Second dinner guest of the week! I really should spread things out more. I met Stephen when I moved to the area at the beginning of the year. At a difficult time, it was great to make a new friend and we get on so well. He runs the fantastic Urban Botanica in Kennington; my favourite source of coffee and plants. It is a lovely little space, surrounded with greenery and the delicious smell of roast coffee (along with wonderful cakes) and has a great little garden out back for those warmer days.

One of my favourite things I like to do when I am cooking is “use up”. Growing up in the middle of nowhere I learnt, from my Mum, how to make a meal out of nothing. She would often plan a dinner then come to make it and realise she was missing an ingredient and have to solve on the fly. My favorite one of these stories is when making a lasagna she realised she didn’t have any flour so used custard powder instead! What an innovator! (apparently it tasted fine was just a slightly odd colour).

So, like my mum, I have a pretty good ability to make a meal out of “nothing”. My cupboard is always pretty full of tins and jar or things leftover from recipes I’ve tried and with storage always being a challenge in London flats I am trying to cook new things to use up. Today’s ingredient on the chopping block: polenta. I also had a big pack of beef mince in the “freezer” (tiny ice box at the top of my small fridge). I found a great recipe on the Tesco website for Mexican Chilli Beef with Creamy Polenta and pickled red onion. Link below

https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/mexican-chilli-beef-with-polenta.html

This was really easy. I did the small amount prep beforehand and because it slow cooks for a little while there was plenty of time to make desert.

I had egg whites leftover from the custard tarts (more using up!) so I decided to make a old favourite of mine, Lorraine Pascale’s Brown sugar and Coffee Meringue Bites with dark chocolate from A Lighter Way to Bake. I have made these at least five times and they always go down an absolute storm.

The coffee and brown sugar in the meringue is rich and delicious and when they are dipped in super dark chocolate…well there’s a reason I’ve made them 5 times. They were a bit stickier than normal on this batch so i wonder if my oven isn’t quite up to temperature but a bit of extra time and they were crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. Perfect.