What We Ate Wednesday--Roasted Clean Out the Fridge Meal

Hello lovelies! Sometimes, you just can't be arsed, am I right?

I keep us on a tight budget, by making a menu and a shopping list and sticking to it. But life has a way of cropping up and sometimes you don't always get to eat what you had planned.

We were invited out for a meal and then some friends who are developing some spice packs for their burgeoning business asked us to be recipe testers which we were more than glad to do. (It was lovely by the way.)

So, suddenly we were left with lots of odds and ends in the fridge...a little of this....not much of that. I cannot bear to let food go to waste, so i quickly threw together a meal made of scraggy bits and slightly wilted veg and a sad looking wrinkled lemon. I couldn't be arsed to research a recipe, so I just threw together stuff and hoped for the best.

I know that roasting brings out the  best flavour, so that's what I did. Basically we had chickpeas and half a yellow pepper roasted with the juice of half a lemon and a splash of tamari/soy sauce with roasted broccoli. Then  a few small potatoes cooked in vegetable stock with a handful of kale thrown in at the last minute to the boiling liquid to soften it. Then the other half of the lemon squeezed on.

Easy peasy. And delicious.

Roasted Clean Out the Fridge Meal
Preheat your oven to 200C/400F

In a large roasting pan add the following:
1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
half a pepper, chopped
some broccoli

Spritz both chickpeas and broccoli with oil and drizzle juice of half a lemon and a splash of tamari/soy sauce over the chickpeas. Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.

I like to segregate my chickpeas and broccoli in the pan. This is not racist, it just helps them cook better.

In a large cooking pot, add some chopped potatoes (I had about 400 grams--4-5 egg sized new potatoes) and cover with water and add a stock cube.Bring to the boil and simmer until tender. When close to the end of their boiling throw in a handful of kale.

Meanwhile, roast for 12 minutes, remove the pan and stir the chickpeas and flip the broccoli then roast a further 12 minutes.

When the potatoes and kale are done, drain and return to the pan. Add the juice of the other half of the lemon and some pepper. Serve with your roasted chickpeas and broccoli.

Sorry to be so imprecise about the measurements, but i was making it up as I went along.

It was good though. Real good. I am sure we will have it again the next time we have to clean out the fridge.