Pizza
Friday night….good TV, fine wine and homemade pizza.
Like last time, we made this with the (alledged) Pizza Express recipe. I think we’ll have to find a new recipe though, this one doesn’t behave all that well. Neither of us are that experienced with dough though so it could just be our lack of understanding.
After all the resting and kneading, we placed it on the pizza stone, topped it with some tomato sauce (normally we make our own, this time we used a jar of Waitrose bruschetta topping, it was much better) red and yellow peppers, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, spicy sausage and cheese and cooked it at 200 for about 15 minutes, just until the cheese melted really. It was brilliant.
G
Chicken Tagine
Tuesday night seems to have become Marathon Cooking Night. Last week we made three dishes, this week we did the fajitas and chicken tagine, which we ate last night. It was good, we had it with cous-cous and bread while watching Masterchef.
G
Beef Fajitas
After the success of last week’s chicken fajitas, we attempted steak fajitas. We did them exactly the same way but they just weren’t very good. I don’t know why. They were edible but just not brilliant.
G
Stuffed Pasta
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 gloves garlic, crushed
1 stick celery, finely chopped
20g porcini mushrooms
500g minced beef
3tbs Marsala (or sherry)
2tbsps tomato puree
S&P
1tbs parsley, finely chopped
Generous grating nutmeg
1tbs worcester sauce
125ml milk
Fry onion, garlic, celery and mushrooms on a medium heat until soft and translucent.
Add beef and cook for approximately 10 minutes.
Add Marsala, turn up the heat and cook for approximately 3 minutes.
Add tomato puree, parsley, nutmeg, worcester sauce and milk.
Simmer for one hour.
Fill cooked pasta with mixture, top with grated parmesan and grill until melted and brown.
Cheese On Toast
Mmmmmmmmmmm 🙂
Sausage Casserole
One of my food-related new year’s resolutions was to perfect the sausage casserole. This was my first attempt and is a long way off what I was hoping for.
This method requires you to fry the sausages and shallots, then add garlic and bacon and fry a little more, then add stock, wine, mustard and cornflour and cook for a further half an hour. It was ok, but the flavours weren’t properly amalgamated in my opinion.
So, the search continues.
G
Battle Of The Baking Trays
Since we began making muffins, we’ve been using small, fairy cake trays. They work ok but not brilliantly. Last week, my mum bought us a silicone muffin tray and a friend bought us a heavy, metal muffin tray.
This morning, Stephen decided to put them both to the test. So far, the silicone is the winner as the flavours seemed more evenly distributed and they were easier to get out.
Chicken and Meringue (not together)
Last night, we had people over for dinner and decided to cook Jamie’s chicken in pastry. After making up a dough of flour and water, the seasoned (garlic, lemon, sage and thyme) chickens are encased in pastry and baked in the oven for an hour. Once they’re ready, the pastry is broken open and discarded to reveal the chickens. The pastry case allows the chickens to steam and they come out really tasty and moist. They don’t look very pretty though.
We served them with braised leeks, crushed new potatoes, winter greens and tenderstem brocolli.
For dessert, we had Nigella’s pomegranate meringues. Meringues, topped with cream and pomegranates. Really pretty and really tasty too.
Pork in Cider Vinegar Sauce
This was from Delia’s Winter, Stephen has been super-keen to make it all week so, on Wednesday night we cooked it ready for last night’s dinner.
The flavours were good, but the meat was quite dry. The sauce is thickened with creme fraiche which I don’t think worked very well. It needed to be thicker.
Chicken Fajitatatatas
We sort of made this up as we went along. Marinated the chicken pieces in some olive oil, lime juice, chilli, coriander, garlic, salt and pepper. Fried it off in the wok, removed to a plate, fried off the red onion and peppers and then served with corn wraps, tomato salsa and sour cream.
Could have done with more chilli but otherwise, very tasty and very quick.
G
