Cabbage, pasta, parmesan and chickpea soup

Like parsimonious Italian grannies, in my flat we've been saving the rinds of spent blocks of partisan for a moment such as this. Now they come to the fore and truly become themselves. Soup. To be specific, a kind of minestrone x pasta e fagioli bastard, miscegenation born of necessity. The cabbage, pasta, parmesan and chickpeas are the backbone of this dish - feel free to experiment with the other ingredients but I think these four should remain as the central pillars around which the flavour is woven. If you have some white wine to hand why not add a small glass to the pot?

• an onions and some garlic
• one cabbage
• one tin chickpeas (or other beans)
• parmesan
• vegetable stock
• pasta
• olive oil
• dried chilli
• fresh basil (not crucial)

Chop your onions and garlic and cook in olive oil. Give them ten minutes or so to get properly translucent and nice. Add the parmesan rinds and some dried chilli.

Introduce stock, a shredded cabbage and a tin of chickpeas. A couple of minutes later put in some pasta (don't go mad with the amounts - it should compliment and not dominate the rest of the ingredients). Cook for ten to fifteen minutes and make sure everything is cooked. Now is not an al dente time. Season, add more olive oil if needed and stir in some grated parmesan. Add some basil at the end if you have some, it's not a big deal if you don't

This soup is a great example of a combination which exalts its humble components beyond the store-cupboard. The chickpeas and pasta give it main-meal heft, the cabbage gives you vegetable goodness and the parmesan, chilli and garlic keep things interesting. You could posh it up a bit bit that qualifies as gilding the lilly in my book.

Multi vegetable paella

A dish to capitalise on the last warm days, now seemingly, sadly, past. It's a tasty and straight-forward Ottolenghi recipe from his book Plenty.

 

This dish is jam-packed with veg which sits in a rice mix with the signature Spanish flavours of sherry and smoked paprika.

The generous nature of the meal means it can accommodate most vegetables. I think the inclusion of fennel was excellent.

The black olives are good here. The cherry toms are just allowed to be cooked by the heat of the rice.

Some chorizo was hanging around in the kitchen and the rampant carnivores dining couldn't resist frying a bit to put on top. It was very nice and I think wedges of lemon also make an excellent addition to a fresh and light flavoured dish such as this. They temper the starch of the rice.

The sherry gives a good broad taste to it though I don't think it would miss the suggested saffron terribly.

Apologies for the lack of incisive commentary here: this recipe does what it says on the tin and tastes how it should.

Quick tea of vegetables and bread

Quick tea before heading out. Asparagus with bread crumbs and broad-beans. This was just a handful of ciabatta breadcrumbs from the freezer (great way to save stale bread from the bin) fried with thyme and chilli flakes and tipped over some white asparagus and broad-beans done in a griddle.

Then a soup of roast tomatoes and peppers. Roast them in a 50/50 ratio with some garlic and olive oil, blitz and top up with water to a good consistency. Add a pinch of stock and salt and pepper and that's it! Couldn't be easier. Eat with more bread.