'Banging' Nachos

Nacho platters are becoming a big favourite with us, midweek, for a fast, slightly 'treaty' supper that doesn't break the bank (and see my recipe for Loaded Beef & Bean Nachos as well).  They are also a great way to get children to eat more pulses and vegetables.  I prefer to make my own tortilla 'chips' for these; I feel that the method I give here makes for a more filling base to the plate than a bag of bought tortilla chips provides, plus you can avoid all the extra added salt of the commercially fried chips.  Just take some corn or flour tortillas, cut each disc into six wedges and spread out on lightly oiled baking sheets.  Bake at 200°c for 5 minutes, then turn them and return to the oven for another five minutes.  You can make these in advance and keep them in a tin if you like, but  they aren't a great deal of effort even if you do everything for this meal just before you eat it.  

Making this sauce by mixing spices and herbs with a drained can of chopped tomatoes was something of a revelation for me when I first tried it out (necessity being the mother of invention, as they say) and I share it with you now. It gives you a lovely thick, spicy sauce just perfect for nacho-type dishes or just as a dipping sauce; no need to shell out for long-life jars of incredibly salty, yet suspiciously sweet, 'salsa' ever again!

Sausage Nacho Platter

6 flour tortillas, cut and baked as above
6 sausages
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 tsp mild chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
400g can mixed beans, drained
100g sweetcorn, defrosted if frozen
4 fat spring onions, chopped
1 small red pepper, diced
150g Edam, grated

Skin the sausages and divide each into three.  Heat some cooking oil in a non-stick pan and fry the sausage pieces until well cooked through (about 3 minutes a side).  Meanwhile, drain the excess juice from the tomatoes, discard it and mix the chili powder, cumin and oregano in with the tomato chunks.

Spread the tortilla chips out across a very large plate, then top with the beans and the sweetcorn.  Scatter over the red pepper dice and the chopped spring onion.  Nestle the sausage 'nuggets' atop the vegetables, then dollop and drizzle the spicy tomato mixture all around the surface.  Cover everything with the grated Edam and pop the plate in a hot oven until everything is covered in molten, oozing cheese.  Serve with a crisp green salad on the side.

Cath xx

Quick & Mix

I love homemade bread, don't you?  Still a little warm, dunked in soup or topped with lashings of butter and, just maybe, some cheese?  I crave good bread and this recipe means that I can satisfy that need easily, pretty much whenever I feel like it.  You really do need a mixer or processor to really appreciate the speed, but you can take the 'scenic route' with a bowl, wooden spoon and your hands and just take a little longer about it.  You can use a full 750g of white flour for your dough if you like, but I prefer some wholemeal in there too; it somehow makes the bread taste even more homemade!

Easy Mixer Rolls

500g strong white flour
250g strong wholemeal flour2 tsp salt
7g sachet easy-blend dried yeast
450ml warm water
a little milk
seeds, to top, if liked

Rub the butter into the flour, then stir in the salt and then the yeast.  Mix in the water, then knead until the dough is soft and smooth.  Cover the bowl and leave to rise for 30 minutes.  Divde the dough into 12, roll each into a ball and place side-by-side, slighly spaced apart, in a roasting tin.  Brush with milk and sprinkle with seeds, if you like (I usually use poppy, sesame and sunflower seeds separately, see picture; sometimes I mix some mustard seeds in with the poppy seeds too).  Bake at 200°c for 15 minutes, remove to  rack and cool slightly before serving.

You can also use this dough to bake a loaf (in a 2lb tin or formed into a round on a baking sheet) at the same temperature for 35 minutes.  My other favourite thing to do with this quick dough is my Fake Foccacia.  For this, you need to pat the dough into the bottom of an 8"/20cm sandwich tin and, withe your fingers, poke indentations all over the surface.  Dabble the loaf with olive oil (garlic-infused, if you have it) and sprinkle with freshy chopped rosemary or thyme.  Bake for 30 minutes and cool slightly in the tin before removing it to a rack to finish cooling.

Cath xx

Weekend Cook

While cooking during the week has its rewards and is a worthwhile occupation, it can be fraught; keeping the family happy, the cook composed and the suicide hour as peaceful as is reasonably possible.  Weekdays find me looking for shortcuts, quick solutions and recipes for the all-important slow-cooker.

Weekends are another matter, though.  I am rarely more at peace with myself than pootling around in my little kitchen at the weekend; baking for the week ahead, preparing bits and bobs in advance for the week's meals and just generally idling hours away planning lovely meals...

Saturday night was pie night for us and, while I would usually make a pie like this with leftover roast, or otherwise cooked, chicken, his one was a scratch pie from start to finish.  Poached chicken has such a beautiful succulence in a pie and the liquid provides a tasty sauce with little work.

Chicken & Leek Pie

Obviously you could use leftover cooked chicken, as detailed above and just steam the leeks while you make the sauce with a pint of stronger chicken stock (and I would recommend the Knorr Stock Pot stock gel if you have no homemade stuff to hand)


4 chicken breast fillets
60ml dry vermouth
3 leeks, trimmed and sliced thickly
light chicken stock or water, to cover
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 dried whole chilli pepper
40g butter
40g flour
1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry

Put the leeks and chicken breasts into a large saucepan and pour over the vermouth.  Pour the stock or water into the pan and add the peppercorns, bay leaves and chilli.  Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes.  Remove the chicken and leeks from the pan with a slotted spoon and strain the liquid into a jug.  Pour the liquid back into the clean pan and boil it, reducing it to a pint.  Leave the liquid to cool.  Chunk or slice the chicken breasts as you like and put them, and the leeks, into a pie dish.  Put the butter and flour into a saucepan with the poaching liquid and bring to the boil, whisking continuously.  Turn the heat down and simmer, still whisking, until the sauce has thickened.  Pour this into the dish and gently mix to coat the other ingredients.  Top the dish with the puff pastry and bake at 180°c for 30-45 minutes until the pastry is cooked and everything has had chance to heat through completely.



This weekend has been boosted by my acquisition of Kitchen, the lovely new offering from Nigella Lawson.  Filled with all sorts of good things and the sort of perceptive, evocative writing she is so well-known for, I have been sofa-bound, armed with this book, whenever time allows.

Today, I decided to try out a few of the recipes; the Everyday Brownies (p.217) and the Crustless Pizza (p.26) and the Ham Hocks in Cider (p.368).  The brownies were very popular with the children, being more 'cakey' and considerably less opulent than my usual Fabulous Chocolate Brownies.  The pizza was a delicious kind of  'Yorkshire Pudding' pizza and went down very well with all of us at lunchtime.

Ham Hocks in Cider are now simmering on the stovetop in readiness for our supper this evening.  Happily, the ingredients are things that I generally have in the house (apart from the fennel seeds, so I left those out and added a couple of bay leaves instead).  Two large hocks cost only £3.00 from the butcher yesterday, so hardly extravagant.  To that end, I plan to serve the hocks with extravagantly buttery mashed potatoes and, I think, the last of the purple sprouting...

Cath xx

Cobblers!

Our friendly door-to-door fish man brought, among other things, some river cobbler round on his van this week.  I'd never tried this fish before, only knowing that it had been implicated in a couple of Trading Standards cases where it was being sold as cod by unscrupulous fish-and-chip shop owners.  If it can pass for cod while being more sustainable and therefore less culinarily unethical , I'm interested...but then, I love a bit of controversy, me!

While I love a good fish pie, it can be a bit of a production for a simple weeknight supper.  These little jackets are a time-and-stress friendly option; always welcome on the first day back at school! 

Fish Pie Jackets

4 large baking potatoes, scrubbed and pricked
2 fillets firm white fish (and see above)
milk
200g spinach, washed
50g parmesan cheese, grated
salt and pepper to taste

Bake the potatoes.  I bake them for 90 minutes in a 160°c oven.  Meanwhile, poach the fish in enough milk to just cover it.  I do this in the microwave for speed; one of the few things that I do use the popty ping for.  Just make sure that it's in a covered dish!  Put the spinach into a large bowl.  When the potatoes are ready, halve them and scoop out the cooked potato into the bowl on top of the spinach; the heat from the spuds will wilt the leaves.  Mash the potato and spinach together, the add the fish, flaking it and folding it in carefully.  Add as much of the poaching milk as you need, to make a nice soft 'mash' consistency and then season the mixture (mainly with pepper, don't forget that the parmesan is salty too!).  Fill the potato shells with the fish mixture and sprinkle with the grated cheese.  Put the jackets on a baking tray and bake at 200°c for 20 minutes to heat through and crisp up.

I serve these with sweetcorn as an extra 'fish pie' ingredient and very good it is too!

Cath xx

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