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.