Spicy Pasta Bake

In the search for tasty and different lunches I decided to try a home-cooked pasta bake this week.  The previous night I cooked up some pasta spirals and mixed them with the following:

• Some passata
• Crushed garlic
• Chopped chorizo
• Finely sliced shallots
• Finely chopped mushrooms
• A big pinch of chilli flakes
• Finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
• Plenty of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

I put this mixture into a baking dish and topped with grated low-fat mozzarella and some grated parmesan. Let this cook in a medium oven until the cheesey topping is bubbling and golden brown.  

I ate some for my dinner and then put some into a lunch box for the next day.  Mr. Chops was slightly dubious that it would be nice unheated but it was a pleasant surprise.  Maybe it was because the chorizo is slightly oily but the bake hadn't lost any of its moisture and in fact, the heat had increased a little bit in terms of the chilli flakes.

Thursday Night Tapas

I felt like some picky things tonight so opted for my own version of tapas. I had Chilli Prawns, Chorizo in Wine with Shallots and Prawns with Garlic and Lime juice.

Chorizo in Wine

• Slice the chorizo into half inch thick slices.
• Finely slice a shallot and a garlic clove.
• Fry the chorizo until crispy and slightly blackened at the edges. Remove from the pan.
• Add the shallot and garlic to the pan and fry until slightly golden but not browned.
• Add the chorizo back to the pan and throw in a big splash of red wine.  Allow it bubble down to half its original quantity.
• Then add some finely chopped black pepper, flat-leaf parsley and fresh thyme. Give the whole thing a stir and place into a small dish and place in the oven at the same time as the prawns.

Prawns with Garlic & Lime
This one's easy. For this and the next prawn recipe, used cooked and peeled king prawns.
Mix the prawns well with a couple of teaspoons each of olive oil and lime juice, a finely chopped garlic clove, some seasoning and chopped flat-leaf parsley.  Heat gently in the oven for approximately 15mins.

Chilli Prawns

Mix the prawns well with chilli flakes, smoked paprika, finely chopped garlic clove, some seasoning and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley. As with the other prawn dish, heat gently in the oven for approximately 15mins.


These dishes are nice served with a crusty roll.

Any of these dishes would also make a nice starter or lunch dish.

Sausage & Mash

I needed comfort food this evening and having bought sausages the other day with the plan of trying a new recipe for an Italian ragu I went with proper grub. There is no easier dinner to make.

• You boil then mash some floury spuds add lashings of butter if you're not watching your diet (lucky you!). 
• Then fry off some chopped onions until soft and lightly browned then set them aside. 
• In the same pan fry off your sausages until fully cooked. 
• Make some gravy with the onions, which you then pour over the sausages right before you serve up.  

I tried to be restrained eating this meal but I was so hungry it disappeared off my plate in a few minutes!!!

My Greek Salad

I haven't been feeling great the last few days, the flu was beginning to take hold so major amounts of drugs were required and food wasn't really a priority. But last night I felt I could just about handle a salad. I'd bought some feta during the week so that led me to a Greek salad.  I used the following:

Little Gem lettuce, chopped up
Sliced red onion, soaked in water for 10-15mins then rinsed and dried with kitchen paper

A boiled egg, cut into 8

Cherry tomatoes, quartered
Feta cheese, cut into bite-sized cubes

Dressing:

1 part cider vinegar to 3 parts olive oil

Pinch of dried oregano, crumbled finely

Garlic clove, halved

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Put all the dressing ingredients into a jar and shake well until combined. Let it sit for a half hour or so, out of the fridge, to let the flavours mingle.  Put all the salad ingredients except for the egg into a bowl, pour over the dressing and then place the egg on top. Then eat!

Steak Stuffed with Mushrooms & Asparagus

The weekend is lovely and there's nothing I love more than cooking on a Friday night listening to 80s music on the radio. I treated myself to a piece of sirloin steak and decided that I'd stuff it; thanks for the inspiration 'you-know-who'.
I quickly seared off a few asparagus spears until almost done, they should still have a decent amount of crunch.

Then I finely chopped up a few chestnut and button mushrooms and fried them gently in a little olive oil with crushed garlic, finely chopped shallot and plenty of seasoning. Allow these and the asparagu to cool before putting them into the steaks.

Lay the steaks between two sheets of cling film and flatten out as thin as possible. Then you lay the asparagus into the middle of the steak and spread the cooled mushrooms across the top. Fold either side of the steaks over to seal and put seal side down in a baking dish. Set aside while you prepare the rest of the meal.





There was a bag of baby new potatoes on offer yesterday so I decided they'd be nice roasted in their skins. Slice them lengthways and rinse them well to get rid of the starch. Pat them completely dry with kitchen paper. I preheated the baking tray then sprayed it with spray oil added the potato slices, sprayed them with more spray oil and generously seasoned with sea salt and black pepper. These take approximately 25-35mins in a preheated oven at 180C/fan 170C. Turn them every ten mins to ensure they go brown and crispy on both sides.

I char-grilled some asparagus spears on the griddle until nicely marked but still with a bite. I left some button mushrooms whole and griddled them as well.  Once the potatoes have been cooking for around 15mins add the steaks to the oven. You want them to be still juicy and pink in the centre.  Once they are cooked remove and let sit for a few minutes while you reduce down the juices they released to make a sauce. The sauce can then be spooned over the steaks just before you serve them.

Spicy Prawn Spaghetti

Sunday more often than not involves something spicy usually a curry. But this Sunday I went down the Italian route, this recipe has very few ingredients:

Spaghetti
Cooked prawns
Chilli Flakes
Crushed clove of garlic
Olive Oil
Sea salt & black pepper

Cook the spaghetti for the required length of time.  For the last couple of minutes heat a couple of teaspoons of olive oil in a frying pan add as big or as small a pinch of chilli flakes as you like. Stir it around for a minute or so then add the garlic and prawns keeping the heat moderate, you don't want burned garlic because it'll just give a bitter taste. Throw in the drained spaghetti with a little of the cooking water and add the salt and pepper. Mix everything together using two large spoons to combine the prawns with the pasta.  I ate this with a garlic pitta bread. Delish!

Thai Red Prawn Curry with Potatoes

This is the ultimate in quick dinners. I cheated and used a shop bought red curry paste, handy for when you don't want to spend the whole evening slaving over the hob. I used the following:

Couple of tablespoons of Thai red curry paste
A few asparagus spears, with the woody ends broken off
Boiled and peeled baby potatoes, which I halved
Cooked, peeled prawns
Couple of chopped shallots
Sliced red pepper
Sliced mushrooms
Handful of peas
Couple of teaspoons of lime juice
Grating of creamed coconut
Coriander herb

Gently fry off half the onion and all the mushrooms for a couple minutes until soft. Then add the paste and give it a good stir around, be careful not to have the heat too high as the paste will burn very quickly. Then add some water, you need enough to cover all the veg when its added. Grate in the coconut and add the lime juice then let it bubble gently for a couple of minutes. I also chop up some stalk of the coriander and add to the sauce. Adjust the heat and seasoning to your taste, I added a big pinch of chilli flakes. Let the sauce bubble for about 10 mins, adding the peas for the final 5, and then add the red of the ingredients to heat through.  Add a handful of chopped coriander right before you serve. I served this with Garlic, Onion and Coriander pitta bread link: GOC Bread.

Spaghetti with Chicken & Mushrooms and Garlic Pitta

I was hungry hungry hungry tonight, therefore, dinner had to be cooked the minute I got in the door from work. Chicken breasts are great because they're pretty low in fat and they cook so quickly when chopped up or flattened. Recipe as follows:

1 Chicken breast, sliced finely

5 or 6 mushrooms, thickly sliced

Quarter of red onion, sliced

Large clove garlic, crushed, half for pitta

Spaghetti
Oval pitta bread
Salt & pepper
Grating of parmesan cheese

For the pitta bread, mix a couple tablespoons of butter with half the crushed garlic clove, salt and pepper and a pinch of dried parsely. While you are doing this lightly toast the pitta bread. It should still be soft so be careful to have the toaster on a low setting. While its still hot cut a slit in the top and put in the garlic butter, pushing it right down to the bottom so the entire interior is all garlicky and buttery.

You can reheat when the spaghetti is ready by placing it over the toaster while its switched on, the residual heat from the bottom will warm it through just keep an eye on it. This probably isn't a safe way to do it but I'm still here!!

While the spaghetti is cooking, fry the chicken in a little olive oil over a high heat, its nice if it's browned a little. Then add the mushrooms, onion and garlic and keep stirring. Throw in a few spoonfuls of pasta water and let it bubble vigorously until its almost gone. At this stage, grate in some parmesan, as little or as much as you want. The addition of the cheese with the cooking water kind of makes a creamy sauce. Once its cooked, add the spaghetti to the chicken give it a good stir and serve with the pitta bread. I dare you not to like it.

Pork Stir-Fry with Noodles

Chinese style tonight. I finely sliced up a pork chop, after I'd removed all the fat. I quickly fried it and then removed it from the pan. In the meantime, I cooked some egg noodles for a couple of mins, once they're cooked strain them and rinse straight away in cold water.

Then I stir-fried the following:
Carrot matchsticks
Finely sliced red & yellow peppers
Finely sliced red onion
Finely sliced mushrooms
Scallions, cut on the diagonal with the green tops kept for garnish
Frozen peas
Crushed garlic
Grated ginger
Large pinch of chilli flakes

Pinch of Chinese Five Spice powder
2tbsp light soy sauce
Couple of drops of sesame oil
Freshly ground black pepper

You don't need to add any salt because the soy sauce will have all the salt you need.

Add the cooked pork to the stir fry with the noodles to heat through and serve immediately with the garnish of scallion greens sprinkled on top. If you like a thick sauce you can also add a tablespoon of cornflour to a couple of tablespoons of water to make an instant gravy.

MR. CHOPS MAKES DINNER

It was a super soccer Sunday yesterday and poor me, I had a little bit of a cold so Mr. Chops stepped up to the cooker and said he'd take the dinner in hand. Lovely it was too. He actually made today's dinner as well which is sitting in a big pot on the cooker but more of that later.

Anyway, he made great use of some chicken breasts! He wrapped them in back bacon rashers with lashings of pepper. With the roasted breasts, which took just under 40mins at 170C fan, he served roast potatoes (par-boiled roosters just basted in olive oil, salt & pepper just under an hour to cook), peas and green beans and gravy. Now we cheated with the gravy it was made with Bisto but what's wrong with that? We like Bisto ok! This is what our gorgeous dinner looked like:

MR CHOPS HAS A HANKERING FOR BACON

Most Saturday nights we tend to treat ourselves to a nice home cooked dinner, and last night was no exception...except for the fact we didn't want the whole hog (pardon the pun I'm sorry). Mr. Chops had great idea as earlier in the day I'd made brown bread so the idea was to incorporate the bread into the bacon dinner. Now when you say bacon in Ireland you don't mean strips of bacon or rashers as we call them. You mean a slab or loin of back bacon, unsmoked of course as Mr. Chops hates anything smoked. The local butcher was doing an offer so we availed.

Having grown up in the countryside it was impressed on me at a young age how to cook a piece of bacon. No matter that the butcher tells you its not salty it often is. If you can soak the bacon overnight in cold water, start this process early in the evening so you can change the water a couple of times before you go to bed. If you haven't time to do it overnight then a couple of changes of cold water over a few hours will be enough. Then comes the cooking process. I always add a roughly chopped carrot, bay leaf, a large onion cut into eights and a good sprinkling of black peppercorns. This is what I suppose you'd call a brine. Make sure it completely covers the meat. It looks like this:

Bring it very slowly to the boil and let it bubble gently for 20mins or so. Then carefully remove the bacon to a plate and empty the contents of the pan into a colander getting rid of the water. Put everything back into the pan and replace with hot water from the kettle just making sure again that the meat is fully covered. Again bring slowly to the boil and repeat the process of changing the water. During the last boil you can make up your mustard glaze. Oh did I not mention you finish off the cooking in the oven with a delicious mustard and honey glaze. Now its up to you but I use 3 different mustards with my honey, which should be clear and runny. Here they are:

I mix a couple of large teaspoons of each of wholegrain, English and Dijon mustard with a couple of teaspoons of clear honey. Give it a stir to bring it altogether. Its not precise, I tend to make more than I need but I always use it up on the bacon, the thicker the layer of mix the crustier it gets and yummy!!!

Preheat the oven to roughly 160C fan/170C. Probably the best tip I can give you is to double line your oven dish with tin foil, it saves on the washing up afterwards which is very important for a Saturday night. Once the bacon has bubbled for another 20mins take it out and let it dry slightly, you can also dab it all over with kitchen paper. Pierce the meat with a long skewer but try not to go all the way through you want the mustard mix to seep through and it also keeps the meat moist in the oven. Remove any excess fat and skin from the meat, sit it fat side down on the tray and lather it all over with the mustard mix. You want to smother it really. It should look like this:

Give it about 30-40mins in the oven, cover it with foil if you think its getting burned - honey does tend to caramelise. Once cooked either serve it with the usual suspects of boiled potatoes & cabbage or do what we did: fresh brown bread generously buttered, slices of large plum tomatoes and chopped scallions. Absolutely delish and very satisfying indeed!

Tonight's dinner

Well it was made last night by the Mr. Chops but the overnight resting did it nothing but favours. It was a delicious, heartwarming beef stew. It basically consisted of:


Stewing beef - Onions - Large chunks of carrots - Baby new potatoes - Couple of tsps Dried mixed herbs (Goodalls brand) - Couple tsps Dried parsley - Vegetable stock, to cover meat - Dashes of balsamic & Worcestershire sauce - Tomato sauce - Chef's brown sauce - Bay leaves - Salt & Pepper - Pinch of nutmeg

All cooked slowly for about 3 hours until the meat is breaking apart and the veg are lovely and soft.

We made proper gluttons of ourselves and had some stoneground brown bread with lashings of butter on top. I couldn't finish it all and I'm stuffed now so I'm only slowing making my way through some rosé.