Chicken & Mushroom Pie

This super simple pie is a great dish for all the family. Both my girls love it too and served with some leafy green veg. is a perfect winter warmer.

I use this short crust pastry recipe from the bbc then simply make up a chicken and mushroom filling.

Brown off some chopped chicken thighs.
Add mushrooms on a high heat and a big knob of butter.
Season well and add a splash of water if they’re starting to stick.
Turn down the heat once everything is browned and cook through.
Sift a little plain flour over the top and stir in.
Add milk on a high heat a little at a time, making sure every drop is incoroporated before adding the next splash.
Once you have a thick sauce, add chopped fresh thyme and check seasoning again. Lots of pepper, a little salt. If you want, crumble in a stock cube too.
You can keep this mixture in the fridge for a couple of days if you wanted to get ahead.

Then line a pie tin with half the rolled pastry, use a metal one to ensure no soggy bottoms; stick the oven on 200; add the filling; lay the other half of the rolled pastry over the top and seal at the edges. Brush beaten egg or a little milk over the top and stab it a couple of times for the steam to escape. Pop into the oven, then reduce the heat to around 180. Leave until the pastry is golden brown on top, between 30 and 40 mins and check filling is piping hot before serving!

CDwM Main Course recipe - Chicken with wild mushroom and spinach sauce.

From Bon Appétit

I've cooked this dish a few times before and it's always really tasty. It's sort of an up-to-date version of that old classic, Chicken Tarragon that my mum used to make. Now, having watched quite a few 'Something for the Weekends', I have noticed that Simon has a penchant for this herb, and, I believe, quite rightly so! It's one of those things I don't think we use often enough and tends to be in dried form at the back of the cupboard from the early 1970s! Well, this recipe uses fresh tarragon. You can't make it ahead of schedule, in terms of the day before, but pan frying the chicken and beginning the sauce is something you could do earlier in the evening, before your guests arrive.

For the real recipe, click here, or for my version, carry on reading!

Chicken breasts with skin on, preferably free-range
chicken stock
wild mushrooms
spinach
white wine
cream
tarragon

basmati rice
flaked almonds

Pan fry the seasoned chicken breast until browned, ensuring the skin is crispy.
Turn skin side up, pop into an oven-proof dish and pour chicken stock around them, until it reaches a third up the breasts.
Cook in a hot oven, about 180-200 degrees celcius, until cooked through: about 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, fry the butter until sizzling, then add the torn wild mushrooms. Don't shake the pan around; let them sit there for a few minutes first.
When they are soft and browned, add a glass of wine and bubble 'til it's nearly gone.
Add the spinach, cream, I used double, and the chopped tarragon and season to taste.

Serve with the rice: Cook the rice as per the packet instructions, toast the almonds, either in a hot, dry frying pan or in the oven (keep an eye on them, I usually end up making two batches, the first always being very burnt as I get easily distracted!) Once done, combine them with the rice and add a blob of butter to taste.

On the night, I slightly overcooked the chicken and this is something to be aware of! If the sauce isn't quite ready, remove the chicken from the oven, and pop it back to heat before serving. It's a quick and easy recipe but, if you serve it attractively, looks more complex than it really is!

chicken soup - thanks to allens of mayfair

This was the second recipe we made from the meat butchery course the OH went to at Allen's of Mayfair a few weeks ago. One of the bags he returned home with was a bag of bones; chicken bones to be more precise. So, being the ever resourceful one who tries, but doesn't always succeed, not to let anything go to waste, I decided a chicken soup would be a perfect lunch, or starter for supper.

You'll need - a bag of bones, or the carcass of an already roast and eaten chicken! A small potato, onion, leek, double cream, herbs.

First, cover the carcass or bones with water and boil rapidly for about 20 mins. Then, pick all the bit of chicken off the bones and set aside. Return the bones to the pan.

Meanwhile, fry off the onions, leeks and chopped potato, ensuring you season them well, until browned but not cooked through.

After boiling the bones for about 2 hours, strain the liquid and return the stock to the pan with the vegetables. Gently simmer until cooked through, adding a chicken stock cube to add flavour if necessary!

When cooked through, blend the mixture until smooth, then add the chicken pieces and stir in the cream. Taste and season as desired and sprinkle with chopped parsley to serve.

Day 1 - chicken with spinach and wild mushrooms

Chicken with Spinach and Wild Mushrooms

Was rather in a rush tonight when trialling my first dish for the forth-coming CDwM. I'd have been in more of a hurry had I not bumped into Titto in the supermarket; he valiantly offered to help pack and it was finished in a flash! As you know, you need to cook with love if you want it to turn out right, and, to be honest, I really didn't have the heart for it tonight: take-away pizza and coleslaw would have been perfect, but, as I've got rather a lot of trial runs to go this week, so I can change my menu if necessary (!) I thought I'd better get started.

Chicken - overcooked, dry and chewy. Need to buy similar sized fillets and cook for no longer than 15 mins after browning. Good colour on top though!

Mushrooms - due to lack of usual packet from Tescos - sorry, would buy form Borough Market if I lived even marginally close - had different types from normal. Need to cut very thin slivers of these type.

Rice - There's a first time for everything! Perfectly cooked. Be careful to serve hot! Leave over steaming water once rinsed with cold water. Only 2 handfuls needed per person, not three. Don't forget about toasted almonds in pan and leave some for top of rice. Needs serving in narrower circles - little glass ramekins?

To serve - rice in one corner, blob of sauce with chicken on top in other.

Tonight's dinner was ok; definitely not a winning dish though! A lot more attention to detail needed, and accurate cooking times.

Day 6: Crisp parmesan chicken with garlic & lemon broccoli

Crisp Parmesan chicken with garlic & lemon broccoli

recipe: Janine Ratcliffe

Olive Magazine, August 2009

According to the recipe, it should take 50minutes, serve 2, and is classed as 'easy'.

Ingredients

skinless chicken thigh fillets 4
50g parmesan, finely grated
white breadcrumbs 50g
1tbsp flour
1 egg, beaten
1 small head broccoli, broken into florets
25g butter
1 garlic clove, sliced
lemon 1/2, zested and juiced

Method

Heat the oven to 200c. Season the chicken thighs. Mix the Parmesan and breadcrumbs on a flat plate and put the flour and egg onto separate plates. Coat each thigh in flour, dusting off the excess, then dip in egg and roll in breadcrumbs. Sit on a rack over a baking tray and bake for 40 minutes until crisp and golden.
Boil or steam the broccoli until tender, then drain. Melt the butter in a pan and gently sizzle the garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add the lemon juice and zest and season. Toss with the broccoli and serve with the chicken.

What it should look like...

Original photograph: Lis Parsons

What mine looked like...

The facts:

The chicken was one of the ingredients on the list I already had, though I used free-range chicken breasts rather than thighs as those were already in the freezer. I lessened the cooking time to 30 minutes in the oven. I always finds that having to 'crisp' something with flour, egg then crumbs always puts me off making it as it seems so 'phaffy' but I followed the recipe and it was really easy - just a few more plates to wash up! Easily made within the time, served two as stated, but I also did a baked potato for hubby.

Taste:

I was worried, as I always am with dishes like this, that the crumb wouldn't crisp and would be soggy, but, true to the recipe, the crust crisped beautifully in the oven, turning a rich golden brown. The chicken itself, with a hint of Parmesan, was very tasty, but I think had I made it with the thighs as per the recipe, it would have had a little more moisture inside. Now, there's not a lot to like about broccoli, it just does the job of being green and good for you, so it was nice to hear the comment, 'I love the broccoli,' from my husband! It's not often that people actually bother to speak about the taste of things such as broccoli, but the lemon and garlic butter sauce was easily absorbed by the florets and as such, it was particularly tasty!

My one negative comment would be the overall lack of something 'wet' to go alongside it. Like I said, the whole meal would have been more moist had I used thighs, but I feel it still would have been rather dry. A homemade fresh tomato salsa, with a chilli spice, would have been perfect!
Last meal tomorrow: Tandoori Pork Burgers.

Jambalaya - recipe stolen

Recipe stolen from Simon Rimmer at Something for the Weekend: he didn't mark it as Jambalaya but add a bit of spice, maybe a dash of tabasco, a red chilli and a spoonful of sweet chilli sauce, and substitute the bacon for chorizo...

It worked out a treat; not too stodgy, not too dry. The dish was incredibly easy to make and very tasty. A lovely every day evening meal with not too much to do apart from stuff it all in a bowl after pan-frying. Basically, you fry off whatever veg. takes your fancy, stir in the rice, cover with stock and bake. The omelette-type thing on the top may not to be to everyone's taste, but it just sort of finished it all off, gave it that top layer and extra texture.

Stuffed Chicken Breast with Roasted Vegetables

As I sit here writing this, my boyfriend has decided he too would like to write a blog and is asking all sorts of questions regarding how I know about blogging; what it costs; what I am writing about; why I am doing it, etc, etc! My mouth is watering, not because of all the questions and answers, but because the beef (cooked to perfection - rare) on the television looks fantastic. My dinner is still in the oven!


I guess the purpose of this is to see what happens. It's like when I pick up a wet leaf from the pavement - just to see; you never know what amazing patterns you're going to find underneath. Look at my little dinosaur leaf in Budapest! I couldn't just leave (he he he) him lying there on his own! So that's what this blog is: a leaf, well, the pattern left by it on the pavement. An experiment. To see what happens if I write a blog. I've chosen to keep food as the main topic as this is my passion. I live, breathe and eat the stuff, literally. Even as a child I needed to know what I was having for tea (does that give away that I'm a Northerner ;) ) before I left for school so I could look forward to it during the day.

To be fair, I arrived home fairly early and had time to make a meal and begin this blog - I don't know which I'm more excited about, food or blogging...

Tonight it's Stuffed Chicken Breast with Roasted Vegetables.

A quick and easy Thursday tea. I stuffed the free-range chicken with garlic, garden herbs and cheese, then wrapped them in bacon. Before transferring to the oven, I pan fried them to add colour and flavour. Yum! Can't wait until the summer when I can use veggies from the garden!
(oops - spent too much time doing this and just rescued the veggies in time!)


A demain,

Merlotti x