Friday Night Fakeaway : Ginger Chicken

Now, this is GOOD... Happy Friday, everybody

Ginger Chicken

For the sauce:

2 tbsp soy sauce

4 tbsp cider vinegar

1 tablespoon tahini

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped

1 lemon, zested and juiced

1 tbsp toasted sesame oil

4 tbsp rapeseed oil

Place all ingredients except rapeseed oil into a bowl. Slowly whisk in said oil to make a thick, pale brown sauce. Set aside while you do everything else (or you can make it the day before).

4 chicken breast fillets, cut into bite-size pieces

Cornflour

2 beaten eggs

Roll the chicken pieces in cornflour, then egg, then cornflour again.  Heat about 4 tbsp oil in a large pan and fry the chicken in batches until ncrisp and brown.  Don’t worry about cooking it all the way through, just get it looking good… Remove and drain on kitchen paper.

Now, you could (and I have)just throw it in a dish and pour the sauce over before baking it, but I like to add noodles and spinach underneath to make it a more ‘complete’ meal.  Soak two or three nests of dried egg noodles in hot water from the kettle, then drain them over a colander containing a handful or so of chopped leaf spinach.  Put this into an ovenproof dish and stir through a few spoonfuls of the sauce.  Top the noodles with the crisp pieces of chicken,  in a single layer (or as near as damn it),, then spoon over the remaining sauce, making sure you get a bit on every piece of chicken.  Scatter with some sesame seeds and bung it in a 180 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Cath xx

Jam-tastic!

Now this is bit of a revelation.  Homemade ice-cream in five minutes with no cooking!  You need a pot of cream, a jar of jam, a lemon, a shot of some sort of booze and a lemon (and you only need half of that!).  If I can get all of these things in the shop in the village, they are hardly difficult to come by.  True, you do have to freeze the ice-cream overnight, so it's hardly what you could call an instant pudding, but it is so easy that you can almost always have some in to feed the ravenous hordes, whether expected or not...

It does need to be a decent jam though, and I favour the Bonne Maman conserves.I've also had luck with blackcurrant with cassis and apricot with amaretto but I always, always go back to the favourite; strawberry with triple sec.  There's something about the orangey alcohol that just seems to bring out the true flavour of the strawberries and this has been described to me by more than one person as the most strawberry-ish strawberry ice-cream they've ever had.  Not bad for five minutes' work!

Jam Ice-Cream

284ml carton whipping cream
370g jar of jam (and see above)
2 tbsp booze of your choosing (and see above)
juice of half a lemon.

Stiffly whip the cream.  Stir the jam, alcohol and lemon juice together, then fold this mixture into the cream until thoroughly combined.  Pour into an airtight plastic container and freeze.  Transfer the box from the freezer to the 'fridge about twenty minutes to half an hour before you want to serve the ice-cream.  I normally do this as we sit down to eat, which is easy enough to remember.  Dish it out with an ice-cream scoop dipped in hot water for ease.

Cath xx

Posh Peelings

 What a busy few weeks we've had at Distracted Towers! Weekend after lovely weekend we've had friends and family visiting and lots of enjoyably drawn-out suppers around a very convivial table.  My younger son turned five last week and, eschewing a party, announced that he wanted to go to dinner at the local Italian restaurant.  Yes, he's five... and yes, we went and all had a wonderful time. These announcements are getting to be regular occurrences of late; only the weekend before he announced that he wanted mussels to eat.  His beloved, and adoring, Granny dutifully purchased said bivalves and he tucked into them with gusto... I had to snaffle some quickly to be sure of a share!

When Hubby took the boys to see his parents during the half-term holiday, he returned with a rather large bag of apples.  He confessed that he'd accepted them thinking the children would gobble them up before long, before he found out they were, in fact, 'cooking' apples.  So they sat around guilt-inducingly, until today when I finally had time to process the whole sack bag's worth.

I now have four 1-litre bags of stewed apple for the freezer, and a couple of bottles of extremely tasty apple juice.  This may just be my new best thing...

Thrifty Apple Juice

apple peelings
water

Pack the apple peelings into a deep lidded pan.  I had to use my stockpot because I'd peeled thirty-plus apples and had a veritable Mount Peelmore on the worktop.  Pour water over to just cover the peelings and bring to the boil.  Reduce the heat to a very low simmer for a couple of hours, then strain the juice and stir in some powdered sugar to taste.  Let cool before decanting into (empty wine) bottles with a funnel.  Keep in the fridge, or use some to make ice-lollies

Cath xx

Normal Service will resume shortly...

Just to let you know, it's the school holidays, and we are mired (in a good way, natch) in visitors and the like, so I shan't be posting much, if at all, for the next week or so.  Sorry!

Cath xx

Luscious Leeks

I really, and I mean REALLY, love leeks.  I adore them and would happily eat them, cooked in all sorts of ways, several times a week.  I rather rate them, too, chopped raw into salads in place of spring (or aren't we now supposed to say 'salad') onions.  Leek soup is fab and there is no easier, nor lovelier, side dish to a roast chicken than a tin of chunked up leeks, roasted with a little oil and some chestnut mushrooms chucked in halfway through cooking.  Anyway, I digress...

I remember eating something rather similar to this as a child, though only vaguely.  'Baby' (i.e. early) leeks wrapped in prosciutto, with hollandaise sauce was also quite a regular first course for entertaining in my newlywed girl-about-the-kitchen days.  Leeks and ham, or bacon, are a marvellous double act in whatever guise you choose.  See also:

• Chicken, Leeks & Bacon with a Crumble Topping (June 2007)
• Leek, Bacon & Caerphilly Tart (March 2007)
• Bean & Bacon Soup with Small Pasta (January 2011)

Leeks with Ham & Cheese

I like to use 'Black Forest Ham' in cooking more and more these day; I love the smoky flavour and find it drier and less greasy than a lot of cured hams.  It tends to be cheaper than prosciutto too, which is always nice these days!

6 slim leeks, washed, ends trimmed and cut into thirds (and see picture)
50ml dry vermouth
9 slices of ham, halved (and see above)
75g butter, plus some for greasing the dish
50g plain flour
1 tsp mustard powder
400ml milk
125ml double cream
50g strong Cheddar cheese, grated
100g fresh (i.e. stale) breadcrumbs
100g Parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 180°c.  Put the chunked up leeks in a big pan, slosh in the vermouth and top up with water.  Bring to the boil and cook until just tender.  Drain and set aside.  Melt the butter in the same saucepan, then stir in the flour and mustard powder.  Cook briefly, then pour in the milk and cream, stirring continuously.  Simmer until thickened, then add the cheese, remove from the heat and whisk like b**gery, until the cheese has completely melted into the sauce.

Wrap each chunk of leek in a piece of ham and arrange these little parcels in a reasonably shallow ovenproof dish which you have greased with a little lump of butter.  Pour the cheese sauce over the top and smooth it out as best you can.  Mix the breadcrumbs and Parmesan together, add a few grindings of black pepper, then scatter these over the dish.  Bake for 25 minutes.

I rather like a bit of salad with this but, apparently, I'm weird.... (how rude!)

Cath xx

Harvest Braised Steak

This is a precious hand-me-down from my paternal grandmother.  My beloved Granny gave this recipe to my darling Mum, who cooked it often during my years at home, before writing it out for me.  Now I pass it on to you, for fear that this delicious recipe will otherwise, one day, be lost forever.  It's a brilliant one-pot dinner, quickly prepared but slow to cook; ideal for a rainy Sunday in autumn.  Food like this just feels so right at this time of year, familiar and warming but not flash or fussy.  It's a completely self-contained meal as well, no bits and pieces or side dishes required, so very little washing-up to be done before the mad weekly rush to get the children's things ready for school tomorrow, lay out uniforms for the morning and get my babies off to bed, ready for the last week of school before half-term (and, blimey, hasn't that come around quickly!).

Harvest Braised Steak

2 tbsp oil or dripping
1 onion, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
600ml beef stock
20g cornflour, dissolved in 100ml cold water
500g carton passata OR 400g can chopped tomatoes
200g mushrooms, chopped roughly
320g can sweetcorn, drained
handful of uncooked  macaroni
800g braising steak, cut into portion-size pieces

Preheat the oven to 150°c.  Heat the fat in a large casserole pan on the hob and cook the onion and carrot until softened.  Pour in the stock and the cornflour mixture.  Add the tomatoes, mushrooms, sweetcorn and macaroni and stir well.  Lay the pieces of braising steak on top and transfer the pan to the oven.  Cook for two hours, checking occasionally that it is not becoming too dry.  Top up with a little water or stock if necessary, then serve straight from the pan at the table.

Cath xx

Friday Night Fakeaway: Meatball Pizza

My eldest son came home from school a week ago, having been on a field trip to taste the food at a local Italian restaurant (I know! How good is that? We never had cool trips like that in my day! *feels old*).  One of the dishes the children had tried, which had made a very serious impression on my lad, was "a really nice pizza with meatballs and lots of stringy cheese, Mummy".  It soon became clear that the mere notion of this full-on 'man' pizza was enough that the males of the household; from the tallest to the shortest, would pester me mercilessly until I caved in  ask me very, very nicely if I would please make a similar pizza for the Friday Night Fakeaway this week.

Pizza is, it has to be said, a favoured option for Friday nights; I have used my bread machine pizza dough recipe for almost as long as I have had the machine itself, and this simple no-cook pizza sauce is easily thrown together and left to do its thing morning, noon or night.

Love-It-and-Leave-It Pizza Sauce

1 tube tomato purée
250ml water
4 tbsp cooking oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried thyme
fresh black pepper

Stir everything together in a bowl.  Cover it with clingfilm (which I hope, by now, you have learned to keep in the freezer) and then pop the dish in the 'fridge for a few hours; overnight or all day is fine too, just leave it for a bit for the flavour to really develop.  Spread liberally onto your prepared pizza base and cook as normal.

Meatball Pizza

For tonight's meatball pizza, I defrosted some meatballs that I already had, as is my habit, in the freezer, but you can use whatever you have, buy some or make some specially.  Use as many or as few as you like, naturally.

Cook the raw meatballs in the oven at 180°c for 15 minutes until cooked through, then remove from the oven and set aside.   Turn the oven up to 220°c.  Dust your baking trays with cornmeal (polenta) or regular flour, then place the rolled-out pizza bases on to the trays.  Prick all over with a fork, then spread evenly with the tomato sauce.  Dot  the sauce-smothered pizza bases with the meatballs.  Cover the pizzas with grated mozzarella (for the 'stringy cheese' of my son's description), sprinkle with a few mixed dried herbs and finish with some grated parmesan for an extra 'cheesy' flavour.

Transfer the trays to the preheated oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until cooked; crisp around the edges with the golden, sizzling cheese settled around the nubbly forms of the meatballs.  Throw a salad of some kind together (I'm still very keen on my Black Bean & Sweetcorn Salad).  Remove the pizzas from the trays to a board,  and slice them into wedges.  Pour a glass of something lovely and enjoy the start of the weekend.

Happy Friday, everyone!  Cath xx