Stacks of success

What do you do when you hit the middle of the week, there's nothing much left in the fridge, it's the day before pay day and you're hungry because your boyfriend is a fitness nut who insists you power walk/climb/lift/leap and run over hill and over dale? 

Apart from a lot of cursing, you look into the deep, dark depths of your fridge and see if anything besides the frozen emergency meals are salvageable. 

My fossicking around turned up the following items: two pink potatoes (eyes not growing that much), one red capsicum, one medium sweet potato, one large zucchini and two portobello mushrooms that were on the verge of turning into fungus but still ok if you peeled them. Which I did. 

Tim glanced at this collection, carefully arranged according to length, and politely expressed the view that he wasn't convinced anything could be made of it and wouldn't it be much easier if we had cereal for dinner? Big mistake for a man who had just made me march up, down and around a sizable hill for fun. 

Heck, after that feat, during which I engaged muscles in the general buttock region that I did not realise existed, (and I was excellent at biology) I felt that creating dinner for two people in under half an hour from this collection was not only achievable, but that I may even triumph!

Whatever... I made roast veggie stacks. 

And they were amazing. Another idiot-proof idea. The principle is simple: 

Take whatever veg you can find in your fridge and that will withstand a good grilling.  Slice lengthways - about half a centimeter is a good guide - mash up some garlic with some salt and olive oil in a pestle and mortar (or the mini-whizz machine); paint the mixture on both sides of everything; grill until they're going brown but not burnt. Except for the pepper which you want to grill the bejesus out of so it goes black and you can pull the skin off easily. 

For the mushrooms, once both sides have been browned, put some diced fetta and sprinkle some parsley on the inside and stick it back under the grill until it's looking brown.

Stack the whole lot up on a plate with the mushroom on top, dabbing with hommus at intervals. Serve with some olive oil, black pepper and baby capers. (Yes, I really did have those things just languishing in my fridge.)

I know you can buy hommus, but it's SOOOOO easy to make it I don't know why you wouldn't. Into a food processor, stick a can of chickpeas, (rinsed and sans can), the juice of one lemon, some salt, pepper and a tablespoon or so of tahini and enough olive oil so that when you whizz it to bits, it forms a nice, smooth(ish) hommus-like consistency. You might find you want more lemon juice or olive oil or even tahini. So for goodness sake, taste it as you go along!!! Personally, I like it on the lemony side. It's pretty hard to get it wrong but whatever you do, you don't want it to be dry. All dry hommus is is mashed chick peas and nobody ever paid for that.

All this in under a half hour and bloody delicious, and probably quite good for you too.

Now to get serious for a second, Tim and I are really enjoying the whole process of cooking, eating, presenting and photographing the food. It can be so fun and yet so challenging, especially for a couple of people who are completely self-taught. We're certainly learning a lot as we go which is all part of the fun. I tell you all this because we're pretty proud of some of our efforts, particularly this one - the photo of the half-eaten stack was taken in one shot, nano-seconds before the light blew!!! We hope you enjoy. We certainly did!