Roast Chicken (and Chicken Stock)
As you know, this is a firm favourite in our house and after our first week of healthy eating we were both looking forward to it. Aside from over-cooking the roast potatoes, it lived up to our expectations and we both left the table feeling full and content.
With the leftover carcass we made chicken stock – put the carcass and bones into a large pot with some carrots, celery, bay, peppercorns and any leftover leek tops. We also added the carrots and celery that we roasted the chicken on. Add some water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 1.5 hours.
Easy peasy and perfect for the risotto I’ve been craving later in the week.
Cottage Pie
I’m really surprised that we’ve never made this before, it’s a classic and one I grew up with. You’d think that it wasn’t all that appropriate for an evening in August but then the weather hasn’t really been all that appropriate of late either so it seemed fitting.
As I said before, I grew up eating this and I remember my mum making enough of it to feed an army, there was always a huge heap of mashed potatoes on the top that were crispy on top (mum used to brush the potato with an egg) and fluffy inside. This is one of the first dishes I remember learning to cook and I still have the handwritten copy mum wrote down for me when I went away to university. I made it a lot then (mince was cheap and like most students, I preferred to spend my hard-earned student loan on beer and clothes) but can’t remember the last time I cooked it.
I didn’t use mum’s recipe today largely because she boils the mince. It makes wonderful gravy but I don’t enjoy the smell of boiled mince – any more than she did either I imagine 🙂
I did my research and firstly consulted Mr Ramsay. I’ve never cooked one of his recipes before but have enjoyed the odd episode of Kitchen Nightmares and I recall him introducing this to an Irish restaurant in America as the signature dish. Not wanting to play favourites, I next called upon the honourable Delia Smith. I’ve lost a lot of enthusiasm for Queen Delia since her recent cheater-McCheater programme but when she’s not using frozen mashed potatoes she does give good British cooking. Next up was the spiky-haired Gary Rhodes. I remember avidly watching his Great British Classics show with my mum when it was first aired sometime in the mid-nineties and she bought me the book that Christmas. We both used to salivate over his roast beef and pork pies and I remember his version of cottage pie well. Lastly, I consulted my least favourite of the TV chefs, the self-titled Domestic Goddess Nigella Lawson.
As you can imagine, the ingredients and method varied somewhat from chef to chef but the basic principles remained the same throughout. I picked my favourite parts from each and created my own version.
1 onion, finely chopped
Celery stick, finely chopped
500g minced beef
Salt and pepper
Tbs flour
Handful parsley, finely chopped
Handful thyme, leaves only
Half glass red wine
500ml beef stock
1.5 tbs worcester sauce
1.5 tbs tomato puree
Fry the onion and celery in olive oil with a lid on, on low heat, until cooked through (about 10 minutes) and then remove from the pan.
Fry mince on medium to high heat until cooked through (I prefer not to use the very lean beef and then drain off the excess fat and water)
Add onion and celery back to the pan, add herbs and then season with salt and pepper.
Stir in flour and cook for a couple of minutes.
Add wine and cook out the alcohol.
Add stock slowly and let it absorb slightly before finishing with worcester sauce and tomato puree.
Reduce heat to lowest setting, put the lid on and cook for 15 minutes.
Remove the lid for the last ten minutes and cook down until almost all liquid has reduced.
At some point in this process, you need to make the mashed potatoes. I’m not going to tell you how to do that (mum did on the recipe she wrote out for me) but in case you’re interested I started this once the meat was simmering away.
Once the meat is cooked, add it to your dish of choice and top with the mashed potatoes. Delia suggested cheesy, leeky potatoes which I think would be brilliant but Stephen ate all the cheese and the leeks we have are reserved for tomorrow.
Fork the mashed potatoes in the pattern of your choice (I chose random today but mum favoured straight lines if I recall correctly) and then cook for about 25 minutes on 200 degrees.
And that’s it. Serve with your favourite vegetables (savoy cabbage and green beans for us) and enjoy.
ETA: saving the photograph as “cottage pie” showed us that we have in fact cooked this before, in February 2007. I have absolutely no recollection of either cooking or eating it though and unhelpfully the post doesn’t give a recipe.
Broad Bean Pesto
I’ve been thinking about this for a while and decided to give it a go this evening. I originally thought I’d use basil but since I didn’t have any but do have two huge mint plants, it seemed sensible to use that instead.
I don’t know what quantities I used but I steamed the broad beans and then podded them, added them to the blender with the mint, oil, garlic, toasted pinenuts, parmesan and salt and pepper. The consistency of the beans meant the oil was quickly sucked up so I added some more and then let it cool.
It was interesting, it had a very different consistency to normal pesto – the beans gave it a much coarser texture but the mint worked really well. The whole dish was much lighter too which would be lovely on a summer’s evening. Sadly we don’t seem to be having too many of those so I added some roasted tomatoes and some pinenuts to deepen the flavour. It really worked but then I think the combination of tomatoes and pinenuts would rescue any dish.
An Old Favourite
I had to go to the dentist this afternoon and later on we had to do the weekly shop, neither of us were much in the mood for cooking after that so when Stephen suggested fajitas it seemed a sensible choice. It’s quick, easy and we can do it with our eyes closed.
It’s not all that exciting but we always enjoy it and enjoy it we did tonight.
Pasta Pistou
While researching broad bean pesto this afternoon, I stumbled upon What Rachel Ate Today and subsequently, her recipe for pistou. It sounded just what I needed for a quick dinner this evening and apart from the parsley, I already had the ingredients I needed.
It was certainly quick and easy to prepare, just whizz up all the ingredients while the pasta is cooking but I fear I should have followed Rachel’s measurements as I ended up with a very sharp paste. I rescued it by adding some pinenuts to the blender and accidentally making a kind-of pistou pesto. With some extra black pepper and some parmesan it was a really good dish, although I really should have thought harder about eating raw garlic the night before a dentist’s appointment.
Thai stir-fried Beef with Shallots and Basil
Day two of the healthy eating plan led me to “Vegetables” by Sophie Grigson. We’ve had this book for a while but haven’t used it much despite a lot of the recipes sounding good. This recipe jumped out at me, something about spicy dishes seems to make low-fat cooking all that more appetising.
This worked out reasonably well but wasn’t the best example of Thai stir-fries we’ve tried. There was a huge amount of basil and it worked well with the garlic, chilli, ginger and fish sauce but it was generally under-seasoned and lacking in flavour and heat.
When Lentils Go Bad
We’re back on a healthy-eating kick after a long period of abstinence. The first few days are always the hardest so yesterday we trawled the recipe files and books looking for interesting, tasty and healthy things to make for dinner. I came across a Delia recipe for grilled lemon chicken with lentils which seemed to tick all the boxes and set about it marinading the chicken and cooking the lentils.
I’m not that familiar with lentils, I quite like them and eat them in restaurants fairly regularly but I’ve not had that much experience with cooking them myself. And it showed. I don’t know what happened but all the liquid got soaked up much quicker than Delia told me it would. I added some more water then Stephen came home and took over. He’s much better at the lentil thing than I am but even he couldn’t rescue them so I ran to the local shop and bought pitta bread instead.
It turned out ok in the end but I don’t think I’ll let loose with the lentils again for a while.
Party
You’d be forgiven for thinking that things have been a bit quiet around here lately. Both Stephen and I were out on Thursday and regrettably there was no food involved, only wine. And mojitos. For that reason, Friday saw us give in to the temptation of the supermarket pizza. As you might imagine, it wasn’t even nearly post-worthy.
The other thing that’s been keeping us busy was Stephen’s niece’s first birthday. We were tasked with preparing the food for 20 adults for a Sunday afternoon tea-party. We spent quite a while deciding on the menu which needed to be prepared in advance and easily-transportable. After much deliberating we settled on:
Caper and anchovy tart (this is actually based on a Jamie Oliver recipe for pizza topping, it worked brilliantly and would be great as a pizza topping)
Spinach, pine-nut and feta tart (from BBC Good Food )
Tomato and mozarella salad
Potato salad
Roast Beef (this was supposed to be decorated with watercress but it was in no fit state so we improvised with halved cherry tomatoes)
Poached salmon
Summer pudding
Chocolate brownies
After completing a mammoth shopping trip on Friday night, complete with matching hangovers (hence the reason for the supermarket pizza) we began work the next morning on turning the raw ingredients into interesting dishes.
We started off by making the summer pudding to Delia’s recipe and then the chocolate brownies, using our usual Jo Pratt recipe. Next up we roasted the beef with a flour and mustard powder coating and poached the salmon using this James Martin recipe. We boiled the potatoes, halved them and dressed them with oil, mustard and red onion (we added the parsely the next day). After all of that and the associated washing up we went out for dinner and a large glass of wine.
On Sunday morning we packed all of this up and made the journey to the party where, after a glass of Champagne, we set about completing the menu. We made up the tarts (after a quick dash to Tesco because we’d forgotten the pine nuts), assembled the tomato and mozarella salad, sliced the beef and the salmon and decorated it with cucumber and lemon slices (these were supposed to be those cute little lemon twists but they didn’t work out – an unfamiliar kitchen, someone else’s knives, two dogs and a one year old isn’t particularly conducive to frippary). The brownies were chopped and yet more chopping went on to complete a mixed salad.
Finally we sliced some bread, arranged some condiments and put the whole lot on the table. Half an hour later it was all gone. I’m hoping this is because it was enjoyed (we certainly had a lot of thanks) and not because there wasn’t enough. In the words of the great (or grating, depending on your point-of-view) Nigella, one should never knowingly be under-fed.
Broad Bean, Pea and Mint Salad (with Lamb Chops)
The broad bean season is so short and we’re both big fans but for some reason we don’t tend to use them that often. Determined to do something interesting this week, we put them in the shopping basket on Saturday which forced me to spend some time looking at things to do with them. Seeing as we had some lamb chops in the freezer and an abundance of mint, I opted for a salad. There are of course lots of variations in existence so I decided to combine the parts I liked the best and do it my own way.
I boiled some broad breans, peas and spring onions for about five minutes and left them until they were cool enough for the beans to be skinned. I then added some crushed garlic, olive oil, crunchy salt, black pepper and some torn mint leaves. Mix it all together and serve. It’s really simple but incredibly tasty and the perfect accompaniment to lamb chops.
We also had some sauteed potatoes, just because we always do with lamb but also because there was a lonely looking potato that needed to be used up. I burnt the onions though so no picture 🙂
Ginger Chicken
This was a recipe from the Blue Elephant book that turned out quite well but we both agreed we prefer our Thai food to be spicy. We didn’t have enough ginger or enough time to make the special Blue Elephant sauce (their version of MSG) so that probably affected the overall taste of the dish.
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp light soy sauce
4 pinches ground white pepper
300g chicken breast (we used legs as that’s what we had in the freezer, breast would have been best though)
6 tbsp vegetable oil
7 tbsp chicken stock
40g ginger (cut into matchsticks)
60g onion, sliced
120g mixed peppers, sliced
8 button mushrooms, quartered
2 spring onions, sliced
3 tbsp oyster sauce
Coriander leaves to garnish
Crush garlic and white peppercorns (or mix in ready-ground white pepper), mix with soy sauce and marinade chicken for 15 minutes.
Stir-fry chicken until half-cooked (about 2 minutes)
Add all the vegetables and the stock and stir-fry for 30 seconds, add the sauces and cook for a further 2 minutes until chicken is cooked.
Garnish with coriander.
