another potato bake

using up: cold roast chicken, half a bag of spinach, a mozzarella past its sell-by date

A proper Reactive meal - first for a while.  We are still ploughing through Sunday’s chicken, and had some other stuff that needed eating up.  This worked really well, although next time I would poach the chicken in the cream for a few minutes - it somehow didn’t meld in properly.

Grease an ovenproof dish (I use an olive oil spray for this).  Ideally, get someone else to slice some potatoes very thinly, or otherwise you’ll have to do it yourself, and it’s a bit tedious without a mandoline (which I don’t have, unaccountably).

Wash some spinach, and chop up the cold chicken into small pieces.  Chop a couple of cloves of garlic finely.  Layer half the potatoes in the dish, then add the spinach, the chicken, the garlic and some double cream.  Grate some nutmeg over it.  Add the rest of the potatoes, and add some more cream. Dot the mozzarella, torn into chunks, over the top.

Bake at Gas 5 for about an hour - it will take longer than you think.  Worked really well.

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ChickenWatch #2 - stir fry

It was a big chicken, and there’s only two of us, so this was plenty of meat.

Pete stripped the meat off a leg (of the chicken, you fools!), and sliced it thinly, and we set it to marinate in some cornflour and water, with a teaspoon of sesame oil and some shoyu, just for ten minutes.

There was half a cauliflower in the fridge, so I cut it into florets, and cooked it for a few minutes, while I sliced up a green pepper, a few mushrooms, and an onion.  Pete minced garlic and ginger.

Then veg into the wok, including the cauli, stir around for a few minutes, add chicken and the liquor.  We had it with rice.

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this week’s soup 3 nov 08

I took the vegetables the chicken was cooked on, and blitzed them in the Magimix till they were in small bits.

Added the juice from the chicken pan, a carton of creamed tomatoes, about 1 litre of water, and a cup of puy lentils.  It’s simmering now for lunch - smells rather good.

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apple and pear sponge pudding

This is a generic sponge topping - you could put it over any fruit.

100g butter or marge
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon or so of vanilla essence
140g self raising flour (or plain with a teaspoon of baking powder).

I just bung it all in the food processor and whizz it up.  Cook at gas 5 for about 40-45 minutes.

This time, we put it on top of about five eating apples and a pear, all of which were a bit past their best.  I didn’t bother with peeling, just cored and sliced them, tossed them in a couple of teaspoons of mixed spice and zapped them in the microwave for about three minutes till they started going fluffy.  No sugar, as they were dessert apples.

Piled the spong mix on top, cooked as above.  Gorgeous.

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ChickenWatch day one

We bought a (free range) chickie! this week - we fancied a roast dinner, and chicken is the best value. We can make a chicken stretch a long way, and I’ll document it as we go.

We had a load of root veg in the fridge, so I decided to try something new. I cut up two parsnips, one swede, some carrots and a leek, and scattered them in the bottom of a roasting tray. Sprinkled with pepper, and added two mugfuls of water with Marigold bouillon (everybody should keep this in - it’s a great all purpose, vegetarian, low salt, stock powder).

Sat Johnnie Chicken on the top, and set to roast - he weighed 2.5 kilos and I did him for about 2.5 hours, I guess, at gas 5. In future, remember (as I didn’t) to cut the swede smaller than everything else or it won’t cook through.

I parboiled some potatoes in their skins, then drained them, and “roughed them up” in the saucepan. This softens the edges, and gives great crispy roasties when you .. roast them.  They were done in olive oil, with a sprig or two of rosemary in the roasting tray.  The spuds went in about 40 minutes before we wanted to eat, and the oven went up to gas 8 for the last 15 minutes while the chickie! came out to rest.

This means we removed the chicken from the veg, and put him in a dish for a little lie down - keeps the flesh moister if you do this.  The veg and stock were returned to the oven to continue cooking with the spuds.  Some sprouts were put on to simmer with black pepper and butter (just for a few minutes).

Then, while Pete hacked at carved the bird, I took a few spoonsful of the stock from the veg, and whisked it over the heat with a large knob of butter for gravy.  We fished out some veg to go with the chicken, carefully leaving the swede for later :)  It was all lovely, and I’ll cook a chicken like this again.

The remains of the veg will go for this week’s soup, as they are all gorgeous and chickeny.  The rest of the chicken? - wait and see!

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this week’s meals w/c 26 oct 08

I’m going to start listing what we eat each week for our main meal, mostly for my own reference. But you might enjoy it too!

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butternut squash - a primer

A very useful post from Fiona at Frugal Cooking, on how to stretch a butternut squash into several meals. I think a lot of people don’t really know what to do with one of these, and they’re a wonderful veg!

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this week’s soup w/c 25 oct 08

One parsnip, half a swede (rest was mashed up with potato to go with last night’s stew), three carrots, one leek. All cut into small dice, then sautéd with some oil to cook them down a bit.

Added a couple of litres of cold water, a handful of barley, salt and black pepper, and some Marigold bouillon.

This morning, set it on a low heat at about 10.30, and at lunchtime (circa 1 p.m.) I applied the hand blender to mulch it up a bit. Delicious and warming, especially given the change in the weather!

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fish and broccoli pie

using up: a head of broccoli, some smoked trout

A while back when we were in Costco, we were offered a sample of hot smoked trout.  It was delicious; like sheep, we bought a bag, and I wrapped each fillet separately and put it in the freezer.  I completely forgot about it until I was trying to make space for the mega chicken cookout last weekend, and then I made a mental note.

Thankfully, I managed to retain this note long enough to think about the fish when I needed to use up the broccoli, and this is what I did.  I’m afraid it used a lot of pans, and was a lot of faffing, but it was worth it.  Note the wonderful old battered white and blue enamel dish I cooked it in - I love that dish.

Put some potatoes on to boil for the mashed spud topping.  If you put them in the bottom of the steamer, then you can steam the broccoli on the top, as I did.  Otherwise you’ll have to use yet another pan for the broccoli.

Poach the fish in some milk for about 4-5 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillet.  Lift out with a fish slice (!), set on a plate, and *keep the milk*.

Chop an onion very finely (I used a red one, for prettiness, but a white would be fine)., and sauté in some butter until soft.  Add some flour to make a roux, then complete a sort of onion sauce by adding the milk from the fish.

Flake the fish into chunks, removing the skin; I gave it to the cats, but they were unimpressed.  Combine with the broccoli and onion sauce.  I added some chopped parsley from the garden.

Put in an ovenproof dish, top with mashed potato, and cook at gas 6 or so for about 20 minutes, until the potato is browned.

A lot of messing about, but *well* worth it.

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this week’s soup

This one is a real mongrel.  You’ve probably heard of Nigella Lawson’s gammon cooked in coke - it’s utterly delicious, and I make it often (we’re big fans of buying a large gammon and having it for our lunches during the week).

Rummaging in the shed last weekend, we found 12 bottles of ginger beer that we’d forgotten about, and they were past their sell-by date.  “I wonder”, I thought … So we tried boiling the gammon in ginger beer, with a stick of cinnamon added, and it was absolutely delicious.

This, of course, left me with a lot of gingery ham stock, so we fished all the rather tired vegetables out of the fridge and chopped them up - a squash, a courgette, some celery, carrots, and a potato.  Cut them into small dice, fried them down a bit, added the stock and half a mug of green lentils.

It has turned out a bit too celery-ish, but other than that, it’s really nice - quite sweet, from the sugar in the ginger beer, but none the worse for that.

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