You've got half a red cabbage and some spring greens, no meat and you want to eat without going to buy some or waiting for something to defrost.
Just a little ingenuity can make even the most scant of ingredients into an appealing, tasty and satisfying meal ...
At times like this, I bring out a store cupboard stock item: canned corned beef.
I am under no illusion that this is good eating - it's needs must, as we say up here.
Take what you have and put it with what you can find ...
I began by boiling the red cabbage. I like to boil it right down to retain all the colour, and actually bulked it out with a chopped onion, some pickled beetroot and a drop of red wine to colour up the onion and deepen the red.
Once boiled and topped up a couple of times, after maybe half an hour, I dropped in a can of corned beef which is deep pink in colour and blended in really well.
More red? Cayenne pepper and paprika! That'll give it a good kick and a subtle under-flavour.
Spring greens were shredded along with some leek and after immersing the spring greens in boiling water for a couple of minutes, they were fried off with the leeks in some beef dripping.
Ready to eat?
Serve out the greens into a wide-brimmed bowl and load the red on top in a mound. Garnish with something vibrant like a red or green chilli.
So, presenting a bowl of green and red!
