ramtops

We bought some chicken breasts from our fabulous butcher up t’road, wrapped them individually, and froze them. And then fetched one out at the weekend to make a stir fry and, readers, it was *huge*. Well, huge to us, because we don’t eat much meat. So we used half in the stir fry, and the other half was confined to the fridge for another day.

Regular readers will know that Tuesday night is pasta night, so last night I chopped up the remaining chicken into small pieces and fried it off in some olive oil. Added four wizened mushrooms, half a wrinkly red pepper, and a chopped onion (£1.80 for 4kgs from the Turkish shop). Added about 30g of Danish blue and stirred it round till it had melted, and a good grinding of black pepper.

Served over spaghetti – delicious.  It’s worth keeping a chunk of blue cheese in the fridge, as it livens up pasta sauces, and makes great cheese scones (although you get quite sticky making them).

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

(I said it was a busy weekend).

The last of last weekend’s roast chicken was languishing in a bowl in the fridge, and the weather forecast was Not Nice. So we decided that A Pie was called for.

Due to the unexpected trip to Lakeland, I started the filling in the tiny slow cooker before I went out. In went two chopped rashers of back bacon, about 30g of finely diced chorizo (oh, chorizo, how I love thee), a chopped leek, and about half a punnet of tired chestnut mushrooms. A small glug of olive oil, a grate of black pepper, some fresh thyme, and I set it on low, and went to Beverley. I’m getting so much use out of that thing, I just love it. I want a medium slow cooker now, but I really don’t think I have anywhere to keep it :(

There was a gorgeous smell when we returned! Once the cake baking marathon was over, I transferred the mix to a deep frying pan, added the chicken and warmed it through. And then, while warding off the Senior Cats, I added about two or three tablespoons of plain flour and cooked that off, and then just enough milk to make a sauce. No idea how much, just until it was right.

Pete manfully rolled out the puff pastry (which came from the freezer – I’m not that daft), and we ate it with mashed swede and carrot, and very nice it was too. And we were so hungry I forgot to photograph it, but I will do so when we have reheated the other half for tomorrow’s supper.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We had a chicken stir fry a couple of days ago; when I got the chicken out of the freezer, I discovered there were two breasts melded together. One went on the stir fry, and one was left.  On Sunday, I made a quick cheesecake, as the friend coming for supper had requested same. So there was a tub of ricotta, and half a lemon, left over from that.

Diced up the chicken, and fried it off in a very little olive oil. added three cloves of garlic, some sliced chestnut mushrooms, and a chopped red onion. Stirred it about for three minutes or so, then added the lemon juice, and a small slug of white wine from an open bottle in the fridge. We seem to be slightly overrun with white wine – no idea why, because we don’t buy or drink white.  I think people bring it, and then decide they like the red on offer better!

Put a lid on the pan, and let it simmer down while the fusilli cooked. At the end, stirred in about half a tub of ricotta and some torn basil leaves. 

About 210 calories, plus pasta. 

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I was in Tesco last Saturday – I don’t like Tesco one bit, but they were the cheapest place to buy a couple of slimline water butts, which we wanted for the garden, and so I whizzed round and bought a few bits while I was there.

They had a special offer on chicken legs – 3 packs of four legs for a tenner. Now, I know it won’t be great chicken, but times are hard, and there was space in the freezer, so I swallowed my principles and bought some.

I turned them into Madhur Jaffrey’s lemon and coriander chicken, one of our very favourite things.  With the additional of a bunch of coriander from our local Indian grocer (65p) and a couple of lemons which would have been, what – 80p?, and a few pence worth of spices, we made 14 portions of Indian chicken for under 12 quid. Seems OK to me.

The recipe link I’ve given you is just a guideline as always. We up the garlic quotient a far bit, use more spices, and this time used dried chilli flakes, as we had no fresh ones in. I do it in the slow cooker too, which works a treat. I do generally make this dish with chicken wings, but I’m here to tell you that legs work just as well.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I’m desperately trying to make some space in the freezer for the festering season, and also the weather here is utterly vile, so I had a bit of a Reactive day yesterday.

Chicken Pudding

I had a rather small tub of chicken pie filling – chicken left over from a roast, with bacon and veg in a white sauce. It wasn’t really enough for a respectable pie. So I chopped up a big leek, and sautéd it down in some olive oil. Half the leek went into the soup pot (more on that later) and the other half to bulk up the pie filling.

Then I made a suet crust with 6oz wholemeal flour, a bit of baking powder, 3oz of low fat veg suet (I know, I know, but it’s healthier), and some water. Lined a greased bowl with 2/3rds of it, popped in the filling, rolled the rest out to a lid. Topped with a piece of folded tinfoil, secured with a rubber band, courtesy of the postman, and bunged it in the slow cooker for 5 hours. We ate it accompanied with buttery sprouts and a really, honestly, tiny number of potatoes roasted in duck fat. And there’s half a pud left for later this week!

Plum and wizened apple crumble

I had a punnet of plums to use up, and three very wrinkled apples from the fruit bowl; they weren’t particularly nice apples to eat, but I couldn’t bear to just chuck them. I cut the plums in half, and laid them flat in a shallow pan; sprinkled them with some five spice powder, added half an inch or so of cold water, and then – in a spirit of experimentation – a tablespoon of Amaretto liqueur. These plums were quite hard, so it took about 12 minutes to soften them, turning them occasionally, and while they were cooking, I chopped the apples into fairly small dice. I did core them, but peeling them seemed like too much hard work.

I transferred the plums to an ovenproof dish, then bunged the apple into the liquor and softened it over a fairly high heat, so that the liquid reduced. Poured the resultant gloop over the plums.

Crumble topping was standard for this household – 2 parts wholemeal flour, 1 part porridge oats, 1 part sugar, 1 part marg. Blitz in the Magimix, pour on top of the fruit, pat it down. Bake at 180˚ for about 45 minutes. Serve with double cream. This pud will do us three evenings, as we try not to eat too much sweet stuff.

Meat loaf

We haven’t had a meat loaf for ages, and it’s a really nice thing to eat on a cold winter evening (it’s -5˚ here in Hull as I type, and it’s only just 4 p.m.!).

I’m not really a purist about these things, I just bung in what I have. So there was a pack of sausage meat, seasoned with sage and onion, that I got from Fields of Anlaby when I collected the goose last Christmas (!), a pack of pork mince, and a pack of beef mince. Probably about 700g in all. I found a pack of stuffing mix in the pantry, which bore a legend of “best before Oct 07″ (oh dear). We opened it, and sniffed it, and it seemed OK, so I made it up with boiling water.

Pete finely chopped a couple of shallots, and then manfully mixed the meats and the stuffing by squidging with his (clean) hands, and he bunged in some tomato ketchup and some Lea and Perrins Worcester sauce. We pressed the mixture into two silicon loaf “tins”, put them in a bain marie, and baked at gas 4 for about an hour.

I left them overnight to cool right down, and today I turned them out of the silicone, and cut each one into three – that 700g of meat has made 12 portions; they don’t look big, but they’re solid meat.

Wrapped the portions in tin foil, and put them in the freezer (well, five of them – we’ll eat one tonight, probably). They can come out, and be cooked in the foil for a nice quick supper. Eat with a nice gravy, or even baked beans if you’re in a rush – who needs supermarket ready meals?!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

A friend of mine told me he “roasted” a whole chicken in the slow cooker, and I didn’t think it would work. But I was prepared to give it a whirl, so I bought a free range chickie! for the purpose.

Did my usual trick with a chicken, of cutting a lemon in half, putting one half inside the bird, and squeezing the other half over it. Rubbed the chicken’s skin with olive oil, seasoned it, put it in the slow cooker and switched it on, on high.

Then left it completely alone for about 8 hours. It was gorgeous, and it left some very nice chickeny juices in the bottom of the dish. We’ll be doing that again!

We ate it with lots of steamed buttery cabbage, and some carrots with star anise, and Pete had some potatoes too.

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I bought a pound of diced chicken last Friday, and soaked and boiled some chickpeas, with the full intention of making a tagine with them on Sunday. Didn’t get to it, due to an unfortunate cycling incident (OK, I fell off), so I stole 30 minutes yesterday morning to make it.

Browned the chicken pieces in olive oil, and put them in the slow cooker. Cut two peppers (one red, one yellow) into chunks, and fried them off until they were just starting to blacken at the corners, added them to the cooker. Hurled in a sliced courgette which was getting a bit tired, a lemon cut into 8, salt, pepper.

Cut a red onion into chunks, and chopped four cloves of garlic, fried them off, added some ras el hanout to the pan and cooked it for a few seconds. Rummaged in fridge for ideas, and found a jar of tomato and pepper relish, so bunged in a couple of tablespoons’ worth, then a squirt of honey and some water. Brought all that to a simmer, hurled it into the slow cooker with the chickpeas, switched on.

The smell drove us demented all afternoon, and we ate some for supper with rice, and chopped coriander sprinkled over the top.

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Regular readers will know that our regular fare is Indian, middle Eastern, Italian, but rarely, very rarely, something that involves potatoes and veg and so forth.

But we had a dying basil plant and half a block of feta that needed using up, and some chicken breasts in the freezer, and Jersey Royals, and English asparagus, so some combination was called for.

I chopped the feta into small cubes, and bunged it in a bowl with a finely chopped shallow and clove of garlic, some black pepper, some chopped basil, lemon juice, and olive oil. Cut a pocket into the chicken breasts, and bunged as much of the mix in as I could – there was far too much stuffing, of course.  I tied the chicken breasts round with string, put them in an ovenproof dish, and scattered the rest of the feta mix over the top.  Into the oven at gas mark 5 for 20 minutes, then turned it up to 6 for another ten.

Boiled the potatoes, steamed the asparagus on the top.  Utterly lovely.

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We had a load of cold cooked chicken left over from a roast, some rather tired coriander leaves, a wizened yellow pepper, so time for one of our favourites.

Roughly chopped two onions, several cloves of garlic and the yellow pepper, and sauteéd them off in some olive oil. Added some chopped chorizo and let it cook down, and then added some cumin seeds. Hurled in the chicken, a load of chickpeas (which I’d soaked and boiled, but tinned is fine).

Made a stock of Marigold bouillon powder (no home should be without it) and a teaspoon or so of arrowroot to thicken it. Squeezed in the juice of a lemon, and some salt and pepper.  It looked a bit unbalanced, so I bunged in half a jar of roasted yellow peppers, sliced thinly. Left to cook for about half an hour with a lid on, then added the chopped coriander and cooked for another ten minutes.

Delicious!

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Our local Co-Op had special offers on chicken last week – two packs of diced breast for a fiver, and the same for whole breast.  I picked up two packs of each and stowed them in the freezer, not least because I’m trying to cut down my red meat consumption.

There was also a head of fennel in the fridge; I love fennel, but tend to forget about it and just lob it in the soup, so I wanted to actually, you know, make something with it deliberately.

In the morning, I took half of one pack of diced chicken – it was in a plastic tray divided into two, so that was simple, and I stuck the other half into a poly bag and replaced it in the freezer.

This evening, I cut the chicken into slightly smaller chunks, and browned it in some olive oil.  Put it in a brown bowl, then added sliced fennel and a chopped red onion to tha pan.  Sauted the veg until soft, then added a spoonful of Dijon mustard and stirred it round.  Added a knob of butter to the pan, and when melted, returned the chicken, and added about a wineglass full of cider, and some seasoning.

Stuck a lid on the pan, and left it for about 12 minutes, then took the lid off and reduced the liquor down, finally adding a little double cream.  We ate this with pasta – my share of that was about 35g, which ain’t too bad.

No idea of the calorific value of the rest of the meal, but as Pete and I went for a 6 mile walk this morning, I reckon I’ve earned it :)

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.