Pasta with chicken mustard sauce

Posted in recipes on 06/01/2009 04:01 am by ioannis

This has to be one of the easiest pasta dishes, and the beauty of it is you are actually cooking unusual – not just the usual tomato sauce.

Ingredients (for 2 people, and a bit leftover)

  • Pasta
  • 2 chicken breasts, skinned
  • 250ml single cream
  • 1-2 tbsp English mustard
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Garlic powder, to taste
  • Grated parmesan to serve

Cooking

  1. Cut the chicken breasts in strips
  2. Add salt and the garlic powder
  3. Pan fry until golden – make sure they are cooked through
  4. Meanwhile, set the pasta to boil. Drain when ready.
  5. Add the drained pasta in the pan with the chicken. Add the cream, mustard, and pepper. Mix.
  6. Bring to the boil, and allow to boil for 2-3 minutes or until cream is thick.
  7. Serve hot
 

77p Casserole

Posted in recipes on 05/21/2009 04:31 am by rachel

Okay, it’s not quite 77p when you’ve bought all the ingredients but it’s cheap, is the point! As summer is almost upon us, this is a good one for those days when you come in from the rain freezing cold and want some feel-good-food to warm you up! Great British Summers call for Great British Food…

You will need:

Just a standard oven and some kind of ovenproof dish big enough to fit loooooots of casserole. Oh, and a frying pan.

The raw stuff (this will do 2 greedy people with a bit left over for lunch the next day):

  • An onion. Red or white. Whatever you prefer.
  • Garlic. The real stuff or the granules, though of course the real stuff tastes better!
  • 6 Sausages. Again, whichever you prefer but best not the REALLY cheap ones. Ones with a touch of chilli or apple work well.
  • Pork liver. (That’s where the 77p comes in)
  • A tin of tomatoes.
  • A beef stock cube.

How to do it:

First- Pre-heat the oven to around 200/180 if it’s fan assisted. No idea what that is in gas terms. Ask Google! Chop the onion into rings (so just in half, then along each half once). Drain the pork liver (it usually comes in a lovely packet resembling something discarded from surgery) and chop the sausages into halves.

Next- Fry off the onion and garlic in some olive oil (or vegetable oil if you’re not posh enough to have olive oil!).

Then- Add the sausages to the pan and just fry them quickly until the skins change colour ever-so-slightly. You’re not actually cooking them so this should only take 3-4 minutes. If there’s room in the pan, add the liver. If not, tip everything out into your oven-proof dish, add some more oil to the pan and then pop the liver in. Fry, turning quickly, for 2-3 minutes. Then chuck everything into the oven-proof dish.

Finally- Make up your beef stock (about 400 ml of liquid is fine-Depends how thick you like your casserole sauce!) and pour it over everything. Add the tin of tomatoes, give everything a good stir and whack into the oven. Give it about 30-40 minutes. It’s done when the whole house smells delicious and it’s all bubbling nicely.

And there you have one nice big bowl of comfort food! Serve with a stick of crusty bread or mashed potato. Delicious!

 

Greek, home made yogurt

Posted in recipes on 05/19/2009 05:43 am by ioannis

I’ve got an obsession with yogurt and recently began making my own instead of buying from the supermarket.

It took me a while to perfect the recipe having read many online forums. So here goes the result….

Equipment

You need an oven that can run at 40° Celsius – this is the temperature required for yogurt to cultivate.

If you don’t have such an oven, you can buy a yogurt maker for around £20 online – make sure you choose one that does not need any kind of special ongoing consumables from its manufacturer. I have the Severin Yogurt Maker which comes with useful glass pots as well.

Ingredients

  • Milk (Full fat milk will give you thicker yogurt. UHT milk will not require the heating process in Step 1)
  • A pot of plain yogurt from the supermarket. Make sure what you buy is live yogurt, i.e. that it contains live culture. Going forward you can use some of the yogurt you made in a previous week!
  • Optionally, a mix the milk with 1/6th of single cream for even thicker yogurt

Procedure

Step 1 – Heat the milk (and cream) in a pot. Make sure it doesn’t boil – you can switch the fire off when you see some foam forming at the top.
Cover and set aside to cool.

Step 2 – Place some of the live yoghurt in glass or clay jars. I use about 1 teaspoon of live yogurt for every 125ml of yogurt I make.
When the milk has cooled down to about 40° C, pour in the jars and mix with the yogurt.

Step 3 – Cover and place in the oven at 40° C for 8-12 hours. After that time, the mixture will have set into yoghurt which you can refrigerate and enjoy. You will notice some whey forming at the top as well, which you can easily drain.

Step 4 – Greek style yogurt is drained and kept at cultivation temperature during the process. This gives it a thicker and smoother texture.

Place the yogurt into a sieve or colander, and make it stand into a bowl so the whey can be strained. Then place the construction into the oven at 40° C and leave for 30 – 90 minutes. Note that if you don’t have an oven that can work at that temperature, you can preheat to a higher temperature and switch the fire off to achieve the same effect.

Step 5 – Once strained, you can mix the yogurt with a whisk to remove any imperfections and refrigerate.

Bon apetit!