Easiest. Dinner. Ever

Gosh, hasn’t it been a while? My apologies for the lack of recipes lately. August was crazily busy and (mostly) very good fun. Lots of good eating – but none of the cooking was done by me. Fabulous wedding in Ireland with a seven course meal (I think, I lost count), a beautiful tapas meal cooked for my birthday, and a late birthday lasagne and enormous cake. All lovely.

But now it’s time for me to start contributing again. This is a bit of a cheat. Anyone can do this recipe, or variations of it, but the fact is it’s really really nice. And if you don’t already have a version of this in your repertoire, you should, because it tastes much better than you’d expect from just a bit of chopping.

So here’s my recipe for roasted chicken legs with Mediterranean vegetables, and a lemon and pine nut cous cous.

To tart up this dinner I made foccacia earlier today, according to this recipe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/rosemary_and_sea_salt_12392

But added my own toppings. I made a couple, one with olives and rosemary, another with chopped garlic and basil and some lemon juice. It was all good fun! But I’m not one for typing out someone else’s recipes so click on the link above.

Stick your oven on to preheat at around 190 degrees.

For this you will need a bucketload of Mediterranean type veg. I had a courgette, an aubergine, a pepper, a couple of small onions, a handful of cherry tomatoes and a few cloves of garlic. Chop everything up into big chunks and put it in a roasting tin. Chop the garlic roughly and scatter it over the top, then if you’ve got any basil tuck half a dozen basil leaves in amongst it too. (Rosemary works well with this; the first time I had a variation of this meal at a friend’s house it was made with rosemary and the smells were brilliant).

Now slosh over a good load of olive oil (erm, maybe 6 tablespoons? I have no idea) and about half as much balsamic vinegar.

Now put a couple of chicken legs on the top of it and season liberally – the salt will help the chicken skin to go crispy, but the meat will stay moist because of all the steam from the vegetables. I’m a big fan of chicken legs (or any meat on the bone really) as it is so much tastier than chicken breasts, which go dry very easily.

Shove in the oven for about forty minutes. I lifted the chicken and gave the vegetables a good stir around half way through.

It also helps to baste the chicken with some of the lovely juices from the bottom of the pan – but you only need to do this once. 

You don’t have to have this with cous cous – it’s nice with roasted new potatoes or just steamed new potatoes. But this time we were having easy dinner.

Toast some pine nuts in a dry frying pan (keep an eye on them, they burn easily) and chop some parsley. You’ll be able to tell if the chicken is nearly ready because the juices will run clear when you poke it with a skewer or sharp knife. At this point, cook some cous cous according to the instructions on the packet, then stir through the pine nuts, parsley, the juice of half a lemon, another slosh of olive oil and some salt and pepper. 

A bonus from this recipe is that you will have chuffing LOADS of roasted veg leftover. This makes a lovely pasta sauce for another day. Just cook some pasta, warm the roasted veg, add a dollop of crème fraiche and stir the whole lot together. Again, you wouldn't expect it to be so good, but it’s awesome.

Pork chops with warm bean salad

So the football season’s started again, which means I have significantly more free time of a weekend. Yesterday I took advantage of this by cooking a cracking meal.

Despite the fact it’s supposed to be summer, it’s grey, cold and miserable so I fancied something properly comforting.

First, get a couple of proper meaty pork chops, skin on and bone in. Make up an easy marinade with the grated zest of half a lemon, a finely chopped clove of garlic, some finely chopped rosemary, olive oil and salt and pepper.

 Rub this into the meaty bits of the pork chops on both sides, and leave them to one side to soak it up. 

Get potatoes ready for roasting by chopping them up and boiling them in some salted water until nearly cooked. Then toss them in some salt and pepper with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Cook them in the oven for a good half an hour.

Make a dressing for your bean salad with two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, four of olive oil, a finely chopped clove of garlic and some salt and pepper.  Shove it all in an old jam jar ready for shaking up just before serving.

Use any old beans for the salad, I had haricot. Shove a tin of beans and some chopped spring onion in a pan with a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Put on a low heat and shove in a good few handfuls of spinach. Put a lid on and leave it on a low heat for five minutes. The spinach should start to wilt down. You can add any old veg to this really, I put in some cooked green beans too. Give it a stir around. And when you’re ready to eat stir through the dressing you made earlier. Don’t leave it on the heat for too long, you don’t want the beans to break down or the spinach to overcook.

I was quite a fan of this, I reckon it would go well with a barbecue too; it’s really tasty and a bit different.

Rub some salt well into the fat and skin to try and encourage it to turn into crispy crackling. 

 

Heat up a roasting dish on top of the hob until it’s pretty hot, and put in a splash of vegetable oil. Put the pork in let it sizzle for a couple of minutes, the skin should start to crisp up. Now flip it and shove it in a really hot oven (about 220 degrees) for about ten – fifteen minutes until crispy.  Turn it once while it’s cooking.

My crackling didn’t work out too well this time, I don’t think my oven was hot enough, so I ended up just taking it off.

Take the meat off the roasting dish and leave it to rest for five minutes. Deglaze it with the juice of half a lemon and a touch of water, and scrape up the tasty bits off the bottom of the pan. It’s not a gravy, but the juices are well worth pouring over the top of the chops. Now plate up!

It was a shame about the crackling, but nonetheless it was a really tasty meal, as well as a welcome distraction from the start of the football season. Expect more regular blog posts for the next ten months!

Whilst making this I mostly listened to: Laura Marling.

Rosemary and Olive Bread

I make a pot of soup once a week. It’s my cheap and healthy lunch for at least three shifts a week at work, and helps avoid inadvertently spending a fiver in M and S food every lunch time. I was trying to change this to salads for the summer, but they don’t keep as well (I’ll often take a few days worth of soup in to work at once) and so just aren’t so easy.  So I go for lighter soups instead.

I try not to have bread all the time, (carbs etc. etc.) but sometimes it just can’t be helped.  I was having a lazy afternoon yesterday so decided to make some bread. It’s a pretty stress free, relaxing process.

The basic recipe I use is the one below, so see that for specific amounts:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

It’s nice to make plain bread, but, predictably enough, I like to add stuff. 

Blitz up a few sprigs of rosemary (leaves only) and half a dozen olives. You don’t want a paste, some chunks of olives are nice.  Put this in the bowl with the strong flour, yeast and salt and give it a good mix together.  Then make a well in the centre and add the oil, and the water in a couple of batches. I use my hands to mix it together, as bread dough is like glue so you want to be cleaning it off as few things as possible.

Then on a well floured board knead it for at least ten minutes. Kneading means pushing, squashing, rolling, generally beating all hell out of it with your hands. It’s a messy process, your hands will be covered, but rub them together to get the dough off and try and get it included.  The thing is, a slightly sticky dough will actually rise much better than a dry one. It really is important to knead it for as long as you can be bothered, do ten minutes then add another minute.

It's a pretty messy process

Lightly oil your bowl and put the dough in (by now it should be all in one piece and a bit elastic), and cover with a damp tea towel and put it in a sunny spot for an hour.

 It will start this size:

And end up about double the size:

Now “knock it back” or lightly knead again. I find putting it on the board and punching it a few times to knock a load of the air out of it is a good start. You don’t need to mess around with it for anywhere near as long as before. Then either shape it into loaves or rolls. I decided to go for rolls this time. 

Put on some oiled trays and leave for another hour. (I'm not bothered that they're a bit rustic. They're for dipping in soup)

They should double in size again.

Preheat the oven at 210/220 degrees and then pop them in.  Loaves will take longer than rolls, these were ready in about 25 – 30 minutes.

Test them by knocking on the bottom, they should sound hollow.

Put on a wire rack to cool. I don’t have a wire rack, I do have an oven shelf on a chopping board.

And they’re good to go! I will be making some soup later; just mushroom, so ridiculously easy.  If anyone’s bothered just ask, and I’ll put up that recipe too.

So this week, I will be having mushroom soup with rosemary and olive bread, yum!

In other news, I love this cookery programme and I love Grace Dent’s TV reviews, so I strongly recommend you watch The Good Cook on iPlayer, and read this review:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jul/23/the-good-cook-grace-dent-tv-od?CMP=twt_gu

Pasta adventure

I love pasta. I love most forms of carbs, but I almost never get sick of pasta. Even after being a student for five years and eating it at least twice a week. It’s a comfort food, a hangover cure, and so versatile it can be anything.

Right. Got that out of my system.

Despite this, I have never made my own, so today’s the day. My lovely sister and her husband gave me a pasta machine for Christmas, so I’ve been rather lax at trying it out.

I decided to follow Jamie Oliver’s recipe for the actual pasta, and make my own filling and sauce. I don’t use cookbooks often, but I do have a copy of The Naked Chef. He looks about twelve on the front, so God knows how long I’ve had it, and it might be the first time I’ve followed a recipe from it.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/a-basic-recipe-for-fresh-egg-pasta

(one tip I would say for this, he suggests using either a bowl or a clean board. I used a board and nearly made a right mess. Use a bowl.)

While the pasta dough was resting in the fridge, I started on the filling (spinach and ricotta) and the “sauce” which is a sort of pesto.

I put some spinach on to steam: it takes very little water and no time at all. As soon as it was done I left it in a sieve to drain and cool while I got to work on the pesto.

I then toasted some pine nuts. It always bothers me how expensive pine nuts are, but nevermind. I burnt the first batch, and had to redo them because I wasn’t paying enough attention, so made it even more expensive for myself.

Then I shoved a couple of cloves of garlic, a load of olive oil, and the juice of half a lemon in a food processor with as much basil and parsley as I could fit. 

Pulse it/blitz it until it looks like this:

Normal pesto would have the pine nuts in and some parmesan I think, but I just sort of fancied doing it like this.

Then I made a salad and a dressing. Any salad stuff you’ve got to use up.

The dressing was just olive oil, salt and pepper and some lemon juice, shaken up in an old jam jar. (or mustard jar in this case.) Don’t dress the salad till just before serving.

Chop up the cooked spinach, add a pot (or two) of ricotta, some grated nutmeg, some black pepper and some salt (if you didn’t salt the spinach when cooking it). 

Then I rolled. And rolled, and rolled and rolled. It’s quite labour intensive making pasta isn’t it? 

Then I spooned out the ricotta mixture, used water to seal round the edges and carefully pressed down the edges, trying to get all the air out of the middle. I ended up with loads of ricotta mixture leftover, I’d appreciate suggestions for what to do with it!

 Then boil some salted water in a massive pan. Add the ravioli and cook for a few minutes, then drain carefully and assemble! 

Grate some parmesan over the top, or if you’re too cheap to buy parmesan, grana padano. (it’s a bit cheaper, but not quite so good).

I think it worked out pretty good, but perhaps just a touch too thick. Lesson to learn: roll the pasta to the thickness you THINK you need, then roll it at least one notch thinner.

Whilst making this I listened to: 6Music. Liked the montage of clips of Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron and the Jam’s “News of the World.”

Three course extravaganza.

I have spent all weekend eating. Or that’s what it feels like. Amazing. Last night we had an extremely good value Moroccan meal at Sami’s in Chapel Allerton; £12 for three courses. Ridiculous. It’s a bit basic but still tasty, and very, very cheap! (and bring your own booze, happy days)

Today I was cooking as, not only was it Father’s Day, but yesterday was my Mum’s birthday. So I decided to make something a little bit special. However, I was also conscious that it’s Sunday night, so it couldn’t be too heavy. The menu went like this:

Grilled asparagus and halloumi starter; Cod with creamy leeks and peas, pancetta and Jersey new potatoes; then chocolate brownies with raspberries and vanilla ice cream.

The key is to be prepared… I managed to spend the whole day reading papers and hanging out with my folks then pull it all together.

Yesterday I made brownies according to this recipe: My earlier blog with a brownie recipe

Then this morning I made a dressing for the asparagus starter, by blending together 6 olives, the juice of half a lemon, some olive oil and some salt and pepper.  Pop it in a jam jar, so that later you can just give it a shake and it’s good to go.

For the starter I coated the asparagus in a little olive oil and cut the halloumi into big chunks. Then shove it all on the griddle pan. 

Stack a few asparagus spears, with a big chunk of griddled halloumi on top, then a handful of rocket. Drizzle over some dressing. 

In advance I griddled the pancetta until it was crispy and part cooked the leeks and peas. Whilst preparing the starter I got the potatoes on. 

I’m a bit gutted, I forgot to take a picture of the potatoes, and after they were cooked I tossed them in some butter with chopped parsley and chives (from my garden!) They were lovely.

In defence of the use of cod, my Dad offered to get something for the meal and I went to two supermarkets and was so unimpressed by the selection I asked him to get the fish. I asked for a more sustainable alternative, but the fishmonger convinced him that line caught North Atlantic cod is sometimes ok. And according to http://www.fishfight.net/ that’s true, so I went with it.

After the starter it was a case of reheating the leeks and peas whilst the cod was pan frying over a high heat. I added lemon juice and a touch of cream to the veg as well as plenty of black pepper.

Then stack them up too. Toss the pancetta in a hot frying pan to reheat a little bit and put a bit on top. Yum.

I'm really annoyed I didn't notice the two runaway peas when I took this picture - they've ruined the presentation!

Then for pud I just zapped the brownies in the microwave for a minute, then served with fresh Scottish raspberries, and some nice vanilla ice cream. 

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: Fleet Foxes. 

Apologies if this is full of mistakes; quite hastily written as I'm shattered! Ready for an early night before work tomorrow. Rock. And. Roll.

One for the hippies and veggies: Potato and Chickpea curry

It’s the weekend before payday, which means I’m putting off buying nice ingredients and I’m determined to use up whatever I’ve got in the fridge/cupboards. Thankfully, you can make a decent curry out of just about anything, and it’s perfect for using up veg.

So I had: a few potatoes, some green beans, half a pepper. Thankfully, we almost always have garlic and ginger in. A quick raid of the tin cupboard and the freezer and we’re sorted.

The first thing is the spices; we have a cupboard full of them (largely thanks to Joe going on a spice buying spree) but if you want to cheat, I won’t hold it against you. Every spice cupboard should have cumin, because it’s ace and brightens up a stir fry or a curry (or a boring lentil soup) no end. Every spice cupboard should also have a decent curry powder as a massive cheat, and some chilli flakes for times like this when you’ve run out of fresh chilli.

First toast some mustard seeds, fennel seeds, cumin seeds and the inside of a couple of cardamom pods until the mustard seeds started popping. Just put them in a dry pan over the heat for a bit. (skip this if you’re not doing the whole individual spice thing) Then grind them up in a pestle and mortar.

Fry a sliced onion in a little vegetable oil, then add the ground up spices along with some turmeric, ground coriander, garam masala, and more or less any other suitable curry-ish spices. 

Blitz up a couple of cloves of garlic, and a decent chunk of ginger in your mini-food processor and then add this and a good pinch of chilli flakes. 

Add your chopped potatoes and veg. Give it a good stir so that everything is coated in spices.

I’ve mentioned before my issues with the price of coconut milk, so this time I tried coconut cream, which came in a big block. It looks slightly odd at first, but it melts down pretty quickly. Add half a block, and your tin of chickpeas. Then top it up with hot water, it should be nearly covered, and allow it to bubble away to cook the potatoes.

Put on your rice, you’re nearly done. (I always have brown rice, as I prefer the taste, so it takes a while to cook)

As ever with cooking, taste it as you go along. It may need a touch of sugar if it’s too spicy and you want to calm it down, and I added plenty of salt and pepper.

I always have spinach in the freezer as it’s really handy, and I love spinach in a curry, so I added some of this towards the end of the cooking. Done and done! Healthy, tasty and, most importantly, really cheap.

This weeks soup: Turkish lentil. I had this in Istanbul, loved it so came home and worked out how to make it. It involves paprika, lemon juice, bulgur wheat (I'm a little obsessed with this at the moment) and mint. Cheap and very tasty.

Fancy barbecue in the rain

When I originally decided I wanted to have a barbecue, the forecast was much nicer. As soon as I’ve decided on something I’m going to cook, I tend to think about it a lot and formulate a plan. So when the weather looked fairly rubbish this weekend, I had planned too much to change my mind.

As well as this, my parents had given us a barbecue ages ago and I’ve been itching to use it. I put it all together this morning, and only had a few bits leftover when I’d finished!

Now there is no need for a barbecue to be like this, last time we had one we just had burgers, but I spent all today doing boring jobs and was ready to hang out in the kitchen for a while.  Plus, inspired by our trip to Turkey I had an urge to cook meat on sticks.

So the menu is: Halloumi kebabs, lamb and aubergine kebabs, tabbouleh, and watercress and carrot salad. Poncy, eh?

First, prep the lamb. Lamb is really expensive at the moment, my butcher actually apologised for the price! But like I said, my heart was set on it, and it was a one off. I made a little rub for the cubed lamb, with pepper, cumin, paprika, chilli flakes and salt, mushed up in a pestle and mortar. You don’t need loads of it.

Throw it in a freezer bag and put in the lamb. Tie the top and give it all a squidge round so all the lamb gets some of the coating. Leave this out of the fridge to get the flavour into the meat, for at least half an hour.

Next I made the halloumi kebabs by chopping into big chunks the cheese, some courgette and some peppers. I skewered all this with a little bit of basil on the cheese, than drizzled it with a bit of olive oil and black pepper.

The irony is, after spending a small fortune on the lamb, we both actually preferred the halloumi. I think that’s probably just because halloumi is absolutely amazing stuff.

Then I made the tabouleh (out of interest, how do you pronounce this, TAB-ouleh? Tab-OU-leh?) Cook bulgur wheat according to the packet instructions (I think it varies slightly depending on the packet)

I would normally say that life’s too short to peel tomatoes unless they’re going in a sauce so you really need to get rid of the skin. However, today I was quite happy listening to music and pottering in the kitchen, so I though I may as well. Slightly score the skin, then pour over boiling water. Leave it a few minutes, but no more or they’ll start cooking. Then run under cold water. The skin should come off really easily. Then pull out the stalks and the seeds and finely chop.  

Finely chop red onion, mint and parsley, then mix it all together with the cooled bulgur wheat. Add the juice of at LEAST half a lemon, a really good slosh of olive oil and some salt and pepper. 

Once the lambs been sitting in the rub for a while it’s good to go. Put it on some skewers with some big chunks of aubergine and rub a little oil on to help prevent it sticking.

The watercress salad is just loads of chopped up salad stuff with some grated carrot, and a quick balsamic dressing. (one part balsamic to two parts olive oil and a little salt and pepper). Ours had watercress, cucumber, celery, spring onion and a handful of mixed seeds. Because I’m a hippy.

I also threw some asparagus on there, because I find it completely impossible to see half price asparagus at this time of year without buying it. Just toss it in a little olive oil and salt and pepper, it only takes 5 – 10 minutes on the barbecue so put it on last.

Prep done! A couple of top tips for barbecuing I heard on Woman’s Hour the other day (so rock and roll):

- Make sure all the coals have gone grey and there are no flames.

- Make sure the meat is at room temperature; it stops it from being too tough when it gets the shock of going on the heat.

- Don’t turn things too much, as you risk losing a lot of the juices which keep the meat moist.

My own tip is just to work out how long things need so you put it on in the right order, and not play with it too much. Our new barbecue has a lid, which is really handy for more even cooking.

So for this I put the lamb on first. They don’t take that long, about 5 – 10 minutes on each side. Then the halloumi, and finally the asparagus.

Frankly, yum!