Tuesday 11 February 2014

Reduced To Pot Noodles

So far , 2014 hasn't exactly had the Wow! factor .  Even the little , wild-haired chap I see whenever I go to the supermarket , who springs  to attention waving a handful of plastic keyrings , "Hello Madame ... Buy One , Pay For Two ! " , seems deflated . His marketing ploy seems to have lost it's sparkle and his cackle's not so loud . Only Liz , whose photos of her Antarctic advenure are keeping us all enthralled , seems to be having fun .

Bored to a frazzle , Winter Olympics notwithstanding ,  I've been rummaging through my cookery books to find something to perk us up . Ignoring oddities like Mexican Risotto ... bananas , eggs , bacon and almonds  added to the rice  ....  from Lady Maclean's Cook Book (  Lots of worthy staples such as Chicken Liver Patè  , "makes enough for thirty" ... or Lady Sykes Pheasant patè , "will serve eight over a weekend" , as well as the 1960s abberations ) , I hovered over a recipe for Hooihaantjes from the morning paper . Cockerel cooked with hay , apples and beer . Though where , in a first-floor flat in the middle of town , one was supposed to get hold of a small quantity of hay , clean and appetising enough to soak in beer and stuff a chicken with , I didn't know . A pet shop ?  Anyway , we ended up having Pot Noodles for supper .

Well , not the real thing ... I don't even know whether they still exist . But I used  an Indonesian ready-mix for chicken soup

 
 
and , instead of the recommended additions of rice and potatoes  ... bleugh! ... , added a leek , egg noodles and baby spinach to the chicken . Looked hideous but cheered us up enormously !
 

7 comments:

English Rider said...

It's always cheery when the house is full of cooking aromas.

colleen said...

Well this cheered me up. I was looking up recipes for tinned sardines earlier. very good with pasta, onion and tomatoes as it happens...

Annie Cholewa said...

I have a copy of that book somewhere! I wonder what she'd have made of the soup mix!

rachel said...

I love soups like that! And when I was little, Knorr Chicken Noodle Soup was my very favourite.....

lovethosecupcakes said...

Similarly looking for culinary inpiration (though of the vegan kind) here.
Thanks for the mention! Only problem with starting 2014 on the highest high with an Antarctic adventure is it can only be downhill the rest of the year. Or is it uphill from the bottom of the world?

Friko said...

Me too, I’ve been cooking up a storm all week. Beloved has never eaten as well as during the past week. I think he’s hoping the weather will never get back to normal.

Fran Hill said...

Doesn't look hideous to me. It looks nice. It's made me quite peckish. (Mind you, that's not hard.)