
  

Vegetable Jalfrezi

We came back from the allotment today with our rucksacks full of bounty. I had it mind to cook a vegetable curry - but which one? Taking into account what we had, the Vegetable Jalfrezi recipe from "Vegetarian Indian" by Shehzad Husain fitted beautifully. I am very proud (well shouldn't be, because I was playing truant from the allotment until last month) to say that all the vegtables in this curry, except for the chillies and coriander, came from our allotment: tomatoes, carrot and green beans.

Saag Aloo

Another recipe from "Vegetarian Indian" by Shehzad Husain, again with allotment fare: potatoes and tree spinach.

Smoked Mackerel and Chorizo potatoes

Yummy recipe from the June 2005 issue of Delicious magazine. Particularly pleased with this as three of the ingredients: potatoes, onions and tomatoes all came from the allotment. There were only 5 ingredients anyway, the other 2 were smoked mackerel and chorizo. I was supposed to add flat leaf parsley as well but we don't currently have that in the garden (soon to be rectified). Neither did I strictly use chorizo, but rather some whole salami sausage that I had in the fridge.