Penne with Chilli, Aubergine and Feta

This is an adaptation of a recipe by Nigella Lawson.

I cannot predict which meals my family will love. I only made this so I could use up leftover things in the house. I had half a block of Feta cheese and some courgettes laying around so put this meal together. Apparently, my family loved this meal, so I suppose I should add it to my recipe blog.

• I sliced two green courgettes and diced an aubergine, drizzled them with olive oil and seasoned with salt and black pepper. I roasted them for around 15 mins until they started to go golden brown.
• I boiled water for penne in a big pan. 
• In my lovely red ceramic casserole dish / cooking pot, I fried some sliced chicken in olive oil with hot chilli powder. Then I set these aside. 
• In the same red pot, I put another glug of olive oil and fried an onion, with another sprinkle of chilli powder, until the onions got soft. Then I added a teaspoon of sugar, two cloves of garlic and I cooked these with the onion for a minute or two. I poured over enough red wine vinegar to moisten the mixture. The pan was hot so the vinegar boiled quickly. Then I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and water to the same volume as the can of tomatoes. I put the lid on, and let it all simmer together for about 15 minutes.
• When the pasta was ready I drained it but kept a little water aside. 
• I then added the roasted vegetables and the chicken to the pot with the pasta sauce and I crumbled in about 150g of feta cheese. I put the lid back on the pan for 2-4 minutes. 
• Then I added the pasta and the little pasta water that I had preserved to the sauce. 
• I served it in warm bowls with fresh basil leaves, black pepper and grated parmesan. 

My son ate two bowls of the pasta and mopped up the sauce with bread and butter. It's kind of amazing how much a teenage boy can eat and not gain weight! My husband and son really enjoyed it.

Chorizo Pork Belly and Chickpea Casserole, with roasted Jerusalem Artichokes

I haven't written in this blog for a long time, but I had to blog this one because husband and son thought it was so great. 

I had a new red casserole pot and everything that goes into seems to come out so delicious. This one was Chorizo, Belly Pork and Chickpea Casserole . I mostly followed the recipe with a few exceptions. I didn't have enough pork belly so I made it up with lardons and with a little extra choriza. I also added some fresh cherry tomatoes (seasoned with salt) and some sun dried tomatoes because I had some in. I didn't have golden caster sugar so just used normal caster sugar. I didn't have sherry vinegar, so I used red wine vinegar as suggested by the recipe. The result was very delicious. 

I served it with some roasted Jerusalem artichokes and Brussels sprouts. I made these by putting a good splash of olive oil, about 6 crushed garlic cloves, and thyme in a bowl. I tossed the Jerusalem artichokes and sprouts in the bowl and then roasted them at the same time as the casserole (though only for about 50mins). 

I didn't take a picture, but it was pretty darned good. 

Penne and Sausage Pasta Bake

Nights are drawing in so it's the time of year when hearty evening meals are especially satisfying. I made a sausage and Penne pasta bake from  this recipe, I'd never made a white sauce before but found it very easy to do and tasty. The white sauce really made it stand out from the other pasta bakes that I make, but obviously, it means a lot of calories. The sausage meat wasn't my favourite. I used "mild Italian brats" but I think it might work better with British sausages. It's certainly a good hearty dinner that's reasonably cheap. It also made plenty of leftovers for the next day.

Parsley Sauce

I have tried to make parsley sauce several times and have always cocked it up. I make it too bland and milky. With my beloved Nan passing away this week, I decided to try again.  Nanny always used to make ham and parsley sauce and it reminds me of her. This time, it actually worked it was very creamy and buttery and delicious. Rather than being pleased with my success, it made me sad. I don't suppose I would have been less sad if I would have cocked it up and imagined by nanny's disappointment, but nonetheless it made I had to choke back a few tears at the dinner table, trying not to make it awkward for everyone else. 

I used this recipe,  which has three parts.  You need to make a roux out of butter and flour, make some sort of stock from milk, onion slices, carrot slices and parsley stalks. Then combine the two with the parsley and season.  I messed up and used too much of the roux, it was so thick that I needed to add a lot more milk to make it normal again. It was lovely but so buttery! I honestly (not joking) had palpitations after dinner.  I served it with shredded cabbage with (butter and) mushrooms, carrot (not pictured because I forgot about them) and mashed potatoes.

My son loved it, as did I. I think my housemate was being polite, but he said it was good. My husband opted to eat a sandwich instead. He doesn't like parsley sauce. 

Shrimp Risotto with Parsley and Asparagus

This was a bit chaotic. Usuallly, on Fridays my husband and I forfeit dinner for booze. We just get olives and cheese and nibbles and a good amount of alcohol and hang out and drink. Today, however, I neglected to eat lunch, and as I was getting ready to head out from work, I got really hungry. I decided I needed a shrimp risotto, which is a weird thing to need, but there we have it. I found this recipe, and printed it and drove home as fast as I could (safely). Really excited about dinner and booze.

I ran to the supermarket on the way home. They have good fresh shrimp, a fabulous grocery section and I had seen arborio rice there recently. However, today they were out of arugula, lemons and fennel. Flipping irritating. I buy the other things I need and dash to another supermarket a few miles away. They are also out of fennel and arugula only comes in a packet with spinach. Fuck it. I got the lemons, I skipped the fennel, and I used a large bunch of curly parsley and some asparagus in place of the arugula. I was winging it.

When I get home, super keen to get on with dinner, I ask my son to help with the shrimp. I am not patient enough to do the shrimp first, and then start the onions and rice, so he peels the shrimp, while I start the ball rolling on the risotto. About five shrimp in, he has a funny turn and needs to lie down. I cannot stir risotto and peal shrimp and chop onions and garlic all at the same time. chaos ensued. Dinner went a bit like this.

First I made three cups of chicken stock. Second, I sauteed an onion in some olive oil and then added the garlic and the rice. I used a lot more rice than I was supposed to, probably about two cups, maybe more, so I added a whole glass of white wine, and upped the amount of stock. Once the wine was absorbed I added the stock little-by-little as it got absorbed in the rice (I kept adding stock until the very end when the rice was cooked). Then I chopped the parsley very finely and stirred it into the rice. It added a good green tint. Then, I added the juice of two pretty small lemons and the zest from both lemons. As the liquid was slowly sinking into the rice, I fried the shrimp in olive oil in a separate pan and then put them to one side. Then I put a little water in the shrimp pan, and about two teaspoons of butter and I cooked a bunch of asparagus (chopped into 2cm pieces). When this was cooked, I added it (and the buttery water) to the rice. Then I stirred in the shrimp, seasoned and ate.

It was good. Very flavorsome and the lemon gave it a good fresh summery taste. Would eat again.

Spinach, Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

I have an arch nemesis called "The Really Big Bag Of Spinach ".  The Really Big Bag Of Spinach, or TRBBOS is too large. It contains more spinach than my family of four can eat before it goes putrid. It is, however, obnoxiously inexpensive. It costs one dollar less, than a normal quantity of spinach, that would just barely go around four people. I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to spend more money, to get less spinach. But I have a grandmother who taught me that wasting food was a terrible thing. The woman was brought up in the shadow of the second world war. She had a solid "waste not want not" attitude.  She taught me that letting food go to waste was a shitty thing to do. As such, if I have to throw away a potato that has rolled to the back of the cupboard and gone-off, I feel bad. As i throw it into the bin, I get a pang of guilt, that is probably not as large as the feeling that Schindler got at the end of the war. I could have done more. I should have cooked and eaten this potato. I get flashbacks to that scene in the Pianist where he only has one bad gone-off potato to eat, and here I am, throwing out potatoes! ARGH! So every time I want to make spinach, I buy TRBBOS and a timer starts in my mind, I've got about three days to eat this absurd quantity of spinach before it goes bad. I've never succeeded, although I have sometimes come close.

Yesterday, I got TRBBOS for a salad. I put as much spinach as possible into the salad, to the detriment of the salad. This barely put a dent in TRBBOS. Today, I decided to find the meal that used the most spinach possible and make that for dinner. I found this recipe for 'spinach, aubergine and chickpea curry' which called for 1KG of spinach. The end of this story, is that I am more than half-way through the bag, with one day to go before it goes weird. I'm pretty sure that if I make a few VERY SPINACHY omelettes for breakfast tomorrow, I'm home free, but we'll see.

I pretty much just copied the recipe exactly, but I went a little too easy on the cumin and coriander, so need to up the quantities on that the next time. I'm also not very good at chilies, I used serrano peppers, and my housemate thought that they were fine, but perhaps I should use more next time, because it could have done with a little more bite. Overall, though, I really liked this dish and it was healthy as well as interesting. I need to make it again, this time with more spices.

Lemon Chicken

This one barely deserves a blog, and I was so hungry I only took a very blurry picture, but here goes anyway.

I made lemon chicken. I read a bunch of  recipes but I mostly used this one. I browned skinless chicken breasts in a pan with salt and pepper, then removed them from the heat and put then in a baking dish. I made a lemon sauce by using the zest of two lemons and the juice of two lemons, a few splashes of cooking sherry, and added oregano and thyme and nine cloves of garlic, which I had put in the pan with the chicken. I then poured the sauce over the chicken and baked for 30minutes. I served it with  cous cous and baked vegetables.

The chicken was really nice and flavorful. I always like roasted broccolli and mushrooms but I don't always know what protein to serve it with. This is a cheap and convenient thing to do with a chicken breast to have it interesting a juicy, without adding butter.

Apologies for the worst food photography of all time.

Asparagus with fettuccine and smoked bacon

Holy Shit this was delicious. I was stuck for something to make for dinner. I've been totally out of inspiration recently. I've gone through the BBC Food recipes too many times and can't find anything good there. If you just google for 'recipes' you get a load of crap that involves opening a can of mushroom soup and a can of green beans and bleugh.

One way that I try to get some inspiration is to look for foods that are in season and then look for a new recipe to make with those. As it's spring, asparagus is in season, and asparagus is delicious. I've only ever steamed it and served on the side of something else. I decided that there must be something else to do with asparagus. Asparagus may be one of those foods that is both healthy and delicious, I just didn't know how to make it into a meal, rather than serving it beside chicken.

Being a boring and predictable human I looked on the usual websites: smitten kitchen and BBC food. There wasn't much to do with asparagus apart from to serve it wrapped in ham. I unchecked the "healthy" option to see what else goes with it, to see if I could find some good Google search terms to use helped me wade through the all the "semi-homemade" bullshit. That's when I came across this recipe and I couldn't help myself. "Balls to healthy", thought I. I made it anyway.

IT WAS SO FREAKING DELICIOUS! but that's because it contained a whole block of Parmesan, a whole packet of bacon and all the fat that came with the bacon. This was a meal that was built around a good idea, but became a bad idea pretty fast. Oh and it's supposed to serve six people, but it served four of us and we licked the plates clean. Usually, there is guilt and remorse surrounding such a decadent meal, but not this time.

The picture is blurry because I was so excited to eat it that I couldn't wait. I also forgot to add the parlsey in my haste. No regrets.

FREAKING. DELICIOUS.

Roasted cauliflower and Sausage and Spinach Balsamic Farfalle

I made roasted cauliflower with caramelized onion and parmesan.  I put a chopped onion and a cauliflower in a baking tray with olive oil, thyme, garlic, salt and pepper and baked for 35minutes. When it was cooked, I sprinkled with Parmesan.

I boiled water for pasta.  When the pasta went on, I cut up two chicken sausages and put them in a hot skillet. When they were cooked,  I added two cloves of garlic and a whole punnet of mushrooms (sliced). In about 5 mins, I added a packet of baby spinach and a punnet of salad tomatoes (halved). I seasoned the pan with salt and pepper.  I let them cook until the spinach was wilted. Then I poured over balsamic vinegar. When the pasta was cooked, I added this to the pan for a minute or two. I served with fresh cold mozzarella.

Husband loved the balsamic idea. Would totes make again.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Beetroot

My husband wanted to have a pizza in front of the TV tonight, so I made two things that he doesn't like. Brussels Sprouts and Beets.

I've never roasted either of these things. I found this recipe for roasted beets that also used the beet greens. it it suggested roasting the beets in olive oil for 45 - 60 minutes. The beet greens are not roasted but are sauteed with onion, olive oil and garlic. There were not many beet greens on my beets, so the beet greens part wasn't much to talk about, but the beets themselves were good. Once the beets were cooked enough that I could comfortably put a knife through them, they were peeled, sliced, and seasoned and drizzled with red wine vinegar. They weren't amazingly delicious, but they were pretty good.

I bought a bag of Brussels sprouts on impulse. It said on the back of the bag to roast them for 40 mins, so I put them in the baking tray with the beets. When they were good and crispy on the outer leaves, I took them out of the oven. I added bits of bacon and Parmesan. These were really good. I would certainly make these again. I got my husband to try one and he said "It's not the worst thing in the world", which isn't a glowing endorsement, but I'll take it.

Baked Pasta with Kale and Butternut Squash

I wrote a really long post but my phone battery died. The re-do is going to be short and to the point.

I made this meal. People liked it.  I used sour cream and a scoop of Philadelphia cream cheese in place of the creme fraiche. I used Parmesan instead of Gruyere. The website "cooking light' might be a misnomer because I don't reckon this was a light meal, it included, bacon, cheese, fried onions, flour and a lot of pasta. It was, however, pretty darned tasty. (Edit: Cooking light thinks that this meal serves 8. In our house it served four! oops!).

When I'm busy, I like baked pasta dishes because I can stick them in the oven while I have spare time between getting home from work and going to get my son from whichever club/activity he's doing that day. Then, when the boy comes home, all the hard work is done and we have a hearty, home-cooked meal waiting for us.

Here are the pictures.

Chicken Fried Rice and Sweet Chili Vegetables

I made this meal because I wanted to use up some left over white rice from the chili I made on the weekend. I know that white rice is not especially healthy at the best of times, and is made even less healthy when fried, but I really don't like throwing away good food. I found an excellent recipe for fried rice, I followed it pretty exactly, but used more vegetables. I included one onion, two carrots, two cups of peas, five spring onions, and half a bag of beansprouts, and chicken for protein.

I served the rice with some stir fried vegetables that I made in a sweet chili sauce. I decided to make this sauce on the fly. In the supermarket I saw some sweet chili sauce and read the ingredients on the side. They were all things that I have in my house already: red chilis, rice vinegar, sugar, water, garlic, ginger, cornflour. I decided to skip the store-made sauce and make my own. When I got home, I googled this recipe and was pretty amazed and the quantity of sugar that this meal requested. A whole cup of sugar! I couldn't possibly serve that much sugar on the vegetables that I was serving with fried rice!  I cut the sugar by about half, and the meal tasted fine! Jesus wept people, chill out on the sugar! I poured he sauce over 3 sliced courgettes (two green, one yellow), one red pepper, a punnet of mushrooms, 5 spring onions, sugar snap peas and the left over beansprouts. It might have contained our five a day, but it also contained an absurd amount of sugar.

Pesto Chicken and Roasted Vegetables

I took my son to soccer practice at 7:30, then went to work for about 12 hours with no time to stop for lunch or a tea break. Driving home, I was in the mood for some satisfying home-cooked family food but I wanted to be on my butt wearing my elasticated pants as soon as possible. I threw this thing together, with very little forward planning, but it turned out to be a perfectly good after work meal. It only took about 30mins to make and was very healthy and satisfying.

First, I started the roasted vegetables. I preheated the oven to 425F. I sliced two leeks, a punnet of button mushrooms and chopped the florets of two broccoli. I spread the vegetables out onto two oven proof trays. I drizzled with olive oil and generous helpings of salt and pepper. I put them in the oven and set the timer for 20mins. You can tell they're cooked when they're sizzling.

To make the pesto chicken, I warmed some olive oil in a pan to a medium-high heat. I sliced two large chicken breasts into small pieces and put them in a bowl with about 1/3 of a pot of pesto and stirred it all together until the chicken was coated. When the oil was hot, I fried the chicken breast slices for about 3-4 minutes on each side, so that they were golden on the outside and still juicy on the inside. I did this in two batches, keeping the pan very hot throughout.

I served with tomato and spinach cous cous and a sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan. The cous cous was a little dry and as none of the food was particularly wet, some might say that it's a pretty dry meal. That didn't bother me or my family too much, but I might try to think of something other than cous cous to serve it with -next time.

I enjoy roasted vegetables more than most. I think they're delicious, especially the leeks. By the end I was bursting full and still trying to shovel the last remaining veggies into my face. The pesto chicken was also very flavorsome and juicy. It;s not a show stopper, but it was a very nice meal for a week night.

Flopping on the sofa, with a belly full of healthy home-cooked food after a busy day is very satisfying. A rare guilt-free moment where you don't worry that you shouldn't have eaten that, or should be doing something more productive right now. You just get to sit, and have a beer and feel satisfied. Good times.

Kung Pao Tofu!

I give vegan food a hard time, but it's actually pretty nice. I really like tofu, and the best nachos I ever had were vegan nachos from the spiral diner. I made this kung pao tofu without even realizing it was vegan until the end. It was really nice. I've got to stop giving vegan food a hard time.

I pretty much followed the recipe but I made a few substitutions. I couldn't get purple sprouting broccoli, so I replaced them with mushrooms. I didn't have rice wine vinegar so I used apple cider vinegar instead. I have no idea what Sichuan peppercorns are so I just used black peppercorns. I didn't make a separate stir fry, I put some thinly sliced bok choi in with the broccoli near the end. I severed with with a few egg noddles because my son is a growing boy who needs his carbs, so un-vegan-ified it, but I'm not a vegan, so that's fine.

I had to chop everything before I started cooking, which I have never in my life done before, because once you get going, it's a fast and furious recipe.  The crushing of peppercorns,  chopping of many vegetables, mixing of sauces and making of emulsions makes this a pretty labor intensive recipe for a mid-week supper, it was ready in about 30minutes, was very healthy, and very delicious.  I already owned the sherry and vinegar, so the total cost of ingredients for this meal was only $15!

Note: I burned the cashews - don't have the pan super hot when you throw them in. They were still good enough to eat but not ideal.

Sweet Potato and Kale Medley

My husband and I are trying again to exercise more and to weigh less. We have been going to the gym every week day, but our meals have not been great.  Yesterday,  our housemate and good friend took us out for hibachi dinner to celebrate a promotion in work. It was very exciting, I've never eaten Hibachi before. It was very delicious but it was a huge meal that contained a lot of fried rice, and it was followed by a tempura cheese cake which is really not a thing anyone needs to consume. I think if a starving survivor from the battle for Stalingrad ate a tempura cheesecake, they would immediately develop type two diabetes or die from shock.

The upshot of all of this is that we're not very good at taking care of ourselves and it makes me feel guilty.  I resolved to make a healthier meal this evening. I made a kale and sweet potato hash with chicken, cloves and lemon juice. I followed this recipe but doubled all the quantities so it would be enough food for four hungry people. I added a sliced chicken breast to make it more hearty for my growing boy. I used the juice of half a lemon and a few red pepper flakes in place of chilli powder.

It didn't look as green as the one in the recipe.  The kale wilted and shriveled but the sweet potatoes kept their volume so it was a very orange looking dish instead of a green one. I also had more liquid on my meal than the pictures in  the recipe. I was a little disappointed with the look of it. I was not disappointed with the taste. I've never used ground cloves for anything. It reminded me of putting cloves into oranges at christmas when i was a girl. The overall flavor was very interesting and rich with the lemon juice and the cloves. It was also a fast and easy after work meal that is very healthy. Everyone liked it. I would certainly make it again

Butternut Squash and Turkey Bake

The squash was a little too orangry, the turkey was a little too winey, and it didn't really fill us up. Everyone seemed to enjoy it but I thought it was weird.

I followed this recipe.

Pasta meals that I've not written down.

I have a few pasta meals that are at least somewhat healthy (apart from cheese) that I have neglected to blog about. Both are very delicious and very quick to make. I'm going to write them here so I remember them in future.

Chicken Nutmeg Pasta

I don't remember where I got this recipe from, but I do remember being confused by the addition of nutmeg to a chicken meal. The source doesn't really matter any more because I've played with it so much over about the last two years that it's not likely to be very similar to the original anymore. I have grown very accustomed to the idea that nutmeg should go in creamy pasta dishes. It's like having eggnog for dinner, but with no bourbon and lots of vegetables. Its really not very healthy, but the original version contains double cream, so I have at least made it a bit better. Despite my changes, it remains a firm favorite with my husband and son.  It's the meal that they most often ask me to make. 

Cut up one broccoli, and two leeks, put in a roasting dish along with a whole punnet of mushrooms. You may need two baking trays to get them to fit without over crowding. Sprinkle the vegetables with olive oil, season generously with salt and black pepper. Bake them at 420F for about 20mins. Fry one or two chicken breasts (diced) with two cloves of chopped garlic until cooked. While this is happening, boil water for pasta and stock. I like to use big fat pasta shapes in this meal, like rigatoni. When the chicken is cooked through, remove it from the pan and set them aside for later. Cut up one or two rashers of bacon and cook them in the pan that had the chicken (the bacon is totally optional, I very often leave it out, I also sometimes fry an onion after the chicken if the leeks are small). Then add a spoon of flour to the pan and cook until the fat has been absorbed. Slowly add the chicken stock to the flour to make a sort of gravy. Then add two-three tablespoons of sour cream to make a creamy-chicken sauce. Add about one teaspoon of nutmeg and black pepper. to the sauce, taste it and add more seasoning if necessary.  I have not found it possible to add too much nutmeg.  When you're happy with the sauce, put the chicken back in, add some grated Parmesan and let the chicken warm through.  When the vegetables are roasted add them to the sauce. I like to add the vegetables just before serving so they keep their distinct seasoned-vegetables flavor and don't get amalgamated into the delicious goo. Serve over big fat pasta with more Parmesan on top. 

Cherry tomato & Arugula spaghetti

This is currently one of my favorite dishes but my husband is not so into it. I've been playing with the recipe,  using fresh basil and fresh spinach. The combination I put together today with arugula and olives was my absolute favorite,  and my husband certainly liked it, but I think this will always be more my kind of dish than his. 

Boil water for pasta. Heat olive oil in a pan.  Add one clove of garlic, a whole punnet of mushrooms to oil and let cook. Cut a boatload of cherry/grape tomatoes in half, season with salt and add to the mushrooms. You don't want to over cook the tomatoes, so don't add them too early. Then add a large handful or arugula/rocket. Cook until the arugula has wilted. Spinach or fresh basil also work very well with this but arugula is better. Add a few olives, chopped and serve over angel hair pasta. Its fucking delightful and so far, no cheese! Here comes the cheese.... add plenty of shaved parmesan to the spaghetti with a drizzle of oil and toss together,  and, if you are interested in experiencing joy, top the dish with one or two blobs of cold fresh mozzarella. It's joyful. All the flavors stay separate, the mushrooms taste of olive oil and garlic, the tomatoes are sweet and salty, the olives have a kick, the arugula has the earthy mustard flavor, and then the cool creamy mozzarella tastes like the cheeks of an alabaster goddess. I just love this meal. 

In addition to being nutritious and divine it's also practical as a quick after work meal. Angel hair pasta takes about 6 minutes to cook. You don't want to over cook any of the vegetables, so it's very quick and light - like a quick stir fry for spaghetti. I just love it. I wish my husband enjoyed it more, but he's really a meat and two veg sort of man. If I add beer to a meal that was originally based around beef, that would be his favorite every time. I like those meals too, but honestly, a good salad makes me just as happy - maybe more happy even. because it has all the deliciousness but none of the shame and guilt. 

Coley with Tarragon Sauce Vierge

This is a healthy meal, that's pretty quick and easy and involves no cheese!

After yesterdays blue cheese bonanza we needed something much lighter today. Yesterday's meal felt like I'd eaten a rugby ball, and a French cheese-eating rugby team were rucking my insides. Not today!

I wanted to use up the rest of the tarragon that we bought before it went bad, so I searched for a fish recipe involving tarragon and I found this one. It was very easy to make, and was light and tender. My husband and I are sharing one car at the moment so he went to get the ingredients. He was intimidated by the crazy fish counter at our local Korean supermarket and so just purchased the only white fish that he could buy without interacting with the fishmongers. He found Tilapia, which is a perfectly nice fish, but it may have changed the overall feel of this dish, which was designed to be served with coley - a much lighter white fish. It was very nice, but I'd be keen to try it again with a different fish.

The fish was simply seasoned with salt and black pepper and fried in olive oil. The more exciting part was the Sauce Vierge (Virgin Sauce). This was made by adding olive oil (120ml), and lemon juice (1 lemon) to a medium pan, with a shallot (diced), two tomatoes (diced with skin and seeds removed) and lots of fresh tarragon (3tablespoons). The sauce was very light and flavourful.

I served with a green salad and a balsamic dressing.

Gorging on Gorgonzola

Baked leek, Gorgonzola and Walnut Penne

I've got into Gorgonzola, but mostly I just put it on leafy salads. I figured I'd try making hot food with blue cheese so tried a version of this recipe. The result was, however, just a little disappointing. It was mac and cheese with knobs on, but they weren't nice knobs. The grocery store that we use doesn't do much frozen vegetables. The peas that we got were so hard and powdery that for a moment I thought we'd got dried peas by mistake. The overall dish was really quite heavy, so much pasta and cheese and bullet peas with a side of garlic bread. It was a much more dense meal than I imagined. I shan't be making this one again but I'll put the details here anyway for the sake of continuity.

First, I heated a small amount of vegetable oil in a pan until it got very hot, and I quickly fried some sliced chicken breast. I added a two cloves of garlic and a pinch of pepper to this. When the chicken was cooked, I set it aside. While this was cooking I boiled penne pasta. Then I washed out the pan, and returned it to the heat. I melted 100g of butter, fried 3 leeks and half an onion until soft. Added frozen peas, lots of fresh tarragon and the juice of one lemon. I stirred ricotta cheese, and gorgonzola (150g of each) and a handful of walnuts. When the cheese was melted and warm through I added the chicken and the penne and served.

Gorgonzola salad

I have totally ripped off this recipe from a local restaurant called Breadwinners. It's called "Pear & Gorgonzola" salad. The menu lists that it contains tomato, pear, pecans, greens, balsamic Parmesan vinaigrette". It is the best salad I've ever eaten, so I imitate it regularly. I make my own balsamic Parmesan vinaigrette, out of olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette and freshly grated Parmesan (my ratios are about 1:1:1) put into a blender to combine. I have to go back to figure out exactly which greens they're using, but I'm pretty sure that one of them is arugula. It's HEAVENLY!

This picture isn't exactly of the Breadwinner's salad, but it's almost exactly the same, it just has apple instead of pears and feta instead of Gorgonzola. I made it for out housemates birthday to serve alongside a smoked brisket of beef. Everyone complimented it. The fools thought that they were eating something healthy, but really there's a whole block of Parmesan in the dressing.

Pie with Pancetta, White Beans and Swiss Chard

This was the winter of pies. I'd learned that chicken is not a great pie meat as it's not robust enough. Beef is great but it's very unhealthy.  I found a recipe for a pie that used pancetta, but just a little, the most of the ingredients were healthy (ish) like white beans, swiss chard, carrots and celery. I've never eaten Swiss chard or white beans so figured this would be a fun recipe to try. 

I followed the recipe pretty much exactly but made one large pie, instead of individual pot pies. I was feeding six, so scaled up the ingredients. Also, we had some ricotta cheese leftover from a previous meal and so I put a spoon or two of that in and reduced the amount of sour cream. I didn't scale up the ingredients for the crust and still easily had enough to line my pie dish (I blind baked the bottom with ceramic pie beads for 15mins) and make the top. I am pretty sure that each of us ate less of the crust than if we made individual pot pies, which is good, because pie crust is not healthy, an insane amount of butter goes into this. 

It was very good, it looked great. I especially liked the crust, which was flaky and flavorful. I think more people should put ricotta in the crust. The inside was a very thick and creamy consistency. As there was so much chicken stock, it did kinda taste like a chicken pie, but with all the other things going on, and the pancetta, it had a much more robust feel to it. I served it with green beans and garlic mushrooms.