Friday 19th of April 2013

This was one of those dishes that came to me out of nowhere,  just an inkling of a thought scribbled in my little 'Field Notes' notebook one afternoon. 

Marrow is a vegetable that, I think, either gets ignored in favour of the more glamorous 'Mediterranean' vegetables, or is ruined by being alternately stuffed with underseasoned mince or drowned in 'white sauce'.  As with so many vegetables. I think that the way to bring out its true flavour is to chop it up and roast it (in this case, anointed with a tiny amount of oil  and cooked for about half an hour at 190ºc).  I decided,  today,  to go with my jotted-down instinct and added, halfway through the cooking time,  some sliced 'cooking' chorizo.  Finished just before serving with a scattered handful of roughly chopped basil and some toasted pine nuts,  it went beautifully with our roast chicken and will,  I suspect,  become a regular standby.  Happy Friday, everyone!

Cath xx

Sunday 14th of April 2013

The final weekend of the school holidays has been, for me, split between relaxing before the chaos hits and cooking up a bit of a storm to prepare for busy days ahead.  We enjoyed my Lamb Stew with Summer Flavours on Friday night, helped along by a steaming mound of couscous, some salad and a scattering heaping pile of my Herby Cheese.

Saturday Lunch was a courgette and goat's cheese tart; made to my usual recipe, but using my lovely new rectangular tart tin from Lakeland.  The new tin made the tart much more presentable and neater to slice, though I found it rather more difficult to get the tart out of this tin than with my workaday round tins.  We ate the tart with some salad and steamed new potatoes (I normally eschew potatoes with party, but I ran across these spanking Charlotte potatoes and was irresistibly drawn to them...  In the evening, the boys and I enjoyed a casual supper of cheese and biscuits with salad and fruit in front of Doctor Who and The Voice.  I like a cheeky weekend fix of Sir Tom, I do (even if his tendency towards name-dropping is worse than ever!).

Now, with school bags packed and ready for the morning, I can truly relax, having cooked an enormous batch of Slow-Cooked Onions (and I used red onions today) to see us through the next couple of weeks, prepared a very nice-looking vegetable curry to go in the slow-cooker tomorrow and served up a bacon and mushroom risotto for lunch.  In advance of school starting tomorrow, the boys and I are looking forward to a 'last supper' of mussels in garlic butter sauce with some crusty bread before it's back to metro, boulot, dodo. Back to the grindstone...

Cath xx

Wednesday 10th of April 2013

Okay, so we had good ol' roast chicken for supper (again), but owing to my increasing aversion to potatoes-with-what-feels-like-absolutely-everything, I needed to cook something that came up to scratch in the hearty, satisfying stakes without being an obvious, 'I just don't want to make potatoes' thing.  Now, I appreciate that a celeriac is not something that, ahem, normal people necessarily have just knocking about in their vegetable basket, but I did - still on a bit of a Francophile tip, I was planning to make celeriac rémoulade later this week but, hey, them's the breaks... Celeriac & Mushroom Gratin it was!

In actual fact, as far as side dishes for roast chicken go, this one is a definite keeper.  I peeled the celeriac, halved and then sliced it.  I popped the pieces in a pan of cold water along with a couple of chopped shallots and brought it all to the boil.  Once drained, I layered the celeriac and shallot in a roasting pan with some sliced mushrooms, scattering a bit of chopped tarragon (mmmm...) between the layers.  Poured over a 284ml carton of whipping cream (though double would also be fine, that's just what I had to hand), ground over some (white) pepper and covered it with a handful of grated parmesan.  That was it; ready for 45 minutes in the oven at 180ºc (which was, helpfully, the second half of the chicken's cooking time).  I allowed the gratin to rest for 10 minutes alongside the chicken after taking them out of the oven; I always think that baked dishes like this benefit from being served on the warm side, rather than searingly hot, they seem to taste more of themselves, somehow.

Cath xx

Sunday 7th of April 2013

Home from a lovely week staying with my parents and guess what? I'm straight back into the kitchen!

For some reason at the moment, I've gotten a bit obsessed (again) with French food, so today for lunch we ate one of my personal favourites, poulet à l'estragon (chicken with tarragon).  This is such a French classic, and it's a shame that this herb is often so overlooked, as it really is magical when combined with chicken like this.

For my Distracted version of this dish, I marinade eight chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on) in about 100ml of rapeseed oil mixed with a dash of vinegar, a minced clove of garlic, a good pinch of sea salt flakes and a teaspoonful of dried tarragon.  Leave this for an hour or two.  I like to cut some potatoes up and parboil them during the marinading. then put them in the bottom of the tin I'm going to cook the chicken in.  When you're ready to cook, put the chicken pieces, skin-side up, on top of the potatoes and pour over the remaining marinade.  Cook at 180ºc for 20 minutes, then pour a glassful of dry white wine into the roasting tin.  Cook for another 25 minutes, then transfer the chicken and potatoes to a serving dish and keep them warm while you make the sauce.

Tip all the juices from the tin into a small saucepan and bring them to a simmer.  Whisk in the juice of half a lemon, a little white pepper to taste and 2 tbsp double cream.  Add some chopped fresh tarragon.  Simmer, still whisking, for a few minutes until the sauce thickens slightly, then pour over the chicken and potatoes in the serving dish. Throw over a bit more fresh tarragon and serve with a green salad.

To follow lunch, and in keeping with the obvious (though admittedly unintentional) theme of the day, we ate some madeleines that I made this morning.  I then proceeded, in clearly-obsessive Francophile mode, to make gougères for supper, but that's another story...

Cath xx

Wednesday 27th of March 2013

Tonight, I tried a recipe from a cookery magazine.  BBC Good Food carried this recipe for Roast Carrot Soup with Pancetta Croutons ages ago and, as is my way, I ripped it out, stashed it in a drawer and promptly forgot all about it.  Until tonight that is, when it was just too cold for anything other than a massive pan of soup. I'd already found a huge bag of carrots lingering in the cupboard; luckily I had some sliced pancetta in the 'fridge and had just baked a loaf of lovely granary bread.  Job done! The recipe is highly recommended by the way...

Cath xx

Tuesday 26th of March 2013

A favourite recipe tonight, or a riff on it at least, adapting it for the slow-cooker... This is based on Mary Berry's 'Chardonnay Chicken with Artichoke Hearts' from Cook Now, Eat Later, but is very much my lazy-arse 'distracted' version.  Somehow all my regular 'book recipes' suffer this fate eventually, with the exception of those written by my kitchen God, the sainted Mr Simon Hopkinson (or Si-Ho, as he is very affectionately know at Distracted Towers).  I simply do not muck about with his recipes; he wrote them that way for a reason and I love every single one of them just the way it is, whether for late-night, drool-inducing bedtime reading or for spattering with butter, flecks of chopped herbs and roasting juices while I cook yet-another much loved favourite.

200g slow-cooked onions or 1 can EAZY fried onions
250g small chestnut mushrooms
8 chicken thighs, bones left in but skin pulled off
2 x 280g jars of chargrilled artichoke hearts in oil
200ml dry white wine 
1 tbsp cornflour
3 tbsp crème fraîche

Put the onions and the mushrooms in the bottom of the slow-cooker pot.  Add the chicken thighs in as close to a single layer as you can manage, then add the drained artichoke hearts (I recommend saving the oil to use in salad dressings).  Whisk the wine, cornflour and crème fraîche together, adding a twist or three of pepper, then pour this into the pot.  Cook on LOW all day.

I served this with couscous and a big green salad, but a bowl of rice or some crusty bread, along with a green vegetable of some sort, would be an equally good option.

Cath xx

Monday 25th of March 2013

Well, what a hectic (and BLOOMING FREEZING COLD) few days we've had at Distracted Towers.  The weekend consisted, mainly, of trying to keep the children occupied indoors when the weather was so dismal, which usually, for me at least, means roping them into some kitchen activities.  We cooked a huge batch of my slow-cooked onions.  We did them, this time, with red onions, as I especially love their sweet flavour, combined with stickiness when cooked this way.  A large portion of the onions went into the base of an ovenproof dish and was topped with chicken thighs with some soft goat's cheese pushed under the skin.  This was roasted for 45 mins at 180ºc and served with a basket of baguette chunks and some salad leaves for a surprisingly warming and really very satisfying meal.

Of course, we needed something sweet as well, and that came (as it so often does) in the form of my Fabulous Chocolate Brownies.  I had prepared some Jam Ice-Cream (strawberry as usual, but with a hint of amaretto for a change) with this weekend in mind, but what with the weather and all, serving ice-cream would just feel downright silly!

Tonight is, of course, a Monday so, armed with a batch of My Big Fat Chilli con Carne from the slow-cooker, I laid on a mini Tex-Mex fiesta with taco shells (bought-in!), grated cheddar, salad leaves, sliced avocado and soured cream.  Plates all clean, and out of the door on time...  Result!

Cath xx