Time off

I am lucky enough to be going away for a few days so I won't be posting much. Now that Blogger is fixed though, you can leave comments and suggestions for anything you'd like me to post about!
See you soon with lots of new ideas!

An easy three course dinner... How to eat your 5 a day in one meal

They were two votes for an easy three course dinner on the latest poll I posted. So, here we go, here is an easy three course dinner that will feed four people and will make the most reluctant of them eat their 5 a day in one meal. 

I have subscribed to a veg box scheme for the past couple of months. I have to say that I have always got top quality products for a fair price. The basket is also great for pushing me out of my comfort zone and making me cook dishes I would not have cooked otherwise. I think things have changed in France now but there was some "vegetable" snobbery going around when I was growing up. Even now, I am sure you can still hear people say "Parsnips are for rabbits", "Corn is for chickens" or "Oats are for horses"... I don't even need to tell you what the French would say about eating sprouting alfalfa! 

Anyway, I have learnt to cook swede over the winter. But for the veg basket, I would not have bought swede to be honest. The thing about swede is that the taste is not strong enough and the consistency nice enough so you can eat it by itself, so I usually cook it along with something else. The problem is then that swedes do not usually come in small sizes so then you are stuck with eating swede for the rest of the week. So, thanks to my cast-iron casserole dish, I have become quite good at mixing ingredients and getting pretty good results! I usually end up bringing some of the food I have made into work in my lunch box. I also freeze some for emergencies. And I have discovered that it's a great way to disguising vegetables so that even the most reluctant eaters do get their veg in!

So, here is the menu for my easy three course meal that will feed four and will take 30-40 minutes to make:

Apple, cheddar and mixed leaves salad

Roast chicken with a swede, mushroom, broccoli and spinach casserole

Mini strawberry Eton mess

Ingredients:

The salad:

1 apple, sliced

3 slices of mature cheddar 1/4 inch thick cut into cubes

mixed leaves

1tbsp of cider vinegar

1 1/2 tbsp of rapeseed oil

1 tsp wholegrain mustard

Salt and pepper

The Chicken + Veg casserole:

1 chicken cut into 4 pieces (ask the butcher to do that for you + ask him to give you the leftover bones from the cut, you will need them for the veg casserole)

1/2 a swede cut into small cubes (1 cm)

1 onion, sliced

4 smoked streaky rashers cut into thin strips

250 ml of cooking white wine (anything dry)

125 ml of single cream

A few sprigs of thyme

1 medium head of broccoli

200 gr of spinach

Salt, pepper

A few tbsp of olive oil

For the strawberry mess:

A small punnet of strawberries: all cut into thin strips but for 4 of them. You will need them for decoration

Some meringues

125 ml of single cream

Vanilla extract

(2 tbsp of sugar if you want)

1. First, preheat your oven at 200°C.

2. Take the chicken pieces, rub them with some olive oil, season them. Put them in the oven, bake for 1hr ish, turn them over after 30 minutes of baking. 

3. While the chicken is cooking, take a cast-iron pot, put 1tbsp of oil in it. Brown the onion, rashers bits, bones left over from the chicken and the swede bits over medium to high heat. 

4. Once browned, after about 8 minutes, pour over the wine, cream, season a little (not too much there are rashers in there already), and add the thyme. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes. Turn it off after that and leave the lid on.

5. Prepare the dessert: 

whip the cream with the vanilla extract, add sugar if you want. Crush the meringues (Here I used the meringues I made while baking the vanilla bavarois, see the previous post on that topic for a recipe for meringues), add slices of strawberries, add a heaped tablespoon of cream and decorate with a strawberry.

6. Prepare the starter: 

Make the dressing first. Add the salt, pepper, the vinegar, the sliced apples. Stir. Then add the oil, the mustard, mix again. Then add the diced cheese and the leaves. Do not stir the leaves until you are about to eat as the salad will wilt otherwise.

7. Have a glass of wine and chill.

8. When the chicken is cooked, add the spinach and the broccoli to the casserole, stir. 

9. Have your starter, the green veggies will be cooked by the time you are finished with the salad. 

10. Have another glass of wine and chill!

Sláinte!

Mama Mia... my pizza!

Hello!

Well, for those of ye who did not read my last post, I made some tomato sauce yesterday I mixed with pasta and I left some to be used for making pizza!
And tonight was pizza night!
I love pizza night because you can pretty much put whatever you want on them, cooking them makes the house smell lovely and given the way it's raining outside, it's great to have the oven on.
Making pizza sounds long and complicated but really, once you have the tomato sauce prepared, making the dough is quite easy, it needs enough time to rise (about 30 min to 1 hour) and then it's just a matter of putting toppings on top. Nothing could be simpler!

So here is my recipe for pizza dough and a few topping ideas! (For the tomato sauce, see the previous post)

For the pizza dough:
- 300 gr of strong white flour
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoon of dried yeast
- between 175ml and 200ml of warm water
- 1 tbsp of olive oil

For the toppings:
- Grated mozzarella, or even better, fresh mozzarella
- Parma ham
- Rocket
- Fresh goats' cheese
- Honey and black pepper

1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt and dried yeast. Then, add some of the warm water while mixing with your fingers. Add enough water so that the mix turns into a ball of dough that does not stick to your fingers too much. Once you have reached the right consistency, add the olive oil.

2. Cover with tea towel and leave to rest for 30 minutes to an hour, until it has doubled size. If you need a little help with the rising, leave the dough somewhere warm like a hot press.

3. Preheat the oven at 220°C. Once your dough has doubled size, divide it into three balls. Use one ball per pizza. Put one of the balls onto a sheet of baking paper, flour your rolling pin and spread the dough thinly. One ball should be enough for a 12" pizza.

4. Put about three table spoons of tomato sauce on the pizza, spread thinly. Put the grated mozzarella or fresh mozzarella on top. Bake in the oven for 7-10 minutes depending on how you like it.

5. Once out of the oven, put some slices of parma ham, some fresh goats' cheese, some rocket leaves and a few teaspoons of honey.

And hey presto, the nicest pizza ever is ready!!!

When there's nothing in the fridge to be eaten...

I came home from work rather later than usual today. I'd say I was home at around 8 ish. The thing about being home at that time is that if you are going to cook, well it means that by the time you are finished cooking, you won't be having your dinner until 9 if you are lucky. I don't particularly like eating late because then I don't sleep that well.
So today when I opened the fridge I cursed myself for not planning my evening dinner any better.
Then again, it's not like there was no food around the house either. It's just there seemed to be nothing that could be cooked together: parsnips, carrots, pasta, rice, eggs, etc. You get the jist.
There were a few slices of parma ham hidden at the bottom of the fridge and I decided to use some of these. I had initially bought them to make pizza but making pizza from scratch at 8 would have meant dinner at around 10. Way too late for me although I am a bit of a night-owl. So I decided to kill two birds with the one stone. I will have pizza tomorrow evening because I prepared the tomato sauce tonight.
And I used the tomato sauce with pasta, celery and carrots, a few slices of parma ham along with a green salad. The beauty of it is that not only dinner for tomorrow evening is already of the way, but tonight's dinner only took me 20 minutes to prepare!
So here is an idea for a quick dinner:

Will feed three people and you will have tomato sauce left (you can freeze it or use it on pizza the following day for instance)

Tomato sauce:
- One carton of tomato passata
- One onion sliced
- Two cloves of garlic sliced
- One good pinch of sugar
- One good pinch of salt and some pepper
- A few leaves of basil chopped
- 1 tbsp of oil

Sauce for the pasta:
- Three carrots, sliced thinly if possible
- 1 celery stick thinly sliced
- 1 chilli sliced (deseeded if you don't like the heat, I kept the seeds though)
- 1 tbsp of oil

Other ingredients:
- 300 gr of pasta (I used short pasta)
- About 9 slices of parma ham

1. First, start with the tomato sauce: Slice the onion, the garlic, gently fry on medium-hot heat in a saucepan with a tablespoon of oil.
2. When slightly brown, add the passata, the basil, sugar, salt and pepper. Add half a glass of water and simmer gently for 7 minutes.

3. Start cooking your pasta in salted boiling water.

4. Slice your carrots, your celery stick. Gently fry on medium-hot heat in a frying pan for 5 minutes. When brown, add the sliced chilli and a little salt and pepper. After two minutes, put two laddles of the above tomato sauce into the frying pan and cook for 8 minutes. You might need to add a glass of water to it as you don't want your sauce to reduce too much, you just want to cook the carrots and celery a bit. (While this is happening, you can prepare a green salad to accompany your dish.)

5. Drain your pasta, pour them into the frying pan and mix well. Serve with slices of parma ham spread over the pasta on a plate.

Et voilà, nearly two dinners in one!
Tomorrow night, I will publish a post on my pizzas... See you then I guess!

New Poll

Hey all,

I have posted a new poll on my blog to get an idea of what you would like to see next. The poll ends in 6 days so don't be shy and vote away!

Et voilà un dessert français!

As promised from the last poll, here is a French recipe. To answer another request, I decided to make it a dessert recipe. So that way, more than half the people who voted in the poll will be happy! Well hopefully...
First, although I do eat desserts and cakes, I have to admit that dessert is not my favourite course. When I was a child of about 7 and when we went out for dinner with my family, which was usually on a rare occasion, I remember the waiters coming over, looking at me and saying "So, you will have the chocolate cake, won't you?" My usual answer was "No thanks, I'll have the cheese plate."As you do...
Yes, I love cheese and I usually love dairy products, specially the soft ones. So I prefer soft cheeses to hard cheeses, I adore yoghurts, custards, baked custards...etc. That is the reason why I decided to make a "Bavarois". I tend to like plain flavours in desserts like that, so I made a vanilla bavarois. Because I had egg whites left over, I also had time to make meringues. The crunchy texture is quite nice with the smoothness of the bavarois.
Second, I am lucky enough to have people give me products they harvest from their garden. Joe gave me a big bunch of fresh rhubarb last week. I really like tart flavours and today I thought that poached rhubarb would be a lovely accompaniment to a rather rich bavarois.
So today's recipe really is Vanilla bavarois with poached rhubarb and crushed meringue.

For the bavarois: (Enough for 4-6 people)

- 1/4 litre of milk

- 1/4 litre of cream

- 1 vanilla pod

- 2 egg yolks

- 75 gr of caster sugar

- 2 leafs of gelatine or 1 heaped teaspoon of agar-agar for my vegetarian friends!

For the meringues: (Makes quite a few!)

- The 2 egg whites from the bavarois above

- 1 pinch of salt

- 125 gr of caster sugar

For the poached rhubarb:

- About 3 or 4 stalks of rhubarb

- 6 tbsp of water

- 6 tbsp of sugar

- 1 slice of fresh ginger

- 1 tsp of ground cardamon

1. First, preheat your oven at 120°C. Put the leaves of gelatine into a bowl of cold water.

2. Then split the vanilla pod in half, scrape the seeds and put them with the milk in a saucepan. Heat up the milk. 

3. In the meantime, whisk the two egg yolks with the sugar until the mix turns white. Take the milk off the heat, it shouldn't boil. Then little by littke pour the milk into the egg-sugar mix. 

4. Pour the whole liquid back into your sauce pan, heat it up again while continously whisking it until the liquid coats the back of your wooden spoon. Do not boil. As soon as you reach this consistency, take it off the heat.

5. After taking your pan off the heat, add the two leaves of gelatine or the agar-agar and mix well. Let the mixture cool down. Make the meringues while you are waiting.

6. To make the meringue, simply whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until hard. Then add the sugar little by little while whisking. Once you have added all the sugar, put the mixture into a piping bag or spoon over baking paper. Bake for 30 minutes if you want to get white meringues, for 1 hour if you wish to get meringues that are gooey inside.

7. Now, whip the cream for the bavarois. Once whipped, add it to the cool liquid. Transfer the whole mixture into a dish lined with cling film. It will make it easier to unmold. 

8. For the rhubard, clean the stalks and cut them into 3cm pieces. Put the water, sugar and spices into a saucepan. Heat up the liquid so that the sugar dissolves. Add the rhubarb pieces in a single layer. Cook them in several batches if necessary. Cook them for roughly 4 minutes.

9. After cooking the rhubarb, keep the syrup and reduce it. 

10. To serve: unmold the bavarois, arrange some crushed meringue on top of the bavarois, arrange some rhubarb pieces beside it and pour some syrup over the fruit.