Quick Chicken Skewer Wraps

Oops! I’ll admit that I totally forgot to prep a post for today! I spent the weekend over in Manchester visiting my sister and went to the Cake and Bake Show on Sunday, which has thrown me off my usual schedule somewhat! It’s nice to get away and do something different though isn’t it?

This recipe for quick chicken skewers should stand anyone in good stead for a speedy last minute dinner. Ideally you want to leave the skewers to marinate for as long as possible. If that’s a few hours, great, if you only have a few minutes that’ll do just fine. Flexibility is the objective here. I like to make these when I’m after a meal that’s light yet packed with flavour. The fact that they’re so quick to make is another point in their favour and, even better, any leftovers are just as good cold for lunch the next day. Any variation from my usual ham sandwich is always welcome!


Serves 4

4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp dried coriander
1 tbsp lime juice
tortilla wraps, salad and natural yogurt to serve

- Slice the chicken thighs into 3 long strips each.
- Thread the strips of chicken onto bamboo or metal skewers.
- Place in a dish and scatter over the chilli flakes and coriander then sprinkle over the lime juice.
- Turn to coat evenly.
- Leave to marinate for as long as you can spare.
- Heat a grill then cook for about 5 minutes, turn then cook for about another 3 minutes.
- Serve in tortilla wraps with plenty of fresh salad and drizzle with yogurt. If I’ve the time I like to chop a little red onion and fresh garlic into my yogurt and leave it to marinate for as long as the chicken gets. It adds another layer of flavour with almost no effort on my part, which is always good!

Slow Cooker Chocolate Chilli

I love chilli. It’s such a comfort food. Especially when you get to load it up with cheese! Some weeks I know going in that work is going to kick my ass. So I try to be prepared. If I make a vat of chilli at the beginning of the week I know I have a home cooked meal ready and waiting for me whenever I make it home. The red meat is going to help me get through and give me a much needed iron boost and the veggies that are hidden in there mean that I’m not missing out on too many vitamins. All in all this chilli recipe is a real lifesaver. I love this mix of spices, if you don’t have smoked paprika in your arsenal I highly recommend it, it really adds an edge to the dishes you use it in. The chocolate is a nice little addition too, subtle but very worth it!

750g beef mince
1 onion, chopped
1 large pepper, finely chopped (I only used green to use the damned thing up! Nigella is right, they’re simply unripe!)
2 sticks celery, finely sliced
1 beef stock cube, crumbled
2 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp smokey paprika
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2x400g tins chopped tomatoes
5tbsp tomato purée
1tbsp granulated sugar
50g dark chocolate, broken into chunks
400g tin red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

- I love slow cooking because the directions basically boil down to this: Throw everything but the kidney beans in a slow cooker, give it a stir and then put the lid on and leave overnight/through the day. 8 hours is what you’re aiming for.
- When you’re ready to eat it you add the kidney beans and leave for another 30 minutes. If you left it to cook overnight and switched it off during the day you can put it back on high with the kidney beans in there until it heats through.
- Serve with rice or nachos, creme fraiche and cheese!

Dyed Eggs

A little bit of a late post here, but 12 hours late is better than never I think! I thought I’d do a post in anticipation of Easter Weekend being almost upon us and share the secret of fabulous brightly dyed eggs!

These are simply hard boiled eggs that have been dyed with basic liquid food colourings. Since I know I’m not alone in having made the switch to gel colours for baking but still having a stash of liquid colours in the cupboard this is an ideal way to use them in a fun project.


I used to love Easter Morning back home. My mum… I mean, the Easter Bunny…used to prepare an Easter egg hunt all around the house and garden and my sister and I would chase around trying to gather the most eggs. Not that it mattered in the end, they were always divided absolutely equally once we’d finished!


Mum would always do a selection of dyed hard boiled eggs in amongst the chocolate and it was always so exciting how an ordinary, boring egg could be transformed into a jewel coloured wonder!


The trick is ever such a simple one: Vinegar!

You take your eggs and put them in bowls of water each with a splash of vinegar and your food colour of choice in. The longer you leave them to soak the brighter and more vibrant your eggs will be. If you were to start with paler eggs and leave them for only a short time you would get more pastel colours. But if you want the bright, bold colours you see here then all you need to do is soak them for longer. It’s easy to check how your eggs are doing, all you do is fish them out and see how deep the colour is. If you want more colour, simply pop them back in for longer! Easy!

Mushroom Barley Risotto

This dish may not look much, I mean, it is a mushroom risotto and mushroom risottos are boring looking. However, the idea of doing a barley risotto or ‘orzotto’ has been doing the rounds a fair bit and I was tempted to give it a go for the sake of a little variety and a few fewer calories! I generally favour an oven risotto I think that they’re simpler and with equally good results being achieved compared to cooking on the hob with so much less time invested on your behalf!

Sadly, pearl barley does not agree with my delicate constitution at all! So unfortunately I won’t be cooking it again, despite the fact that it is quite delicious. The barley adds an almost nutty flavour along with the chestnut mushrooms and instead of having a completely soft consistency like a risotto rice the barley has more of a bite to it. It’s sort of al dente. This is simple to cook you just pop everything in the pan and then pop it in the oven.

Serves 4

1 small onion, diced
1 garlic clove , finely chopped
300g pearl barley
250ml white wine
400g chestnut mushrooms, chopped
1 tbsp thyme (fresh or dried)
1l hot chicken stock
3 tbsp Parmesan, grated

- Heat the oven to gas mark 4/180C
- Heat splash of oil and a small knob of butter in large casserole dish
- Add onion, garlic and a pinch of
salt and cook a few minutes until the onion is starting to soften.
- Add the pearl barley and stir well
- Then add the white wine and cook for one minute until the white wine is absorbed
- Add the mushrooms and the thyme and cook for a few minutes until the mushrooms are just starting to cook
- Season well With salt and pepper
- Add the stock and stir until everything is well distributed
- Put the casserole lid on and place in the oven to cook for further a 40 minutes
– Once it has cooked remove from the oven and stir through a knob of butter and the grated Parmesan.
- Serve with grated Parmesan and may be a sprinkling of parsley if you’d like an extra splash of colour.

Chocolate Rapeseed Oil Cake

This Chocolate Rapeseed Oil Cake recipe was the result of a Clandestine Cake Club challenge.  The theme was Blind Date.  You had to bake a cake you had never baked or tasted before.  Now, this was a challenge in a lot of ways.  First, if I haven’t tasted a cake before it’s because I don’t think I’m going to like it.  Why would I bake something I won’t like?  Second, I like to have something reliable when baking for others.  I want to know how the recipe is going to work and what tweaks I might need to make to have something I’ll be proud of.  With this challenge I really was flying blind!

I hit upon Nigella’s Chocolate Olive Oil Cake because she happend to have tweeted about it around that time.  I like chocolate but I had never tasted an olive oil based cake before.  However, there was the small issue that I don’t like olives.  I use olive oil all the time in cooking where I’ll never taste the oliveyness but I felt that this was one of those times where it would make a difference.  I happened to have a bottle of Yorkshire Rapeseed Oil just begging to be used.  I love the nutty flavour of rapeseed oil, it’s just gorgeous, and I thought this would compliment the almonds nicely.  I was right, it gives a gorgeous nutty flavour and really gives another dimension to the cake.  I’m really keen on trying to use this oil in more cooking in the future.  I think it has a lot of potential!

The end result is a gorgeous nutty, moist, brownie like cake which would be a perfect dinner party dessert cake.  (Imagine it piled up with raspberries or other summer fruits and served with lashings of whipped cream if you will!)  However, it also held its own as a simple cake without any adornment.  The rich chocolateyness of the cake means it really doesn’t need any help to be delicious and the decadent squidgy texture will certainly have you coming back for more!

Serves 16

50g cocoa powder
125ml boiling water
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g ground almonds
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
150ml rapeseed oil (Yorkshire if you please!)
200g golden caster sugar
3 eggs

- Heat the oven to gas mark 5/190C and grease and line a 23cm springform cake tin.
- Put the cocoa powder in a mug then pour over the boiling water and the vanilla.  Mix together until you get a delicious looking chocolaty paste (don’t taste it, it’ll be gross!) Leave to cool while you do the rest.
- Mix the almonds, salt and bicarb together in a small bowl.
- In a large mixing bowl combine the eggs, sugar and rapeseed oil.
- Use a handheld electric whisk to beat the sugar, eggs and oil until plae and thick.
- Add the cocoa paste to this mixture and beat in.
- Add the almond mixture and gently fold in until everything is totally combined.
- Pour the mixture intot he prepared tin and bake int he centre of the oven for 45-50 minutes.  It should look just set int he middle and a skewer will come out clean when it is cooked.
- Allow it to cook for 10 minutes in the tin then run a sharp knife (I actually always use a thin bone handled knife for this) round the edge fo the cake to loosen it.  Then unspring your tin and either leave to cool completely or serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

 

 

Simple Chicken Stew

I was in the mood for some good old fashioned simple comfort food.   This winter has been an odd one, veering from oddly mild to bitterly cold in the blink of an eye.  I needed something that would warm me up from the inside out but at the same time I didn’t want anything too heavy and fat laden.  A girl has to compensate for eating an entire tub of Ben and Jerrys on occasion, no?

This Simple Chicken Stew hit the spot perfectly.  There’s nothing fussy here, either in the preparation or in the flavours.  This lack of adornment really lets the flavours stand on their own and boy do they shine.  There really is something so very deeply satisfying about the combination of chicken and vegetables.  It’s been a classic for centuries and while you can do all sorts of fancy variations there is absolutley no need to.  This is food that doesn’t just feed the body, it nourishes the soul!  I defy you to eat this and not come away satisfied and replete.

Serves 2

2 chicken drumsticks (with bone and skin)
2 chicken thighs (with bone and skin)
1 carrot, sliced
1 leek, sliced
1 small onion, quartered
2 stalks celery, sliced
1/4 swede, chopped into ~1cm cubes (3 medium sized turnips or 2 potatoes work well here too)
1 bay leaf
5 peppercorns
salt and pepper to taste
gnocchi to serve (a nice halfway house between potatoes and pasta I think!)

- Heat the oven to gas mark 5 and boil a kettle.
- Heat a splash of oil in a casserole pan on the hob.
- Add the chicken and brown lightly.
- Add all of your vegetables and herbs.
- Pour over enough hot water to cover everything.
- Give it a little bit of a stir and season well then pop the lid on and pop it in the oven for 45 minutes.
-  Remove from the oven and check that it’s piping hot throguhout.
- Get your gnocchi cooked while your stew is cooling a little.  No one likes a burnt mouth!

Notes:
You can use just about any winter veg that you like here, don’t feel the need to stick to what I’ve said.
If you like a thicker sauce you can add a little cornflour mixed with a splash of cold water at the end and simmer until it thickens.  Alternatively, you can dust the chicken in corn flour before cooking.  I prefer the lighter stock but I know that it’s a matter of personal taste!

Banana Maple Pecan Pancakes

My pancake day creation! I had two over ripe bananas left over from making banana muffins and they were praying on my mind. Then Shrove Tuesday rolled around and I had a pancake epiphany… Banana pancakes!

Then I started to mull it over more. Banana was good but what could make it better, Nutella? Well, yes, but what if I could make it even more awesome? My mind supplied pecans and then immediately jumped to my favourite Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavour, The Vermonster! Maple, pecan, caramel, yum! I wanted to bring the two together and so, Banana Maple Pecan Pancakes were born.

Makes 6

2 over ripe bananas
100ml milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
125g self raising flour
pinch of salt
1 tbsp maple syrup
50g pecans, chopped

- Get a pancake pan or shallow frying pan heating on the hob to a medium high heat.
- Take a jug and mash your bananas up with a fork.
- Add all of the ingredients apart from the pecans and mix well so you have a smooth batter.
- Grease your pan with butter.
- Pour 1/6th of the batter out for each pancake. The size of your pan will dictate how many you can cook at once. They should be about the size of a saucer.
- Scatter the pecans over the wet batter.
- When bubbles rise to the surface of your batter it’s time to flip your pancake.
- Continue to cook the pancake for another minute then remove from he pan and continue with the rest of the batter.
- Keep the cooked pancakes warm while you’re cooking the rest.
- Serve with lashings of maple syrup and, if you have it, I highly recommend Vermonster Ben and Jerry’s ice cream to finish it off!

Nigella’s Italian Banana Bread Muffins With Nutella

I’ve been working my way through Nigellissima, Nigella Lawson’s latest offering. One of the recipes people kept mentioning was the Italian Banana Bread so I thought I’d give it a go. Now, first off, the ‘Italian’ aspect is that there’s espresso in there. I have to admit I didn’t think that the espresso necessarily added that much to it. However, it is a gorgeous banana bread! Moist, springy and flavoursome.

The notes said that it would make 12 muffins, which it did, just. I wanted these for breakfasts and for me breakfast means portable. I also decided that, true to form, banana bread on its own was delicious but I always want some chocolate in there. My favourite trick with muffins is to add a teaspoon of Nutella to the middle for a gorgeous gooey chocolaty centre so that’s exactly what I did!

Makes 12

150ml rapeseed oil
3 very ripe medium bananas (I mean BLACK!)
2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
2 eggs
150g golden caster sugar
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 tsp instant espresso powder
1/2 jar Nutella

- Heat the oven to gas mark 6/200C.
- Put 12 paper cases in a 12 hole muffin tin.
- Take a large Pyrex jug or bowl and mash up the bananas with a fork along with the vanilla extract and salt.
- Beat in the oil. Keep mixing, it’ll happen!
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly between additions.
- In a small bowl mix the flour, bicarb and espresso powder together until they’re even combined.
- Mix the flour mixture into the banana mixture until all the floury bits disappear. There will still be banana chunks in there so you’re not aiming for totally smooth.
- Divide the batter evenly between the paper cases.
- Dollop a teaspoon of Nutella in the centre of each muffin.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until the muffins are set and a beautiful deep golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Coffee and Walnut Layer Cake

I made this cake back in November and I am sorry to say that it totally slipped my mind!  That is not to say that it’s not good.  I’m particularly proud of the Kalhua buttercream.  But life got in the way, as in inevitably does!  I’m going to try to have a bit of a catch up around these parts and get the drafts I’ve got littering the place behind the scenes sorted out.

I was attending a Clandestine Cake Club event and the theme was Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.  I knew how I wanted to decorate my cake, with the teaparty itself, but what to bake for the cake inside? Then it hit me!  What’s madder than a coffee cake at a tea party?  Well, probably something, but it seemed like a cute idea!

I love a coffee and walnut cake.  It is one of my absolute favourites but I hadn’t actually baked one myself.  I decided to go with a classic sponge cake and simply add walnuts and espresso into the mix.  It worked a treat!

I do have a confession though, when I first turned the cakes out of their tins I thought I’d had a complete cake failure and they were a disaster.  I thought they hadn’t risen enough so I started to whip up a new cake to salvage this disaster.  I stacked the layers up in order to clear the decks, which was when  realised.  The cake was perfectly tall enough, I had just forgotten that with 3 layers the individul layers would be much thinner!

Serves 12

150g butter
150g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp strong espresso
150g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g walnuts, roughly chopped
100g unsalted butter, softened
200g icing sugar
2 tbsp kalhua
500g ready to roll icing, 250g white, 250g coloured with paste colours as you like (You won’t use all of the icing up but I always find a use for icing)

- Heat the oven to gas mark 4/180C an grease three sandwich tins. I use silicone ones because they make turning out the cake so much easier.
- Put the butter and sugar in a food processor  and blitz until it is smooth and fluffy.
- Add the eggs one at a time down the funnel with the motor running.
- Add in the vanilla and espresso and continue to mix well.
- Add the flour, baking powder and walnuts and process until the flour and baking powder are totally worked in.  There should still be come chunky walnut bits.
- Divide the mixture evenly between your three cake tins.
- Bake for about 20-25 minutes.  Be careful to check them as they’re so thin.  If using more than one shelf in the oven it’s usually a good idea to switch them around half way through cooking so they bake more evenly.
- Remove from the oven and turn out to cook on wire racks.
- To make your buttercream mix the softened unsalted butter with the icing sugar and kalhua until smooth and creamy with no lumps left.
- To assemble your cake spread 1/3 of the buttercream on each of the layers as you stack it on your serving plate.
- Roll out the white icing into a circle and then drape this over the cake like a tablecloth.
- Use the remaining coloured icing to fashion teapots, teacups and plates.  I also used some other cake decorations to make ‘food’ for my teaparty.  One innovation I was particularly proud of was using popping candy for the tea in the teacups.  I knew that the moisture in the icing would dissolve the popping candy and leave a sticky tea coloured liquid behind.   Go nuts, use your imagination!

My Pre-Christmas Dinner 2012

I held my annual Pre-Christmas Dinner at the beginning of December.  My aim was to have it posted by Christmas… then the New Year… then within a month of the dinner… and now I’ve reached the point where all of these deadlines have gleefully sailed by and I have finally managed to sit down and “put pen to paper” as it were.

This year I had a theme to follow.  Chocolate!  With the new year I have finally left my boring office job behind and have made a very exciting move to work at York Cocoa House.  This is, in part at least, why I have been so busy and have not managed to post my special Chocolate Themed Pre-Christmas Dinner before now.

For a starter we had Christmas Tree Raviolli.  Green spinach pasta stuffed with a wild mushroom, ricotta and cocoa filling.  To make spinach pasta you follow the same method as for regular pasta but you start with 200g fresh spinach and rinse it with water.  Put it in a pan on a medium heat for 5-10 minutes until the spinach wilts.  Put the wilted spinach in a sieve over a bowl and leave to drain.  Give it a bit of a squidge with the back of a spoon to encourage it.  When it has drained you want to chop it into incredibly fine bits.  Just keep chopping at it.  You can practice your cheffy knife skills a bit!

Then you take your wilted spinach, 1 egg and 250g pasta flour and mix it into a smooth dough with your hands.  Roll the dough, either by hand or using a pasta maker if you haev one.  Then you cut out Chritmas tree shapes from the dough and put a teaspoon of filling in the middle of one of your shapes.  Brush water round the edge and press another shape on top of the first to seal in the filling.  Repeat as necessary until all of your dough and filling is used up.

The filling was essentially finely chopped mushrooms and shallots sauteed and repeatedly reduced down with white wine, mushroom stock and eventually ricotta stirred through with 2 tbsp 100% cocoa grated in.  I was freestyling rather so I don’t have an exact recipe!

For our main course we had Turkey Roulade.  I took a frozen butter basted turkey crown from Tescos and defrosted it, removed the skin and butterflied it.

I made a stuffing out of 400g italian sausage meat, 125g smoked bacon lardons, 100g bread crumbs, 75g dried cranberries, 3 tbsp cocoa nibs, 1 tbsp grated 100% cocoa, 1/2 tin of chopped chestnuts and 1 small egg.  Season well then mash it all together with your hands.

Spread it over the butterflied turkey crown.  Roll it up tightly.  Wrap the whole thing tightly with pancetta.  Roast the whole thing in an oven heated to gas mark 6 for 2 hours.   Slice and serve with seasonal vegetables of your choice.

For dessert we had Black Forest Mousses.  I made Nigella’s Chocolate Mousse but with Cherry Liqueur instead of Cointreau.  Topped with a lick of whipped cream and scattered with cocoa nibs I spooned Amarena Cherries into the bottom of martini glasses before filling them.

It was a lovely evening with my mum, dad, sister and her new boyfriend, and let’s not forget the dog! I’m having fun experimenting with chocolate in a number of different ways now that I have discovered a whole range of possibilities that I never knew exited before.  This meal was a nice little way to dip my toe into those possibilities and I look forward to experimenting some more!