Spaghetti Alla Puttanesca

Another day, another meal, another Jamie's 30 minute challenge.  This time I opted for the Spaghetti alla puttanesca which is served with crunchy salad, garlic bread and silky chocolate ganache.

This sounds amazing, but i was a bit concerned about how much hubby would enjoy this.  He doesn't like tuna or olives, which are two key ingredients in the spaghetti, but you never know, he might surprise himself.

My kitchen started out with this assortment of ingredients:

We struggled again with the purchase of all the ingredients.  Nothing too major this time, we couldn't find palmiers, so ended up substituting shortbread.

The garlic bread was the first task.  I have made garlic bread before, but never like this.  A ciabatta is sliced to form grooves and placed on some soggy greaseproof paper... sounds wierd, but stick with it.  This is then drizzled with olive oil and then you crush over some garlic and scatter with chopped parsley.  It gets  bit messy, but you need to cover the ciabatta and ensure you get the ingredients into the grooves.  This is then wrapped and placed in the oven.

It comes out looking like this, and it tastes delicious.

Once you have tried garlic bread this way there will be no going back.

The next job was to start melting the chocolate for the ganache, along with butter, cream, salt and clementine zest.

The spaghetti cooks in the saucepan underneath the chocolate bowl... less washing up which is always good, but it would probably be easier to use two saucepans.

The sauce is created in a frying pan adding the tuna oil, garlic, capers and anchovies.  I love adding anchovies to a frying pan and watching them disappear - I am so easily pleased!

The chilies and parsley stalks are then added followed by the tuna itself, olives, cinnamon and tinned tomatoes (or passata if you are feeling posh).

Back to the ganache - pouring these into tea cups - Jamie suggests espresso cups, but I don't have any, so we used what we had. These are then served with the biscuits, like so:

Next it is one of my favourite bits, using the food processor.  Fennel and radishes form the salad along with some olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper.  I will always love how quick the processor makes a nice salad.

Then all that is left, is the spaghetti.  Combining everything together to create this:

So, the completed meal was great.  Both of us enjoyed the pasta, the salad was great - even for someone who thought they didn't like fennel and the garlic bread was fabulous and yes it was all done within 30 minutes again.

The only thing I wouldn't make again would be the ganache.  I love chocolate, but this was just too much.  I know we used bigger cups than suggested but I did adjust the recipe quantities for 2 servings so it should have been the right serving size.  It was just way to rich for me.  I managed a couple of spoonfuls.  Hubby did much better and finished mine up later.

Jamie's smoked salmon

Well, after a HUGE break, I decided it might be time to revive the blog.

Dinner of choice was from Jamie's 30 minute meals again - this time the smoked salmon, potato salad, beets and cottage cheese with rye bread and home made butter.

Our starting ingredients looked a little something like this:

This sounded like a much more simple recipe than some of the others - mainly because a lot of the main dishes don't require any cooking.

Rye bread is served as is... off to a good start.  Potatoes are boiled with lemon peel which I have to admit sounded a bit odd.

The salmon is placed on the board in 'rustic waves' which is just ridiculous, with horseradish, seasoning, lemon and olive oil.

The butter is the thing that really concerned me about this recipe.  Now I know the basics, but I really did not expect this.  You put double cream in a mixer with beater attachments and leave it et voila! butter.  Honestly the thought of smearing double cream on bread really turned me off.  Hubby enjoyed it though, so it can't be all bad.  This is what the 'creamy' butter looked like:

The beetroot is cut and arranged with splashes of oil, balsamic, basil and cottage cheese.

The potatoes should then be done and you toss them with some dill, butter, olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice.

That's it... see, I told you this was an easy one.

So, our completed meal consisted of the salmon:

The potatoes:

and the beetroot:

This is how my meal looked:

Hubby took a slightly different approach and ate this like this:

In all the meal took way less than the 30 minutes to prepare - we were closer to 20 minutes.

There isn't much to dislike as it is more about arranging ingredients than cooking.  Hubby really enjoyed this one.  I thought it was ok, but the butter concerned me and I didn't really like the beetroot/cottage cheese combination... so mixed reception... on to the next one.

Tofu Triangles

Let me start by saying, I don't like tofu.  I've tried it before - it tastes of nothing and the texture reminds me all too much of egg. Bleugh!

So, tofu seems like the perfect base for dinner right?

We visited Hoo Hing earlier in the day, which by the way is an excellent place to shop.  So many exciting ingredients that you just can't get elsewhere. Check it out here:  http://www.hoohing.com/

So, as usual we bought a few additional 'random' items to try out.  One being tofu, because you must be able to do something interesting with it right?

Having flicked through my books I decided to try some tofu triangles from one of the Chinese themed books.  This will only work with firm tofu!  Sugar, salt, 5 spice, ginger and garlic go in a tub, the tofu is then cut into triangles and coated.  The recipe called for this to then be left for an hour, but I didn't have time.  These then get deep fried for 10 minutes and come out looking something like this:

I have to say these were really good.  Crispy on the outside, soft in the middle and the flavouring actually made the tofu taste of something!  Result!

We had this with some miso soup, which is oh so simple.  Miso seasoning added to water with noodles, veg and of course the left over tofu for about 3 minutes.  This looked a little something like this:

We also have a tradition when we visit the Chinese supermarket.  Hubbie has to buy a drink, some have been good, some not so good.  This week's little gem was this:

Love the label placement!  It actually says Grass Jelly Drink and it is as disgusting as it sounds.

Easter cupcakes

You know a recipe for chocolate cake is going to be good if it contains chocolate, proper chocolate, and not just cocoa powder.

I wanted to make some cupcakes to take to work, I decided to try to make these look like nests with little eggs in... here's how it worked...

The recipe is from the Primrose Bakery book.  You all know how to make cake - ingredients go in, get mixed, and put into cases.  This recipe was a little different to those I have done before as it called for the egg yolks to  be added first with all the usual ingredients.  The egg whites are then whisked separately until they form soft peaks.  This is then added at the last minute and folded in to make the cupcakes light and airy.

The recipes in the book are for either large or small cupcakes. Large is muffin sized, I still haven't worked out what small is.  I put the mixture into standard cupcake cases and it made 24 - it was supposed to make 36 small cupcakes so I guess mine were somewhere in the middle.

I made the chocolate icing from the book again.  This was just butter, icing sugar and more melted chocolate.  It made quite a soft icing so as I wanted to pipe it I ended up adding more icing sugar.

This is the end result:

Apparently they were rather good.

30 minute Chicken Satay

Ok, so technically I didn't cook this... I helped, but Hubbie did most of the work.  This is another recipe from Jamie's 30 minute meals - Chicken Skewers, Satay Sauce, Fiery Noodle Salad and Fruit and Mint Sugar.

Made for our anniversary meal as I was working late.  I love chicken Satay, Hubbie loves pineapple, but neither of us like the other.  So, this is what we started with:

(Well aware the chilli looks odd, this is because we freeze them...works really well)

The food processor comes out again for this recipe and all the ingredients for the satay sauce go in and come out looking pretty tasty.  Some of this goes in a bowl for dipping later.  The rest is used to coat the chicken.

The chicken skewers are really easy to do - I have done skewers before, cut chicken up and threaded it on... Jamie makes it easier, you thread the skewers through the breasts then just cut through once done.  Simples.
These are then grilled, turning later and drizzling with some honey.

The sides for this dish are little gem lettuces, cut so you can use them to scoop up chicken and noodles later and noodles.

The noodles are put in hot water to soak.  Meanwhile, you hit some cashew nuts with a rolling pin, which is always good fun, and heat up the frying pan so you can toast them.

Red onion, chilli, and coriander stalks are chopped in the food processor then put in the serving bowl with soy sauce, olive oil, lime juice, sesame oil and fish sauce - I love what fish sauce does to food, but wow does it smell awful!  Once the noodles are ready and drained they are added to the bowl along with the cashews and coriander leaves.  You toss that together and serve.

Dessert was the pineapple.  I HATE pineapple, but apparently if you don't, this is pretty good... lay slices of pinapple on a plate with some blueberries, in a pestle and mortar pound some sugar and mint leaves and scatter this mixture over the fruit.  Serve with coconut yoghurt.

So this is what the meal looked like:

and this is what my plate looked like:

The boy did good... took him longer that 30 minutes - closer to 45, but he doesn't like having 6 things on the go at the same time and will normally cook by arranging everything in little pots to be added when required so this way of cooking is a little odd for him.

The meal was great, even Hubbie liked the satay and he would normally hate this.  Dessert was ok, but I wasn't really expecting to like it anyway.

Anjum's Beef Madras, Naan and Aromatic Pilaf Rice

So, the last few posts have been a little Jamie orientated.  But my new Anjum Anand book, I love curry, finally arrived!

I have had this book on order for about 2 months, it is seriously difficult to get hold of.  I have one of her other books which is great so I really wanted this too.

We decided for our first culinary adventure from this book we would try out the madras recipe as this is Hubby's all time favourite when it comes to curry.

The madras, being beef, takes a LONG time to cook.  But that is ok, it just makes this a weekend recipe.  The recipe involves browning some onions then adding in an assortment of ground spices (this is where it pays to have an electric spice grinder - I don't miss the days when we only had a pestle and mortar!).  The beef is then added with a little water to stop everything sticking and this is cooked for a few minutes to colour and seal.

Ginger, garlic, tomatoes are added with some whole green chillies and the sauce is then reduced.  Once reduced, you add more water and simmer for about 1 hour 15 minutes (see what I mean about it being a weekend recipe?)

Once this time is up you reduce the sauce AGAIN!  Then add cream and coriander to serve.

The great thing about the curry taking so long, unattended is that you have time to make the rice and naan.

I have made naan before, but Anjum has a recipe for 'instant naan' which is brilliant as it is so incredibly quick.  Naan's involve yoghurt which is a bit of a pain as you can only buy natural yoghurt in huge quantities.  We were making half a batch of the naan as we were just cooking for 2 so this called for 2 tablespoons.  I really didn't want to buy loads, so we cheated and bought a vanilla corner yoghurt, used what we needed and threw out the fruit flavoured corner.  Ok, so this is not natural yoghurt, but it was close enough and seemed to work.  I wouldn't recommend trying this with a flavoured yoghurt though, Strawberry naan may be a little odd.

Anjum gives you a few ideas for flavouring your naan.  We chose to top ours with black onion seeds.  This was the result:

These were delicious, very quick and easy to the point that you have to wonder why we buy then normally.  We will definitely make our own in future.

We also made aromatic rice pilaf to go with the madras.  Normally we don't bother with rice, but I wanted to try the recipe out.  I love making this kind of rice because it really is a throw everything in and leave it kind of job.

The rice and the madras in completed form looked like this:

Sorry about the photo, it is difficult to make curry look appetizing and my photography skills just aren't up to it!

The rice was a little disappointing actually.  I have made this before in a slightly different form from another book and this seemed to work better.  Anjum's recipe calls for simmering for 12 -13 minutes, which I did, but the rice wasn't really cooked so I had to add a little more water and leave it a while longer.  However, saying that it is still much more interesting than plain boiled rice which is duller than a very dull thing (in my opinion).

The madras was HOT.  Well, I thought it was hot, Hubby thought it was mild, but he has destroyed his taste buds when it comes to spicy food.  This was probably my own fault as we have some seriously spicy chilli powder which has ruined many a meal before now.

It tasted good though, and the beef benefited from the hour and a half cooking time.  Hubby enjoyed it and he is the real connoisseur, however he said he would prefer chicken next time.

So, Madras - nice but would make with chicken next time - this is just personal preference though, so if you like meaty, fairly hot curries it is a good one.

Rice - ok, I will probably stick with the other recipe I have though, it is quicker and tastier.

Naan - om nom nom.  These will be making an appearance on our dining room table again sometime very soon.

Vanilla Cupcakes

Cupcakes have never been my thing.  I like making them, but I can never get them to look as pretty as the ones you see in the book.

I have decided the only way to get any better is to practice, so that is what I prepared to do this weekend.

We received a book as a gift a couple of Christmas' ago - Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery.  The cupcakes in this book look delicious, and really cute.  There are a lot of different flavours both for the cakes and the icing/frosting.

I decided to start simple.  Vanilla cupcakes and vanilla frosting.  Sounds a little dull, but I wasn't sure how they would turn out so didn't want to waste exciting ingredients.

What I love about this book is that it actually tells you how to ice the cupcakes.   Proper steps explain how much icing to use and how to manipulate it with your knife to get the right finish.

I have to say, I am rather pleased with the end result.  Although I do now have a kitchen covered in icing sugar and some icing on my slipper!

Pictures?  Why certainly...anyone fancy one?

Jamie's 30 minute rib-eye stir-fry and dan dan Noodles

So, it was time to try another recipe from Jamie's 30 minute meals.  This time we decided on rib-eye stir-fry with dan dan noodles and chilled hibiscus tea.

We already had the steak and although this recipe sounded pretty tasty I have to admit I was concerned.  I really thought adding so much to such a nice bit of steak might be a bit much and I really didn't want to ruin it!  It also calls for blackbean sauce which I don't really like.  But, you don't know until you try, so try we did.

We had a few issues with the ingredients for this one.  After trips to both Tesco and Sainsbury's we had to make a couple of substitutions.  Bok choi was not to be found, so we replaced it with some sweetheart cabbage and we also had to replace hibiscus teabags with jasmine ones.  (Jamie does say the tea can be hibiscus, jasmine or mint).  This was what our worktop looked like once everything was assembled:

Once the pans are heating the first step is to start on the steak.  These are sprinkled with salt and pepper and left whilst you pound some Szechuan pepper in the pestle and mortar.  A little goes into each of the bowls you will be serving and the rest goes over the steak and board with some five-spice.  You then add olive oil and smear everything over the steaks.

Chilli oil, soy sauce and crushed garlic are also added to the serving bowls.  This all seemed a little odd - definitely not the way I have ever made something like this before, but if that's what Jamie wants!  Later on you add some spring onion as well and the bowls end up looking like this, which is actually kinda pretty if you like that kind of thing

The tea needs to brew, so the tea bags along with clementine and lime peel and some sugar are put into a jug (We have bought one of these now, which is much easier than trying to make these drinks in individual glasses!) which is then filled halfway with boiling water.  The chilled part comes later!

Back to the steaks and these are now put onto the griddle (2 mins each side, which is medium rare)  The timer was important here as you have to leave them whilst you do other things and remember to turn them.

Beansprouts and coriander leaf are now put into a bowl.  This is then put on the table as everyone assembles their dish themselves.

The sugar snap peas are put into the saucepan along with broccoli and bok choi (or cabbage in our case).  This is left until required later on.

The steaks are done (unless you like them cooked more thoroughly) and these are put onto a board which has been drizzled with olive oil.  You then grate ginger, chilli and garlic over the top and squeeze over some lime juice.  This looks a little something like this:

The blackbean sauce is spread around a plate and you add some lime juice and olive oil.  The greens are then added, more sauce is piled on top and a little more olive oil.  This is then ready to go.

Time to remove the tea bags.  You add clementine juice, lime juice, ice, mint leaves and the two lime halves to the jug.  Now it is chilled tea and looks rather attractive too.

The noodles are added to the pan you have just taken the greens from along with a stock cube and you go back to the serving bowls, this time adding lemon juice and honey.

The steaks are sliced and the pieces tossed to pick up all the flavours.  Messy, but effective

By the time you have sliced the steak the noodles are ready, these are divided amongst the bowls with a little of the broth and it is time to eat!

The meal in its entirety looks like this:

It looks good and it smelt tasty too.  But, what does it taste like?

The great thing about this, is that everyone can build their own.  You each have the base of the noodles, all the extras that were added to the bowls and a little of the broth but it is up to you how much else you add.  This is perfect for us as I love veggies and Hubby hates them, preferring more meat.  Also he loves coriander and although I like it, I don't like too much.

My assembled meal looked like this:

I have to say this was one of the nicest noodle concoctions we have made (and we have made a few).  The flavourings added to the steak reminded me of beef that you get from a Chinese, but so so so much nicer.  The blackbean sauce that I had been concerned about tasted fine, because it wasn't eaten alone and added to the flavours of the broth etc.

Hubby enjoyed it too, even sampling some of the vegetables, which was a bit of a result.

The chilled hibiscus (jasmine) tea was great too.  Again it tasted like a tea we have had at a Chinese restaurant and both of us had multiple servings.

A meal we will make again in it's entirety and will probably make for others too.

Oh, I suppose you want to know how long it took, being a 30 minute meal?  30 minutes exactly!

Jamie's Stuffed Cypriot Chicken

So, I thought it was time to try another recipe from Jamie's 30 Minute Meals.

Hubby chose the recipe at random, which was stuffed Cypriot chicken, pan-fried asparagus and vine tomatoes, cabbage salad, St Clement's drink and vanilla ice cream float.   Even the list of dishes sounds time consuming and we were wondering if the first meal we had tried and completed in 34 minutes was a fluke...so how did we do?

Well firstly, last time we cooked together, this time I was flying solo with hubby taking on the role of photographer.  The recipe has a rather extensive list of ingredients, but they were all easy to find, with the exception of the asparagus which, being out of season involved trips to a couple of supermarkets.  This is what we started with:

The first step involves getting the filling ready for the chicken.  This consists of chopping parsley, basil, sun-dried tomatoes and crushed garlic with some olive oil and pepper.  Once chopped you add crumbled feta and lemon zest and mix together.  This step smells amazing!  Looks good too.

It is then on to the veg.  The recipes always start with getting the equipment ready so I already had the oven on and two frying pans heating up.  It was now time to add olive oil to the pan along with squashed garlic cloves, herb sprigs (we used rosemary as we have it growing in our garden) and the vine tomatoes.

Back to the chicken, it was time to slice the breasts in half and add the filling.  I imagine the slicing of the chicken breasts might be a bit tricky if you aren't used to it, but it was fairly easy and you ended up with something looking like this:

These are then added to the pan with damp greaseproof paper over the top.

The flatbreads also involve damp greaseproof paper.  On the same board we made the filling on we add olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano with some more crushed garlic.  You rub the flatbreads on the surface to coat, wrap in the paper and put into the oven.

Back to the veg.  The tomatoes, garlic and rosemary is still on a low heat and now it is time to add the asparagus and some olives.  That's it.  Nothing more complicated.

The cabbage salad was next up and good fun to make.  I love a kitchen gadget and this book is really making me start to appreciate my food processor a whole lot more.  I've previously only really used the standard blade, but this recipe called for the slicer.  Cabbage, onion, parsley, basil and chilli whiz round and are sliced in seconds.  In a bowl you then add lemon, olive oil and salt.  The end result is a tasty looking salad like this:

At this point the chicken is turned and you also add some rosemary to the pan.  It is then covered again and left whilst we finish up - just to make sure the chicken is cooked on both sides.

This meal also involves a drink.  You are supposed to make a jug, but we don't own one that isn't a measuring jug so we decided to make it straight into glasses.  Ice and mint are added to with lemon and orange juice and sparkling water and given a little stir.

Everything is pretty much ready at this stage and it is just a case of serving and preparing for the dessert.  Ice cream, coffee, biscuits and coffee cups to the table!

Chicken is then served and sliced, which looked something like this:

The veggies stay in the pan, unless you really want to serve them.  Personally I like Jamie's idea because it involves less washing up!

The flatbreads are taken out of the oven and moved to the table.

So that was it.  Everything ready.  Total time to cook?  29 minutes! It all looked rather impressive and I was pleased to have done it in the allotted time, alone.  This was what our dining room table looked like....mmm (the food, not the table)

Ok, so it all looks good, but what did it taste like?

The chicken was great, definitely something we will make again.  It is one of those dishes which looks impressive, is tasty, but secretly was really easy to make.

I enjoyed the asparagus, although it was far too much like actual vegetable for Hubby.  He preferred the cabbage salad.  In fact the salad was a bit of a winner and will probably reappear at barbecues over the summer.

The flatbreads tasted amazing.  So much so that it was a bit difficult to remember they had started life in a packet from a supermarket.  The flavourings added make them taste so much fresher and more interesting.

The drink was a bit of an odd one.  Hubby loved it as it was incredibly refreshing.  I'm sure it would be - in the summer.  But it is February and all the ice was just a bit too cold!  Maybe we will try this one again when it is warmer outside.

So, the only thing left to sample was the dessert.  We spooned the ice cream into the cups with a cantucci biscuit then added a shot of the coffee.  Wow!  Simple - yes, Tasty - oh hell yeah.  I love coffee anyway so this was pretty perfect as desserts go.  Want to see what it looked like?

See what I mean?  How good does that look?

So, that's the lot.  The second meal we have attempted and the second success.  So far, so good and on to the next...

Jamie's 30 minute meals

So, there has been a lot of hype about this book recently and I thought it was time to give it a go.  The book was half price in Waterstones and I just couldn't resist!

I've heard complaints that the meals aren't achievable in 30 minutes so I wasn't expecting to do it that quickly.  In fact the episode I watched the other night mentioned that 30 minutes is a target goal for when you have practised the recipe a little.

The meal we chose to try first was Cheat's Pizza. The pizza is accompanied by 3 salads and a dessert of squashed cherries and vanilla mascarpone cream. All sounds very nice, right?

Ingredients:  Lots of them (see below)

As you can see all the equipment is ready to go...I have been paying attention!  Although we did have a couple of 'argh, where is the xxxx?' moments

The first step was the tomato salad.  Crushed and chopped tomatoes in a bowl with some chilli olive oil, balsamic, garlic and basil.  Very quick and easy:

Next step, Pizza!  Dough ingredients went in a food processor (I LOVE my food processor!)  Dough gets rolled and put into a pre-heated frying pan.  Job done... for now.

Pizza topping is made using the liquidiser and spread on the base you have cooking in the pan.  You add small pieces of mozzarella, parmesan and your toppings then transfer the pan to the grill to cook from the top - The base was already looking all crispy  and tasty by this point.

Mozzarella Salad was up next.  The remainder of the mozzarella with pesto spooned on, a bit of pepper, more basil leaves and a drizzle of olive oil.

The third salad, and the easiest to make is the rocket salad.  Rocket, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  In a bowl, done!  I won't bore you with a picture as it just looks like you would expect a bowl of rocket to look like!

Then it was back to the pizza to get it out of the oven and on to a board for serving:

Last but not least comes the dessert.  Mascarpone, milk and icing sugar are mixed, adding clementine zest (we couldn't find clementines so used mandarins instead).  Put into little bowls and added to with chilled, crushed cherries and served with some biscuits.  You are supposed to use fancy biscuits but I forgot them when we were out shopping for ingredients so we ended up with some Fox's butter biscuits instead.

So this is the completed meal:

So, how long did it take us?  Bearing in mind there were 2 of us doing this together so that helped.  The 5 dishes took us a grand total of 34 minutes.  I was rather pleased with that!

I enjoyed all 5 of the dishes.  My hubby didn't like the tomatoes, but he doesn't like tomato anyway.  He did however like the dressing and mopped some of that up.

The mascarpone dessert was amazing.  Kind of like a de-constructed cheesecake and one I will definitely make again.  The pizza was so quick and tasty.  We will make this again in the future instead of buying an oven ready one as this was quicker and tastier.

We are both now looking forward to trying out some of the other recipes in the book and hoping the others will be as good!