Saturday, December 5, 2009

Chicken Casserole at long last!

Well I have been very remiss in updating, but the past couple of weeks has been pretty hectic. I went shopping in Belfast while visiting my cousin and have a satisfyingly well stocked larder, so all store cupboard dinners on the menu 'til christmas!
Here is one that I promised last time

Moroccan Chicken.

Ingredients
8 pieces chicken (legs and thighs) skinned
1 medium onion chopped
2 cloves garlic grated
2tsp ground coriander
1tsp cinnamon
1tsp turmeric
2 tsp cumin (I sometimes use less)
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
100g (ish) sultanas
100g (ish) dried apricots
400ml chicken stock

Fry off the chicken in a couple of Tbsp of olive oil in a large saucepan or casserole. I get the butcher to separate the thighs and legs and skin them for me, saves me the hassle. 
You just want to seal and brown the meat, so a couple of minutes each side will do. Have the oil quite hot. It will spit like crazy so keep the kids away for this.  A pan guard (looks like a flat sieve) is really handy for this. 
Remove the chicken to a plate and fry the onion in the oil. I add another tablespoon for this. You want to sweat the onion so lower the heat and don't allow the onion to colour. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes.
Add the spices and cook for a couple of minutes. The smell at this stage is GORGEOUS! 
Add the chicken back to the onion and now throw in the rest of the ingredients; tomatoes, fruit, stock.
Bring to the boil, cover and reduce to a simmer for about 40 minutes. But you can leave it for and hour. It is lovely reheated too.

This is nice with mashed potatoes or basmati rice cooked in chicken or vegetable stock.

Apart from the chicken, all the ingredients you can have in the cupboard. And it is dead cheap. My local butcher does 6 chicken legs (thighs attached) for a fiver. That serves 12 portions so about 4-5 people.


Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Butternut squash Risotto and Chicken Casserole

Well, no photos, can't find the camera cable! I will pop them up tomorrow. 

The next two recipes are inexpensive, hearty and filling and an all round hit with the kids.

Butternut squash risotto.
Ingredients are highlighted in green

The most challenging part of this dish is cutting the squash! Everything else is very child friendly! 
Preheat the oven to 200 c. 

Peel and chop a whole medium butternut. I peel it away from my hand downwards towards the chopping board, sort of 'paring' the skin away. Any peeler I have used ends up threatening to slice the tip of my finger off while peeling this monstrous vegetable!
Chop into the size of dice, actual game dice. Any bigger, it won't cook in time.
Chop a medium onion and crush two cloves of garlic
Now you are ready!
Sweat the onion and garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in an ovenproof casserole. After a few minutes, the onion should be translucent, add the s quash and 325g of Arborio or Carnaroli Risotto rice. Stir around until well coated in oil.  Add 125 ml white wine. (Try not to drink the rest of the bottle!) Let the wine bubble for a minute to allow the alcohol to burn off. Then add 900ml chicken stock (a stock cube is fine)
Stir well, bring to the boil and put in the oven for 20ish minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender. 
Stir in 150g Parmesan cheese. 
Serve.

Seriously it is that easy.

The kids love it. The first time we had it I told them we were having pumpkin pie. Why I thought this was more appealing than what it actually was I don't know. But a couple of weeks later we were in the vegetable shop and Daniel brought me over to a stand with pumpkins and said "Mam......this is a pumpkin, what you cooked in that rice was a Butternut squash!" That was the last time I sugarcoated anything for him. I felt just a little silly!

I am off to bed, too tired to add the Chicken recipe...........Tomorrow!



Monday, November 23, 2009

Today's recipe



A couple of recipes today. 
I did not get to update at all last week, so I will try and catch up this week.

We tried a new recipe on thursday, that is not on the list from the last post. 
It is Parma wrapped Cod with Pesto
It takes 5 minutes to prepare and 10 - 15 minutes to cook, and it is lovely. Daniel who is not a pesto fan even liked it. 

I used Cod fillets, cut into portion sizes. Always ask for the tail piece for the kids, as the tail has no bones.  Any bones in the other pieces I just teased out with my hands, cod bones are usually pretty big.

I laid the fillets in a tray and spread with pesto straight from the jar. You could use sundried tomato paste or any such italian pesto. 
I then grated the zest of a lemon onto the pesto and squeezed the juice around too.
Then I laid a piece of parma ham on each piece and scattered halved cherry tomatoes around the fish.
You could use olives either but I hadn't got any nice ones!

I baked it for 12 minutes  at 190 c until the fish was just cooked through and served it with spirali pasta with butter. The tray had juice that was lemony after the fish was taken out, so I put this over the pasta 

It was a hit with everyone. ( Especially me as it took no time at all!)





Monday, November 16, 2009

Family favourites


Chicken Burgers 


I was listening to the radio this morning and the last item on the news was that most families only cook 9 dinners rotating them all the time.
I think we can all relate to this! The main factor in dinner decisions is speed, affordability and whether the whole family will eat it. It got me thinking about my own dependable stand bys and thought I'd give you a list of dinners that we all like and how long they take to make.
I do try and cook at least one new thing  a week. I know this sounds ambitious, but I often go searching for a new recipe on monday or tuesday and spend the week thinking how to go about making it. I think how I can involve the kids so they can help but enjoy it, where to get the ingredients, and maybe if I can do some of it in advance. As far as possible, I try and pick recipes that use things I have in the cupboards so I don't need to do a load of shopping.
If it works out, I write it down.
So,,,, here are a few ideas

1 Butternut squash Risotto  (oven baked so it is not time consuming)
2 Pizza  (homemade so the kids can make their own)
3 Prawn stir fry with egg fried rice (the fried rice is a real favourite with the kids, they even let me put peas in it.) 
4 Chicken goujons (kids love flour, egging and breadcrumbing)
5 Chicken burgers, mashed potato and pureed veg (carrot, parsnip, sweet potato etc )
6 Macaroni and Cheese
7 Fish gratin
8 Fish Pie
9 Spaghetti Bolognese
10 Lasagna
11 Vegetable pie (We only tried it last night and it was a success)
12 Moroccan chicken casserole (the EASIEST in the world)
13 Fish Cakes
14 Tomato soup


I am going to add the recipes for all the above over the next day or two, and I will include how long (realistically!) they take to make. I will take into account that if the kids are helping it takes longer! Please try them and let me know how you get on and if the kids like them.

The recipe books that I find most family friendly are anything by Rachel Allen (that girl has her head screwed on when it comes to cooking for the kids) and any of Barefoot Contessa's (Ina Garten) recipes. there are some on the web.

First one is the recipe for the chicken burgers shown above. It is a Rachel Allen recipe slightly modified.

For 10 decent sized burgers, (they are very filling, I usually manage one and a half)

600g chicken breast and 400g pork belly minced together. If you ask the butcher to do this they will
100g breadcrumbs (buy them!! Life is too short!)
Bechamel sauce (recipe below)
Salt and Pepper
grated nutmeg (about half teaspoon)
Beaten egg
Choppen chives

For the bechamel heat 100ml of milk with a slice of onion, bayleaf, slice of carrot and 3 peppercorns. In another pot melt a tablespoon of butter and add a tablespoon of flour. Mix until in a paste and strain the hot milk in. Whisk until it is a thick sauce, it should be quite thick, bur stirrable. This takes 10-15 minutes at the longest 

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl with your hands and form into patties. They freeze really well. I don't let the kids handle them, I'm nervous about raw chicken. 
But the kids can trim the chives with a scissors and grate the nutmeg and beat the egg.
This takes about 10 minutes

Then fry for 3-4 minutes on each side in a little sunflower oil. I find they are still pink in the middle so I throw them in the oven for 5 - 8 minutes at 190c to cook through.
Serve on a bun with whatever you want..... nice with relish
Or
with mashed potatoes and pureed carrot and parsnip.

Enjoy!


Sunday, November 15, 2009

Rollie uppy pizza



There is not much you need to do to make pizza appealing to kids, but these were promising that you could freeze them and  cook  from frozen, so I had to try them.

The dough is just garden variety white dough;
1kg strong white flour
1T salt (mixed into the flour)
625 ml warm water 
1T caster sugar
3 sachets of quick yeast or 3 T dried yeast

Pour the water into a well in the flour, add sugar and yeast and mix until you form a dough. Knead for about 5 - 10 mins until you have a silky dough and achieve a zen like psychological state (!) and leave to prove in an oiled basin covered in cling film in a warm place. I used to use the tumble drier, until I broke the thermostat by not letting it cool down! Now I just use the hot press.

Then make pizza sized discs and spread  your toppings on only half the dough, and roll them up. Sealing them well.
We never got to freezing them as the hungry horaces in my family ate them all! 

The kids were quite adventurous with the toppings this time, maybe because they were wrapped up. But you dont need masses of filling either. as the cheese melts into the sauce.
They were gorgeous. I had cherry tomatoes in mine which were so juicy but also volcanically hot, so be careful!


Daniel's visit to a hotel kitchen

I know this does not come into the category of home cooking, but I could not but mention it!
After his TV appearance, Daniel was invited by his very gracious competitor. Richie Wilson is the Executive Chef in the Morrison hotel in Dublin. Richie invited Daniel to come into the kitchen and look around and meet the chefs. Little did Daniel know that Richie would have himself and Robyn in to cook too!
My husband and I were shown to our seats in a very trendy bar, and the kids went off with Richie to the kitchen where they were kitted out in their uniform. We ordered our dinner and when the order went in, Daniel and Robyn made it for us. Daniel himself went for the burger and Robyn in true celebrity style insisted on ordering off the menu and looking for a custom pasta dish with bacon, mushrooms and pesto. Yum!!
They had a wonderful time and I am very grateful to Richie for being so generous. 
I can thoroughly recommend the food in the restaurant. Gorgeous!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Diary of a fussy eater







My eldest son is a reformed faddy eater. 
I thought I would never see the day that he would eat anything unless it was beige and heavily covered in breadcrumbs. But... it has come. 
I hasten to add he is still suspicious of all things green, unless they have really and truly proven themselves to be introverts i.e. imperceptible to the human taste bud. However he is now eating all manner of exotic ingredients like ..........celery. 
It has been a bumpy ride. I asked for, and heard lots of advice. I listened to it all, tried some of it, and ultimately aged 10 years in the process. I read parenting books for the first time since I said goodbye to the toddler years and I tuned into all sorts of experts on radio shows. I really tried. 
I am afraid to say after all that, there is no magic solution or pearl of wisdom I can offer except that it was process not unlike allergy screening. By process of elimination I discovered the two facets of the dilemma; the reason for the problem, and the strategy that best worked for us. I can therefore tell you that both of these issues are as individual as the child. One thing is for sure, that it is completely and totally worth all the hard work. 
Feeding your kids is such a fundamental thing about being a parent, particularly a mother that I am truly amazed at how psychologists and child development experts seem surprised that we get so damn worked up about it. Even after nights of swotting and googling 'food fads' and discovering the agreed wisdom was that reacting to the tantrums was not necessarily the best approach, I could not help but act emotionally. I would wring my apron and demand the plates were cleaned, discuss health issues, send the child to bed hungry and sometimes sob. Of all parenting conundrums (with the exception of driving long distances) this without doubt brought out the worst in me.
So as not to bore you with every strategy I tried, as I most definitely would bore you, I will get to the punchline and tell you what the problem was and how we solved it.
It turns out that food was not so much the problem, but the weapon that was being wielded in a war that was being fought on another field. In actual fact the cause was so divorced from the whole food issue, that it is still hard to imagine that one can have anything to do with another. The cause was to do with inter family relationships, nothing serious, but enough of a big deal that my son felt the need to redress the balance a little and take control in an arena that he appeared to have control over. 
So liking or disliking food had nothing to do with it. 
I did actually already know that. The evidence was staring me in the face. The child would eat bolognese sauce with spaghetti but not linguini. Mashed potato and carrot only when mashed separately and subsequently mashed together. I mean COME ON!
So, I pandered for a short while. I allowed him to give me a list of his favourites and I cooked them or at least a variation of them for a week or two. He took the bait.
He already love helping in the kitchen, and I love cooking so that was Operation Goujon Strike II. He was called on for chopping, breadcrumbing, frying, packaging and freezing, beating and baking. We watched TV chefs for hours, on the premise that if he saw something we liked, we would make it. That was the day that the steamed mussels were born. 
We read recipe books. We even saved up our two euro coins (yes both of us) in a large jar and bought a fancy schmancy kitchen mixer together.  I think this was the most pertinent point. We did it all together. He is like me, in that company is everything. That is where I think I cracked it. No more dictatorship. My kitchen is now a modern democracy.  Who knew that is what it would take? I certainly never would have guessed.
It was not overnight,  I have merely crossed the Rubicon, the conquering is still a ways off. 
But I have a boy who is now eating french onion soup, because he made it. He eats chicken morrocan stew with coriander, cumin, and dried fruits because his favourite spice cinnamon in in it. He is eating prawn and veg stir fry because he shelled the prawns. 
Really the point I am making is that the whole process was like a CSI case but the result has been incredibly worth while. 
I would still suggest you listen to the experts, although I can promise that not one of them will have the answer, you just have to go through the process of allergy screening them 'til one sticks. 

May the force be with you!



Sunday, November 1, 2009

Haloween in the Kitchen Part 2





I have a spanking new copy of Rachel Allen's Home Cooking and it is gorgeous. I actually think I want to make everything in it. 

However, I stopped at making the Butternut Ravioli, although I changed it a bit, I used our own recipe for pasta, and added ground coriander to the Butternut filling. I also made the Chocolate fudge pudding with orange. Both were delicious and I will be definitely making them again
Robyn enjoyed making the pasta. Pasta is indestructible and kids love making it, it's like playdough.
We have a pasta machine, I bought it about 13 years ago and it has been a great investment. So long as you explain to the kids how to use it, they are a great source of serf labour in the kitchen.

The pasta is 300g of '00 flour or strong white with a bit of semolina in it, to 4 whole eggs. You can mix it in a mixer with a dough hook or use your hand.
You can knead to your hearts content, it helps it get silky and go easily through the pasta machine.

Then Robyn put it through the machine, talking to it as she did. (I could listen to her muttering under her breath all day!) It takes a few passes, getting thinner as you adjust the rollers on the machine. 
The pasta sheets need to stay covered until you are ready to use them. 
The filling is placed in teaspoon heaps sandwiched between sheets of pasta using egg wash as a glue.
I love this repetitive, methodical process. You need plenty of time for this. It is not something you do an hour before your guests arrive. You can do it up to a day in advance and leave it on trays in the fridge, tossed in semolina so they don't stick and covered in cling film or a teatowel.

I made a chorizo stew for main course. It was made and sitting in the pot to be heated up, so it needed no work while people were there. I served it with bread. The kids didn't eat this, was a bit spicy for their tastes so I made a dinner sized portion of ravioli for them. 

Dessert had to be made fresh on the spot, so I left the ingredients out and ready and made it between starter and main, and popped them in the oven.

I also satisfied a childhood desire and made Toffee Apples. They worked out great. Declan got thick wooden skewers from the butchers for the apples, far better than lollipop sticks. 
I would not advise allowing the kids to go anywhere near the Toffee making. It is just too hot. They skewered the apples and put the ingredients in the pot, that as far as I would let them go. 

They were lovely though, tricky to eat, but festive and cheery looking.

Was a lovely night.

Haloween in the Kitchen








We had guests coming for dinner last night, along with the usual bunch of trick or treaters so it gave us a great opportunity to cook our little hearts out.

I had been to the fishmonger on friday and picked up Daniel's favourite; mussels. He was making them for lunch.

Daniel prepared the mussels by rinsing them under cold water, removing the 'beard' and making sure they were all closed. Any open mussels should be discarded. 

Then, he fried a chopped shallot and a crushed clove of garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, threw in the mussels and a glass of white wine. This bubbled up, burning off the alcohol, he added chopped parsley and covered the saucepan for about 4 minutes, until the mussels opened up wide, and the flesh was still a little bouncy.

We had them with fresh homemade bread and butter to mop up the liquor.

Yummmmm!!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Our first published meal!














            











Mid Term Fun!























We decided to make a calorific afternoon snack this afternoon to celebrate our first foray into the public domain

It was also a decision based on the lack of ingredients in the house and the fact that Robyn wanted to make it. 
So we made Sweet French toast, which was yummy but is hovering above my digestive system at the moment threatening a ferocious dose of heartburn if I don't quickly have a cup of peppermint tea. Therefore, I will make this post short.

Robyn whisked up 5 eggs, added a spoon and a half of caster sugar (some ended up on the counter) and a couple of drops of vanilla extract. She added a slug of cream, and kept whipping.
We soaked six slices of bread in the mixture and fried in butter (seriously!) on a medium heat. 
The kids opted to serve our Heart Foundation special with bananas, maple syrup and whipped cream


No dinner tonight!!!

This is very new and VERY scary!

So here I am....just going for it.
I always had a fear of expressing myself through writing, but it has grown on me. 

Today I woke up with a very powerful sense of what to do next with my life. Can't begin to tell you what a big deal that is. I am not trying to suggest that I have the rest of my life sorted, I just decided to pick a path and go with it. 

You see, my son was on  a TV show yesterday, cooking. He was fantastic! We had a  great time, but what struck me was the fact that it seemed unusual to a lot of people that I involved the kids in the kitchen, and that they liked it. I had heard it from people before, that they are not inclined to cook with their kids, but yesterday, for some reason, the penny dropped with me that this was something I was good at. 

I am not a chef, I am a home cook... albeit an enthusiastic one. Really I just like feeding people. I am not endlessly patient with the kids either, I just seem to get calm in the kitchen. So I cook with them a lot. We have a rapport over the mixing bowls and baking trays. 

My plan is to document my kitchen exploits with the kids. Meals we cook together and meals we cook for each other. I will put up recipes that went down well and ones that didn't. I will try and include photos as much as possible, and try not to make how tidy my kitchen is a factor in whether I take pictures!

Comments would be nice too, feel free to let me know what you think. 

So! Welcome to my blog!

Tanya