Pot Roasted Chicken
After a weekend of disappointing food, I was lucky enough to have the day at home today to rectify things. In desperate need of something satisfying and comforting, I had originally planned a roast chicken but decided at the last minute to pot roast it instead and see if I could come up with something a little lighter.
It was very easy, just a case of seasoning and browning the chicken before adding some a couple of chopped potatoes, a sliced onion, a few whole cloves of garlic and a big bunch of herbs to the pot along with a glass of white wine and the same of water. Cook breast side down at 190 for 50 minutes and then remove the lid, turn and cook without the lid for another 30 minutes or so (depending on the weight of your chicke). Let the chicken rest, remove the potatoes and discard the onions, herbs and garlic. Reduce the liquid down to something similar to gravy and then serve with some summer vegetables.
The pot roasting method means that the bird will remain moist and tender even if you find yourself forgetting about it and wandering off to do something else. The additon of plenty of herbs, wine, onions and garlic adds plenty of flavour and the seasonal vegetables ensure the dish is light and perfect for the weather. It won’t ever replace roast chicken with roast potaotes and stuffing as our favourite comfort food but it comes pretty close.
Steak
When I got home from work on Friday, Stephen was busy in the kitchen preparing something of a feast. I hadn’t been very hungry during the day and when he asked me what I would like for dinner, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t expecting a starter of crab toasts, an amuse bouche of minted pea soup and a main coutse of steak, mushrooms and onions and brocolli.
It was all delicious and luckily I had found my appetite and was able to enjoy it all. I think I’ll employ the same tactic next time Stephen asks me what I want for dinner and see what happens.
Chicken, Avocado and Radishes with Lentils
Stephen and I both arrived home earlier than usual this evening which gave us more time to cook dinner. We’ve been eating a lot of things-on-toast lately so it was nice to spend some time in the kitchen and some more time eating in the garden.
We didn’t want to devote the whole evening to cooking though and we also needed something that would double up as lunch tomorrow and this worked well. While the lentils were cooking, we fried the chicken and then mixed the two together with some olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar and some herbs. A little seasoning and then a handful of radishes and a chopped avocado and we were ready to eat. Not quite as quick as something-on-toast but a whole lot tastier.
The Sportsman, Seasalter
We took the day off work on Friday and went down to Whitstable for the last day of the oyster festival. Since we were so close, it seemed silly not to go back to The Sportsman in Seasalter for lunch as we had enjoyed it so much last year.
The menu seemed shorter than I remembered previously but that’s no bad thing, I often find it difficult to decide what to eat when I’m out so a short menu makes things much easier. It didn’t take us long to decide what to order and both of us opted for fishy starters. To Stephen’s delight, they had herring on the menu which they had marinated themselves. He enjoyed it but it was slightly too herring-y for me. I did enjoy the firm texture though which struck me as being very different to the tinned variety.
I ordered the slipsole in seaweed butter as I hadn’t had either before. I was surprised when the fish arrived without any vegetables and while I appreciated the simplicity of the presentation I would have liked something else with it to cut through the richness of the fish. The seaweed butter was very good with a hint of garlic as well as the salty, seaweed flavour but it didn’t hold my interest for very long.
Sticking firmly to the fishy theme, I ordered the thornback ray which is the same dish I had last year. It was as good as I remembered, firm and meaty with a rich, nutty flavour from the butter it was cooked in and an acidic sauce to balance it all out. Having eaten so much fish to start with, it was a bit of a challenge to get through such a huge portion but I struggled on with just a little help from Stephen.
Stephen’s turbot was supposed to be brill but unfortunately they’d run out. In contrast to my dish, the turbot was rather small and there definitely weren’t enough vegetables but it was well cooked and the sweet, salty bacon was a real high point.
Both dishes were served with some mashed potatoes and some crushed, new potatoes which were fine but mashed potatoes seemed too heavy for lunch on a hot day and I was really disappointed that there weren’t more vegetables available especially since they’re so abundant at this time of year.
In hindsight, I think we should have spent more time studying the menu and started with something meaty to dilute the fishiness. And perhaps I shouldn’t have eaten all the brilliant bread so quickly and saved some to go with my slipsole.
Proscuitto and Pea Pesto Pizza
As we had so much pea pesto left over from yesterday, we had to come up with creative uses for it. Pizza topping sounded like a creative use, so that’s what we did. We used our usual pizza base recipe, then topped it with the pea pesto instead of a tomato sauce. The pesto was a little hard to spread, but we got there in the end. Then we added roasted cherry tomatoes (that we had roasted with a little salt and pepper while the dough was rising), prosciutto and Laverstoke Park buffalo mozarella and sprinkled with fragrant dried oregano. Popped into the oven on our pizza stone at maximum heat until the cheese was bubbling and the various bits had browned.
The pea pesto base worked very well and obviously created a rather different pizza to the usual type that uses a tomato sauce base. The roasted cherry tomatoes did supply some of the sour tomatoey sweetness to balance out the nutty pesto. The prosciutto and mozarella were brilliant as usual and the oregano gave it all a delicious herby fragrance.
Pasta with Prawns and Pea Pesto
We have been enjoying fresh peas lately and out of some enthusiasm, I picked up two bags instead of one because… well just because. Kerri had had some plans for peas in combination with broad beans, but we couldn’t find any broad beans so the plans changed and we ended up making a mighty mound of pea pesto with all the peas. The quantities are very approximate, but it went something like this:
Pod two bags of fresh peas and boil / steam the peas until just cooked. Roast a small bag of pine nuts until golden brown. Bash the nuts with a mortar and pestle, along with half a clove of sliced garlic. Pick about half the leaves off a largish basil plant. Grate three quarters of a small block of parmesan.
Put the peas and basil into a food processor and process until fairly smooth, drizzling in olive oil as you go. We didn’t add that much oil as we wanted it to be fairly healthy (negated somewhat by all the cheese and nuts, but at least we tried) and it was a lot firmer than real pesto would be. Put the pea and basil paste into a saucepan and add the nuts and grated cheese. Stir well and heat very slightly just enough to melt the cheese. Add plenty of pepper and salt if required.
Because of all the pea-pesto-making, we forgot to cook the prawns until the last minute. Which was fine, because they turned out well – just fried them quickly with a little garlic. The combination was very good, with the roasted nut flavours coming through well and combining with the fresh pea and basil. The sweet garlickiness of the prawns balanced it beautifully.
Mushroom Stroganoff
A typical conversation in our house at the moment goes something like this:
Stephen: “We haven’t decided on dinner for tomorrow night have we?”
Me: “No, I was just wondering about that”
Stephen: “What do you feel like having?”
Me: “Dunno”
Stephen: “What about some fish or something Mexican?”
Me: “I guess. What about (insert random ingredient) instead?”
Stephen: “OK, what shall we have with it?”
Me: “Dunno”
And then poor Stephen is left wandering around the supermarket after work trying to think of something we might both like that includes the very specific vegetable or piece of meat I’ve requested. Which is a very long winded way of saying that I’m not feeling very creative when it comes to food lately and I’m also being very indecisive and Stephen is being very patient. That’s how we came to eat mushroom stroganoff earlier this week, after I’d decided that I fancied mushrooms.
As well as putting up with my random requests, Stephen has also been doing most of the cooking lately since he has been getting home earlier than me. Consequently, I’m not really sure how he made this but I do know it was based on this recipe. I could ask him I suppose but I’m about to hit him with my request for something with radishes for tomorrow night’s dinner and I think I might be pushing my luck.
Barbecued Trout with Broad Beans, Peas and New Potatoes
We’ve been so busy lately that although we have been doing some cooking, we haven’t found the time to blog about it. What we have been cooking has mostly been quick and easy and not all that interesting which makes things difficult to write about. I’d completely forgotten about this until I found the picture while clearing out the camera and remembered that we ate it almost two weeks ago.
Stephen picked up some trout on his way home from work and since the weather was so good, we stuffed it full of herbs and cooked it on the barbecue. I remember it being good but since it was so long ago, I can’t remember much more than that. The picture does remind me that I enjoyed the impromptu barbecue and the al-fresco eating though and it’s these reminders that I enjoy when I look back through old posts so that’s why I’ve written this up. Hopefully soon things will quieten down and we’ll have more time for both cooking and blogging.
Mushroom Burgers
These started life as mushroom pizzas but when it came to it, we realised they just weren’t going to be filling enough so we added some toasted ciabatta and they became mushroom burgers. It seemed like a reasonably good idea when we came up with it but I wasn’t all that excited about it when it came to cooking time. As it turned out though, these were brilliant.
The mushrooms had a really good, earthy flavour about them and they actually tasted like mushrooms rather than just being watery and a bit dull. The filling of salami, artichokes and cheese complimented that earthiness and, for something so quick and easy, they made a really tasty dinner. Obviously not as good as real burgers but a pretty good alternative.
Sill and Crackerbread
After visiting Sweden and eating loads of sill (marinated herring), we popped into a Swedish cafe and shop in London last weekend (Scandinavian Kitchen) and bought some more of it.
We bought one picked in a dill marinade and our plan was also to buy a plain one and do our own marinade for it. However, we got this slightly wrong and instead of getting a plain one, we got another flavoured one. I went ahead and attempted to marinate it anyway – in a bit of mayonnaise with some garlic and chives.
When it came to eating it this evening, the dill one was of course as expected, but the “home made” one was a strange mixture of its original flavour and the garlic and chive, so not that successful. Served with some sliced tomato, cucumber and pickle, on some cracker bread. Later I added a dash of cream cheese and mustard too. Not quite as planned, but still delicious.
