Oh, me and my paella...

On my birthday earlier this month, finding the queue at the Cadbury shop untenable, I sneakily visited the Professional Cookware Company shop at the designer outlet 'village' in Bridgend.  How chuffed was I, to find a gorgeous paella pan for £6.00; half price from the usual £12.00.  We have had several variations on the paella so far, starting off with the pork, chorizo and spinach version from Moro: the cookbook.  The most surprising part has been how effortless it is, nothing too taxing is ALWAYS my kitchen motto!


Gaining confidence in the process has been swift; I concocted a version with added black pudding last weekend, but tonight I truly did myself proud and I really had to share this one with you.  I suspect that you don't really need a proper paella pan for this; I'm sure a decent, deep, non-stick frying pan would do.


Chicken & Chorizo Paella with Purple Sprouting Broccoli

cooking oil (your choice)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 chicken breast fillets, cut into scraps 
1 tsp smoked paprika
80g chorizo, diced
250g paella rice
800ml chicken stock, hot
100g purple sprouting broccoli, in 2cm lengths

Heat the oil and fry the onion until soft and golden.  Add the chicken and the garlic and continue to cook until the chicken is well sealed and the garlic is fragrant in the pan.  Stir in the paprika and add the chorizo and the rice.  Pour in the chicken stock and turn the heat down to a simmer.  Leave the pan alone; stirring at this point makes the rice 'claggy', trust me!  Cook for 10 minutes, then tip the chopped purple sprouting onto the surface of the rice and leave for a further 5 minutes.  Remove the pan from the heat, cover  with foil and leave for a further five minutes. Remove the foil, fold everything together with a fork and serve, not without a hint of smugness.

Cath xx

Colourful Cookery

Sometimes, changing just one thing can make something rather dull into something really rather fabulous.  On a shopping trip last week, the children and I popped into the local heath food store to buy some spices.  While we were there, we spotted this gorgeous-looking lumaconi (meaning: snail's shells) pasta.  Unable to resist any sort of novelty, we just had to bring some home...

This red-and-white pasta bake is something I have made for the children before,  but trust me, it has finally achieved greatness and become all that it can be with the introduction of the new pasta; the sauces pool inside them, still remaining pleasantly separate and allow the surface to crisp beautifully.

 Red-and-White Pasta Bake

I usually have keep tomato sauce in the freezer in 500g portions, but you could just as easily use 400-500g's worth of some ready-made stuff.

300g lumaconi
500g tomato sauce
25g butter
25g plain flour
1 tsp mustard powder
3/4 pint milk
40g Red Leicester Cheese, grated
80g Cheddar cheese, grated

Boil the pasta in lots of salted water until just al dente.  Meanwhile, put the flour, mustard powder and butter into a saucepan with the milk and bring to the boil, whisking continuously.  When the sauce has thickened, stir in half the Cheddar cheese and set the pan aside.  Mix the rest of the Cheddar and the Red Leicester together.  Drain the pasta into a colander and transfer it to an ovenproof dish (the pasta should, ideally, sit in one layer).  Pour the tomato sauce unevenly over the pasta, leaving some areas bare, filling some of the hollows and not others, etc.  Repeat with the cheese sauce; you should have a pleasant 'patchwork pasta' effect (or something like that, anyway!).  Scatter the mixed cheeses over and bake in a 180°c oven for 20-30 minutes, until the surface is crisp and browned.

The great thing about a pasta bake like this is that you can assemble it, up until the point of baking and then either pop it in the fridge for the next day, or even freeze it.  In that case, I suggest lining the ovenproof dish with a large piece of heavy-duty kitchen foil.  Once, cool, overwrap the food and pop it all in the freezer (only if your dish is freezer-safe; most are, but do check!).  Then, once the food is frozen solid, you can slip the food out of the dish with no difficulty and transfer the foil-wrapped parcel to a big ol' freezer bag.

Cath xx

Back with a Biryani

The summer holiday is almost over and, once again, we find ourselves asking "what summer?".  Apart from the odd nice day here and there, we have been disappointed again.  Yah boo sucks to the weather!  We did, thankfully, have a good day for my little brother's wedding at the beginning of August and we've managed to make a few nice memories but still, I'm sure the summer was better, hotter and longer when I was younger... or is that just the rose-tinted memories of childhood?

Meals, for us, have taken a decidedly exotic turn  over the last few weeks, I think in lieu of the BBQ-and-Pimm's summer of my dreams, I sat, salivating, over cookbooks and planning how to cook away the pain.  We have done Mexican, Spanish, Middle-Eastern and all those beautifully-spiced and fully flavoured cuisines.  I keep returning, though, to the flavours of Indian cooking and, after a veritable curry banquret at the weekend (when a very dear friend was visiting us), we had a large cache of cooked basmati in the fridge.  This, therefore, took about 20 minutes all in, which is heroically fast, judging by my standards at the moment!

Chicken Biryani

2 tbsp oil (I use rapeseed for cooking)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
small knob fresh ginger root, grated
2 tbsp garam masala
'knife tip' of cayenne pepper 
1 chicken breast fillet, cut up into small pieces
150g purple sprouting broccoli, chopped
300-400g cooked basmati rice
small handful flaked almonds
small handful sultanas

Heat the oil and fry the onion until golden.  Add the chicken, garlic, ginger and spices and fry until the chicken is sealed, then add the chopped purple sprouting and 50ml water. Cook, stirring often, until the broccoli wilts and softens, then tip the rice, almonds and sultanas into the pan and mix thoroughly to coat everything in the spicy, oily, juices.  Cover the pan tightgly with foil and remove from the heat for 5 minutes.  Serve with raita and Indian pickles.

Cath xx

Homemade Pâté Heaven - It's Easy, I Promise!

Pâté is one of those things that, if you love it, you really love it.  I really like making my own, homemade, pâté, it can be just what I want it to be. That being said, however, I am quite 'conservative' about how my pâté should taste; I like a good livery flavour and not too many extra (for which read extraneous) flavours.  I would much rather eat a small portion of a good, simple pâté like this one than have twice the amount of strange, ersatz pâté, with odd things added to it.  This seems especially to be a problem in the run-up to Christmas, but the supermarkets especially (though independent butchers are not totally immune; I have seen some very odd things in my time) do seem keen to push pâté on us as a 'luxury' food, studded with all manner of fruits and striated with bizarre, and jarring, vegetable purées.  No matter, though, once you taste this you will always want the good stuff...

Really Easy Chicken Liver Pâté


I use GIA's Garlic Purée in my pâté, because I like it to be as smooth as possible.  You can, of course, substitute a minced clove of fresh garlic.



2 x 227g cartons of frozen chicken livers, defrosted and drained

200g butter
2 tbsp double cream
2 tbsp brandy
1 tbsp garlic purée (and see above)

Heat a frying pan and melt the butter.  Fry the chicken livers until well browned, the put everything from the pan into the food processor, with all the other ingredients.  Whizz to form a smooth purée, then pour and scrape into ramekins or one larger serving dish.  Chill the pâté until set, and until needed.  Serve with hot toast, warm rolls and, for my preference, a dish of cocktail gherkins (or cornichons, if you must) to provide tang and crunch.

Cath xx

Choccy Roccy

Generally speaking, I have much more of a 'savoury' tooth than a 'sweet' one.  I will always reach for celery, olives, cheese or nuts without even considering chocolates; I eschew the biscuit tin for a handful of my best-beloved Bombay Mix.  That being said, Rocky Road' is one of the few sweet treats that I really can't resist... So easy to make, and great for the children to help with too, my version gets a nice little kick from the ginger and is just how I like it; more 'rock' than 'choc'.  OK, it's very far from being a health food, but it's a lovely treat.  Cut into slices to serve with cups of tea or as a quick, no-effort pud, chop it up roughly to scatter over ice-cream or just break off a chunk for an instant sugar-fix...

Rocky Road

200g milk chocolate
200g plain chocolate
knob of butter
8 'pink wafer' biscuits, roughly broken up
12 glacé cherries, halved
12 marshmallows, quartered
2 tbsp glacé ginger, finely chopped
100g pistachio nuts, shelled
*hundreds and thousands, to decorate*

Melt both types of chocolate together with the butter.  Stir in all the other ingredients and mix really well to coat everything in chocolate.  Pour and scrape into a lightly oiled baking tin (whether you use a small one, for 'deep', or a larger one for 'shallow' Rocky, is up to you.  Scatter over some hundreds-and-thousands 'for pretty', if you like, then pop the whole assembly into the 'fridge.  Chill it until set, then cut, or break, it up as you like.  Enjoy!

Cath xx

Get a Bead on This..!

Not a great deal to tell you today, but look!  Look! Look at what I made!!  I went to an informal jewellery workshop this morning and in less than 2 hours, turned out this little beauty; the ideal bracelet for so many of my favourite outfits.  I find myself wearing a lot of green lately, so this will happily not be one of those items that is just perfect with one outfit but, unfortunately, only the one, i.e. it doesn't really go with anything else.  Such items are rarely good buys, and just make me feel (a) cross with myself for not wearing them more often and (b) bitter that I *wasted* money when I could have had something more versatile.  Not this baby,  I suspect that this will barely be off my arm for a looooooong time...

Cath  xx

Comforting Food. Again.

OK, Back to it.  This is what I cooked tonight, making use of the contents of the 'fridge... After using it as an accompaniment for my Fruity Spiced Chicken last night, I had loads of leftover brown rice sitting in a box, waiting to be used, so that had to go somewhere.  Rootling around in the depths of my brain, I decided that it would be just the ticket for a vegetarian 'baked rice' recipe.  So I dug some garlic butter out of the freezer (I always make masses at a time and freeze it in portions to use, not only for more garlic bread, but also in more general cooking),  and got to thinking about mushrooms and what sort of binding sauce would be good.  Obviously, you can just use regular butter and add in a few cloves of minced garlic when you fry the 'shrooms, then add some chopped herbs to the dish later, but the ready-homemade-and-frozen garlic butter plan is, I beseech you, truly the way forward.

Cheesy Mushroom Rice

700g cooked brown rice
50g garlic butter (with herbs, if possible)
400g mushrooms
40g butter
40g plain flour
1 tsp English mustard powder
500ml milk
200g Cheddar cheese

Melt the garlic butter in a large frying pan and cook the mushrooms until very brown and what I call 'squeaky'; there should be no liquid left in the pan at all and you will know just what I mean when the mushrooms, almost, seem to squeak  Meanwhile, make an all-in-one white sauce by putting the butter, flour, mustard powder and milk into a saucepan and, whisking continuously, bring it all to the boil.  Turn the heat down and simmer briefly, then remove from the heat.  Add half the grated cheese and stir well until it has melted into the sauce completely.  Put the cooked rice into an oven dish, add the mushrooms and mix the cheese sauce in thoroughly.  Top with the remaining cheese and bake at 200°c for 30 minutes or so, until the top is somewhat crisp.

It was really, really nice - I cannot sufficiently explain how much I wanted to eat, well, ALL OF IT.  This one is definitely a keeper...

Cath xx