Cheerful tray-baked chicken

I love how bright and colourful this dish is, it looks fantastic and best of all it's really easy. As it's finally warming up a bit now (at last!) I felt like cooking something summery, I had some chicken in the fridge, yet more leftover pesto which seems to keep appearing! and some really good bacon. after a quick trip to the shops i also had a good selection of Mediterranean vegetables: an aubergine, courgette's, tomatoes, mushrooms and olives.

All I did was rub pesto over the chicken and wrap it in bacon. I chopped the vegetables tossed them in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, white wine, a few herbs, salt and pepper. whacked them in a baking tray, put the chicken on top and into the oven on quite high until it was nicely cooked. I basted everything every now and then to stop it going dry and it came out great and so simple.

I served my chicken with couscous and poured the juices from the tray over the top.
This is such a good way to cook and has endless variations, it would be great with fish, or pork chops and any selection of veg that takes your fancy, (try to choose a good selection of colours). Asparagus and fish would be a good combo about now.

Eating well on a budget... Spanish style Pork hock and beans

After spending far too much money recently my bank balance is not looking all that healthy! So in an attempt to budget I set out to cook the cheapest meal I could without cutting down on the quality.

The answer revealed itself while I was wandering around Leicester Fish market (which also has several butchers), when I laid my eyes upon some Pork Hocks for the bargain price of 99p! I have cooked with these before and have been pleasantly surprised, not only by how much meat is on them but by how tender and succulent it is. This piece of meat is often used for soups and stocks but I have found their to be plenty of meat for three of us.

The hock is a cut taken from just above the trotter and below the shoulder. Like most of the cheap cuts of meat it requires long slow cooking. It is ideal for stews and casseroles as it adds beautiful richness and depth of flavour. with that in mind I set about making a Spanish style casserole.

In Spain white beans are a very common ingredient, they are especially good with pork too as in the Spanish dish of Fabada Asturiana. So for my casserole I used tinned butter beans which are delicious and creamy and make an excellent addition to meals such as this, they also help to make the meal more substantial.

The real Spanish twist comes in the form of smoked paprika or Pimenton. This spice is amazing, it is available in sweet or hot varieties, has a wonderful smoky flavour as well as adding fantastic colour. It is a traditional Spanish ingredient made my smoking and drying peppers, these are then ground to create the spice. I used the sweet variety rather than the hot, as I wasn't looking for any heat in my dish.

It is recommended that you blanch pork hocks before cooking them, this just removes impurities and results in a better looking and tasting end result. To do this simply boil your hock in a large pan of water for a couple of minutes, pour the water away and you're ready to go...

One of the great things about this kind of cooking is that it allows you to use up whatever you have to hand For my casserole I used finely chopped red onions and celery and a roughly chopped red bell pepper fried in olive oil as a base. Red onions are good for this as the add colour and sweetness, as does the pepper. towards the end of cooking I added my smoked paprika and a teaspoon of dried thyme. Then the hock and around two large mugs of water, a splash of white wine and a spoon of honey.

Everything was mixed together in a large casserole pan and into the oven at gas 1, and left for around 6 hours, around half and hour before serving i added some carrots. I don't add these at the beginning as the become far too mushy and lose texture.

The final result was meat that just fell apart, I didn't even need a knife! The casserole was rich and fragrant and a fantastic red colour. It was a great success and cost about £2 to feed three of us.

Tomato and herb bread

Normally when I make a stew or casserole I would add something starchy like potatoes, this time however to go with my Spanish theme I made tomato and herb bread. I don't have a recipe as i was using what I had to hand again. I found half a jar of tomato pesto, some spring onions, sun dried tomatoes and dried basil and oregano. I added them to a basic white bread dough and this is the result...

The perfect partner to my Spanish Pork and beans. I served it still warm from the oven, perfect for mopping up the juices.

Great Cooks Blogroll

I am really pleased to have joined the Great Cooks Blogroll, this has been created by Jill from Simple Daily recipes and is a great way for food bloggers to come together and share recipes and ideas.
You can see a list of member sites on the left of this page, I do hope you will visit some of them, their are some excellent blogs out there.
If you have a food blog and would like to join click here.

English Tea, Bakewell tarts and chocolate muffins

I have just read an article from the BBC that a new guide states that in England afternoon tea is "enacted daily" apparently at 4:00 we all stop, get out the tea pot, delicate sandwiches and fruit cake!
I'm sure anyone who is English will find this amusing, as obviously the author of this guide has never been to England, or at least not in the last century. As an Englishman I would like to make it clear that this is nonsense, I and no one I have ever met does this. However last Saturday for the first time ever we had tea...A traditional English tea refers to a meal rather than the drink, although a proper tea pot is essential. It traditionally involves delicate finger food such as cucumber, salmon or ham sandwiches, small cakes often feature as do larger cakes such as Victoria sponge or a fruit cake. Scones are also very popular and are usually served with jam and clotted cream. Although very unusual in homes now, afternoon tea is still a feature in grand hotels such as The Ritz.

For our tea I made a Bakewell tart and chocolate muffins.

Bakewell tarts were invented in the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire. They are a similar to the original Bakewell pudding which differs slightly by having no ground almonds, it is more like a custard tart flavoured with almond extract. Although not the same, the tart is derived from the pudding.Whenever we pass through Bakewell I always pick one up from one of the bakeries that sells them. There are three such bakeries each with a secret "original recipe". The shops claim that the pudding was invented by accident in the 1860's when a nobleman visited the White Horse Inn and asked for a strawberry tart, the cook poured the eggs that were supposed to be in the base over the jam and Bakewell pudding was born. This probably isn't true but they're delicious anyway!
Real Bakewell tarts are very different to what you may have tried before, there is no icing and no cherry on top, the real thing is much nicer and I do recommend you try them, you can even buy a pudding by post from two of the the original shops!

The chocolate muffins I made aren't quite so traditional, they are more American style, I should have made little fairy cakes but, I was searching for recipes and these looked delicious. The batter is a bit different to regular sponge mix as it contains a lot of milk ( 1 cup for 12 muffins) They were really tasty and the leftovers had actually improved the next day. The icing is a simple chocolate buttercream.For our tea we also had cucumber sandwiches, ham and salmon open rolls, a Victoria sponge and a selection of bits and pieces such as crisps and olives.

Unfortunately I don't have the recipes to hand, I will post them next week, but here's a similar recipe for Bakewell tart, I used puff pastry for my version which I think is closer to the original.

Choux buns with raspberries and cream

So today I decided to attempt something that I've wanted to for a while but, I was kind of scared of thinking it would be way too complicated.
Today I made Choux pastry and it was amazingly easy, I am really pleased to have finally taught myself this kind of pastry work as their is so much I can make now. Eclairs, Profiteroles and ...Choux buns with raspberries and cream!! That is what I made today, with some bargain raspberries from Leicester market, I thought after an overdose of chocolate from Easter a light fruit dessert would be nice.
Choux pastry is a very light pastry quite unlike any other. It is made by boiling water and butter together in a saucepan then beating in flour and, when its cooled eggs. The high water content of the dough is what causes it to rise as there is a lot of steam created inside the dough when it is cooked. The pastry is usually baked but can be fried and in Austria is sometimes boiled to make Marillenknödel a kind of sweet dumpling.
I made my pastry into make buns using a homemade piping bag made from a freezer bag with the corner cut off (good tip) to pipe buns onto a lined baking sheet (they expand a lot so it is important to space them well to avoid them touching). They were baked for half an hour and came out perfect! It is important with choux pastry to put them on a cooling rack immediately after they are cooked and to pierce them to let the steam out, otherwise you end up with soggy buns!
My choice of filling was very simple... Lightly whipped cream and raspberries folded together. I added a couple of teaspoons of sugar with the cream to offset the sharpness of the raspberries and spooned to mixture into the centre of the buns which had been split open, a light dusting of icing sugar finishes them off nicely.I think these look really professional and are far nicer than anything from the supermarket, the fillings could easily be changed, the only limit is your imagination, savoury fillings would also be good and the pastry has a multitude of other uses, you could fry it for beignets make crullers or it can be used for gougères which I intend to try soon.

Their is a recipe for Choux pastry here: Recipe

Simnel cake

As it's Easter I decided to make a traditional Simnel cake.

A Simnel cake is a light fruit cake which has a layer of marzipan in the centre and also on the top, the top is also decorated with eleven balls of marzipan around the edge which symbolise the true Apostles of Jesus. Judas is omitted. This cake is traditionally made at Easter time in Britain and Ireland, although it is not really that common any more which I think is a shame.

Originally the cake was made by girls to bring home to their Mothers on Mother's Day. The name Simnel is thought to be derived from the word Simila, which is the fine wheat flour from which they are made.

Their are several different versions of the cake but the most common and the version I have made is the Shrewsbury cake, some other versions use a raising agent or leave the marzipan out from the centre. I have also seen some which add chunks of marzipan mixed into the batter.

We ate ours after a fantastic Easter lunch of roast Lamb and I was very pleased with the result. I used a recipe from the BBC website although I made a few changes. I used a lot of dried apricot as well as the raisins and currants, just because I like the flavour, this made for a much lighter colour than usual. I also soaked the fruit in boiling water for a few minutes first which helped make the cake really moist and delicious.

I would certainly recommend this recipe, it is a lot simpler than it looks, and tastes really good, a lot lighter than Christmas cake and really fruity.

Recipe can be found here: Simnel Cake

Dark chocolate truffles

I have just finished reading The Great Chocolate Book by David Lebovitz, the book lives up to it's title, it is a great book and it's by one of my favourite Bloggers too.
The book tells you everything you could ever want to know about chocolate, from how it's made to where to buy the best. There's even a section on the health benefits if you want an excuse to eat more! Included in the book are 30 recipes which are all very tempting. I am looking forward to making the Black bottom cupcakes very soon.

This time I chose truffles, and it was a very good decision! They're a doddle to make but look professional. I added a generous slug of whisky to mine and coated them in Lindt 85% for a serious cocoa hit, they were than rolled in cocoa powder.

The result? seriously good truffles, especially if you like chocolate dark. you could change the recipe to milk or even white chocolate for a milder flavour. The whisky could be replaced by any number of things, I'm thinking orange zest. I might try rolling them in chopped nuts as well for a different finish and texture. Now I'm off to eat a truffle...

Recipe:
(adapted from The Great Chocolate Book by David Lebovitz)

150g of good dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
150ml Double/Heavy cream
A good slug of whisky or your favourite liquor
About 120g chocolate for coating
Cocoa powder on a plate or in a bowl.

Method:

1. Heat the cream in a pan until just beginning to bubble.
2. Pour the cream over the broken chocolate, add the Whisky and whisk until it is a smooth, thick liquid.
3. Leave to set, it must be firm.
4. Use a melon baller or spoon to scoop balls of the mixture. chill well in the fridge.
5. Roll the truffle mixture between your hands to form balls, work quickly or they will melt, and you'll be in a mess!
6. melt the chocolate for coating, and one at a time drop the truffles into it to coat, remove the and quickly drop them into the cocoa powder roll and set aside to cool.
7. Place in paper cases or a nice box, or just eat them!