Poulet a l’estragon – French tarragon chicken

August 18, 2013Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged chicken, Elizabeth David, France, French cooking, pot roast, poulet a l'estragon, tarragon11 Comments

This is the dish I associate most with being in France. I first ate poulet a l’estragon cooked by my father-in-law when we stayed with them in France some years ago. Thinking about it, it must have been more than 15 years ago, but let’s not dwell on that as it makes me feel rather old. When I ate it, I truly thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It is based on an Elizabeth David recipe and, even though those were the days when I really didn’t spend much time cooking or thinking about food, I had to copy down the recipe at once and I have made it myself many times in the intervening years.

It’s such a beautiful dish with only a handful of ingredients, but those ingredients are rather on the rich and decadent side. Perhaps not a dish you should be contemplating if you’re watching the old calories. It’s essentially a simple pot roast chicken but the addition of tarragon, butter and cream elevate it to something quite extraordinarily delicious.

We’ve been on holiday in the Dordogne for just over a week now, far away from the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives. It’s a proper chance to kick back, unwind and spend some quality time with the family. We’re in a stunning location out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by vineyards and sunflowers as far as the eye can see.

Most of our days are spent in the swimming pool, playing Uno, pétanque, consequences or table football, devising treasure hunts and walking in the nearby woods. Oh, and of course cooking and eating. Yes, there’s been quite a bit of cooking and eating. Oh and lots of mini bottles of ice cold beer too.

One of our first meals here had to be poulet a l’estragon. I made it for the first time without following the notes I made all those years ago on my now tatty and grease-spattered scrap of paper, and was rather pleased with myself for remembering what to do. But then it is pretty easy. And it tasted all the better for being eaten outside as the sun was starting to set after an arduous day soaking up the French sunshine.

Poulet a l’estragon

50g butter, softened
large bunch of tarragon, roughly chopped
salt and pepper
1 medium chicken
1 tsp plain flour
150ml double cream

Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas Mark 7.

Take two-thirds of the butter and using a fork gently mash in around half of the chopped tarragon, and give it a good seasoning with salt and pepper. Stuff most of this inside the chicken and rub the rest onto the skin on the breasts and legs.

Place the chicken on its side in a large ovenproof casserole and cover with the lid. Roast in the oven for about an hour and a half, turning onto the other side half way through and basting with the herby, buttery juices. The aroma at this stage will be quite incredible and I defy your stomach not to start growling. When the chicken is tender and the juices run clear, remove from the oven, and keep warm on the carving board while you make the sauce.

Work the flour into the remaining butter and, over a low heat, stir this into the juices in the casserole, along with the rest of the chopped tarragon. Then stir in the cream and bring to a very gentle simmer.

Carve the chicken and pour over the tarragon sauce. I like to serve with steamed rice and a vegetable such as green beans. French beans, naturellement. Bon appetit!

As the star of this dish is undoubtedly the tarragon, I’m entering it into August’s Cooking with Herbs challenge, hosted by the wonderful Karen at Lavender & Lovage, who I’ve just discovered is only ‘just down the road’ here in France!

Random recipe: bacon kebabs

July 29, 2013July 29, 2013Posted in Competitions and challenges, Meat, RecipesTagged aubergine, bacon, belleau kitchen, credit crunch munch, eggplant, goodfood cheap eats, kebab, leek, mushroom, random recipes, sausage12 Comments

This was a truly random recipe choice. I counted along my cook books, from left to right, until I reached the magic number 30. The title I landed upon was a tiny little book crammed in between a couple of heavy weights, The Silver Spoon and How to be a Domestic Goddess. My random book was GoodFood: 101 Cheap Eats; not the most exciting or inspiring perhaps of all the books on my shelf, but there you go. That’s the point I guess when it comes to picking a random recipe.

The next direction was to turn to page 30, which I dutifully did. And the recipe in question was for Bacon Kebabs on Mushroom Rice. Not bad, I thought, although my daughter Jessie won’t be thrilled. The face she pulls if you suggest she eats a mushroom couldn’t be worse if you’d suggested she eat something you’d discovered on the bottom of your shoe.

So why the random recipe choice? Many of you will no doubt already be familiar with Dom at Belleau Kitchen’s Random Recipe challenge, which this month celebrates the big three-oh.

I thought it was about time I entered a dish. I’ve meaning to so for about the last year. All too often I’ve got as far as selecting my random recipe and then completely forgetting to make it before I realise the deadline has already been and gone. The story of my life really! But this month I’ve done it. Only just mind – July’s challenge closes in just over an hour. If I type quickly, I think I’ll just make it!

While the Bacon Kebabs might not have been the classiest or most challenging of dishes, they did give us a good plate of decent grub which went down very well with all the family – with certain members avoiding coming into close proximity with anything remotely resembling a fungus, obviously. It’s not a recipe I’d necessarily have picked out myself to make, but it’s a simple one I can see myself doing time and time again, and one I might possibly prepare the night before for a lazy Sunday brunch when we’ve got people staying the weekend.

Bacon kebabs

Serves 4

2 medium leeks, washed, trimmed and each cut into 4
4 flat mushrooms (I used 3 flat mushrooms and half an aubergine)
14 rashers rindless streaky bacon, halved (I used 8 rashers smoked back bacon, cut into strips)
4 herby sausages, halved vertically and then again horizontally
300g long grain rice
50g melted butter
1 tsp dried thyme
squeeze of lemon juice
200ml creme fraiche

Blanch the leeks in boiling water for 4 minutes.

Finely chop one of the mushrooms and the stems of the others and keep to one side to add to the rice later. (As my oldest despises mushrooms, I chopped up half an aubergine instead.)

Cut the remaining mushrooms into quarters.

Stretch out the bacon with the back of a knife and wrap around each piece of leek, mushroom and sausage. Carefully thread onto skewers. I made sure, of course, that a few of the skewers were free of the “evil” mushroom.

Cook the rice according to the packet instructions.

Melt half the butter with half the dried thyme and lemon juice, and then brush over the kebabs. Grill under a high heat for around 15 to 20 minutes, turning regularly until cooked.

Melt the rest of the butter in a pan and cooked the chopped mushroom (or in my case, chopped aubergine) with the remaining thyme until softened. Add the creme fraiche, season and stir well.

Drain the rice and stir into the sauce.

Stir the kebab pan juices into the rice and serve immediately.

And as this is such a cheap and cheerful dish, I’m also entering these yummy Bacon Kebabs into July’s Credit Crunch Munch from Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All, which is being brilliantly hosted this month by Sian at Fishfingers For Tea.

Review: Kerry LowLow

June 5, 2013June 5, 2013Posted in Meat, Recipes, ReviewsTagged asparagus, broccoli, chicken, kerry, lowlow, pancetta, purple sprouting broccoli, risotto2 Comments

This is a sponsored post.

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We don’t eat a lot of processed cheese in the Bangers & Mash household, but I am trying to keep an eye on my weight so when Kerry invited me to try out their LowLow cheese spreads I was keen to give them a go. This spoof ad made me chuckle and I love the idea of cutting down on our fat intake without sacrificing on taste. Can it really be possible?

While LowLow probably won’t replace a couple of slices of a mature local Cheddar in my lunchtime sandwich, I was impressed with LowLow as a cooking ingredient and will use it again as a substitute for full fat soft cheese or maybe even cream in certain dishes.

Kerry sent me recipes for Pancetta Wrapped Chicken and Spring Vegetable Risotto and I put them to the test on my family, including my discerning mother who was over from Spain to stay this weekend. I played with the recipes a little to suit the tastes of my brood and also to make the most of what happened to be in our fridge, particularly the heaps of wild garlic and purple sprouting broccoli we have to use up.

The first dish I tried out on my family was the Pancetta Wrapped Chicken. Both my husband and mother pulled faces when they saw I was cooking with a low fat cheese spread, and I rather wished I hadn’t told them beforehand what I was up to. Personally I thought the end result was rather good. I don’t think I would have spotted the cheese was a low fat alternative if I hadn’t already known, but Jason and my mum were convinced it tasted different to normal soft cheese. However, they still ate it regardless and the children wolfed theirs down quite happily. Here’s what I did…

Pancetta Wrapped Chicken

2 large sweet potatoes
1 tsp Cajun seasoning
low-fat spray
4 chicken breasts
125g LowLow Mature Cheddar Spread
8 sun-dried tomatoes
8 slices of pancetta
300g spring greens
black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180°C (gas mark 6).

Scrub the sweet potatoes, dry with kitchen towel and slice into wedges. Place in an ovenproof dish, spray with a little low-fat oil and sprinkle with Cajun seasoning. Roast in the oven for around half an hour until soft inside and a little charred on the outside.

Meanwhile, prepare the chicken breasts by cutting a slice in each one at the thickest point, to create a pocket. Spread a quarter of the LowLow Mature Cheddar Spread into the pocket and pop a couple of sun-dried tomatoes into each one.

Wrap 2 slices of pancetta around each chicken breast, making sure to seal the pocket.

Place the chicken breasts on a baking tray and spray with low-fat spray. Season with black pepper. Cook for 20 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, shred the greens and steam for 4-5 minutes.

When the chicken is cooked through, slice and serve with the greens and sweet potatoes. Enjoy!

When I made the Spring Vegetable Risotto the following day, I learned from my previous mistake. This time I didn’t tell anyone I’d used LowLow when I served up this lovely fresh and creamy risotto. It went down an absolute treat with adults and children alike, and my husband and mum both requested second helpings. The LowLow gave the dish a rich cheesiness, which wasn’t too cloying, and rather good to know wasn’t piling on the calories at the same time. Here’s how I prepared the risotto…

Spring Vegetable Risotto

2 tbsp olive oil
1 large shallot, finely chopped
300g risotto rice
1.25 litres vegetable stock (hot)
200g spears of asparagus spears, trimmed at an angle
200g purple sprouting broccoli
100g frozen peas
125g LowLow Mature Cheddar Spread
large handful wild garlic, roughly chopped

Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Add the shallots and sauté for 3-5 minutes until they are soft. Stir in the rice so it is coated with oil.

Pour in a ladleful of stock and stir. Cook, stirring regularly until the stock is absorbed. Continue until the stock is used up and the rice is tender all the way through.

In the meantime, steam the asparagus and broccoli until just cooked, retaining a little bite.

When the rice is cooked, stir in the asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli, LowLow Mature Cheddar Spread and wild garlic. Cook for a minute or two until the vegetables are heated through and the cheese has melted. Serve immediately, sprinkled with a little extra wild garlic.

If you’d like to try Kerry’s LowLow yourself, I have five vouchers each worth £3 to give away. Simply leave a comment below saying why you’d like to try it.

Asparagus, ham and Parmesan tart

May 27, 2013Posted in Meat, Recipes, UncategorizedTagged asparagus, cheese, egg, ham, parmesan, tart6 Comments

This is an exciting time of year for cooks; a time when so many special fruits and vegetables come into season for just a brief and tantalising spell. As with rhubarb and wild garlic, we are making the most of English asparagus and it features on our menus on almost a daily basis.

Generally I tend not to do too much to asparagus. I simply steam it and serve with a squeeze of lemon and melted butter or a soft poached egg. Our girls go crazy for it, especially when they can eat it with their fingers. But I do also enjoy asparagus in a simple tart, like this one, with ham and Parmesan. It’s incredibly easy to make, especially if you forget about making your own shortcrust pastry and buy in ready-made instead, and it’s just as good eaten cold the following day.

Asparagus, ham and Parmesan tart

175g plain flour
salt
75g butter
250g asparagus
2 eggs and 2 egg yolks
200ml Greek yoghurt
50ml milk
100g Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
100g chopped ham

Preheat the oven to 190°C / gas mark 5.

To make the shortcrust pastry, sift the flour into a large mixing bowl with the salt. Using your finger tips, rub in the butter until it resembles soft breadcrumbs. Add enough cold water to make the mixture come together to form a firm dough. Cover with cling film and rest in the fridge for half an hour.

Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the pastry to line 9 inch well-buttered flan dish. Line the pastry with foil or baking paper and fill with baking beads or rice. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until the pastry just starts to turn golden. Remove the beads or rice and the foil, and brush the pastry with a little of the egg you’ll be using in the filling. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes so the egg seals the case. Allow to cool slightly while you prepare the filling.

Lightly steam or boil the asparagus until only just cooked; it should still have a little bite. Refresh in ice cold water to stop further cooking and to retain that beautiful green colour. Drain well.

Gently beat the eggs and the extra yolks (which give it that lovely vibrant yellow colour) and combine with the yoghurt, milk and Parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper.

Arrange the chopped ham and asparagus in the pastry case and pour over the cheesy egg mixture. Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until the filling is set and golden. Leave to cool a little and serve at room temperature with a simple salad.

As this is such a seasonal tart, I’m entering it into Ren Behan’s Simple and in Season blog event, which this month celebrates its second anniversary. You’ll discover lots of tasty recipes over there using asparagus as well as the likes of rhubarb and wild garlic.

Round Up: April’s Recipes for Life Challenge

April 29, 2013Posted in Competitions and challenges, Meat, RecipesTagged blog challenge, Chez Foti, crazy kitchen, fun as a gran, Garden Deli, jibberjabberuk, pork, recipe challenge, recipes for life, spurs cook, swallow charity, sweetcorn, tomato, under the blue gum tree6 Comments

It’s been another fantastic month for the Recipes for Life challenge. I must admit, when I was first told the three ingredients the SWALLOW cookery club had decided on for April, I wasn’t sure how many recipes we’d receive. But as ever you lot have excelled yourselves and we’ve ended up with an incredibly varied and mouthwateringly tempting array of dishes all using the three set ingredients of pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at those delicious dishes and, most importantly, announce this month’s winner…

I got things started with these Rosemary and Garlic Pork Chops with Roasted Corn on the Cob and Spicy Tomato Relish. Roasting the corn gives it an extra sweet intensity and make sure you serve it with lots of lovely mashed potato to soak up the juices from the pork and the butter from the corn.

sausagesweetnsour — Slow cooker sweet and sour sausages

Don’t these Slow Cooker Sweet & Sour Sausages from The Crazy Kitchen look good? The list of ingredients might look long, but don’t be fooled – this is a quick and easy dish to prepare, just perfect for a midweek supper. And what’s more it’s a very frugal dish, making one pack of sausages go a long way.

We had to bend the rules slightly for this Sausage Chilli from The Garden Deli. Sarah was very keen to take part in the challenge but as Sarah is vegetarian, we really couldn’t make her cook with meat. So Sarah entered her sausage chilli using veggie sausages and then I (or rather my husband) tried out her recipe with pork sausages – see below. And we can confirm it works superbly both ways! Here’s how ours turned out:

The whole family loved it. Sarah’s chilli is a feast of colours, flavours and textures, and perfect for little ones as it has just the right level of spice without being too hot.

Next up is a dish that’s making me yearn for summer! Doesn’t your mouth just instantly water when you look at Under The Blue Gum Tree’s gorgeous photos of her sumptuous BBQ Pork Ribs with Sweetcorn Salsa? The ribs are smothered in a simple BBQ sauce made from store cupboard ingredients – the trick is not to marinade the ribs but instead to pour the sauce on for the last 10 minutes of cooking time – and served with a zingy salsa made from roasted corn and fresh tomatoes.

JibberJabberUK has come up trumps with this satisfying Slow Cooker Pork Creole – as she says it might not be 100% authentic, but it’s a great way to add a bit of spice to your family’s food. It’s an incredibly versatile dish, so you can throw in whatever vegetables you happen to have in the fridge or freezer.

You may recall that Helen from The Crazy Kitchen entered not one, not two, but three dishes into last month’s Recipes for Life. And she’s worked her magic again! This Sausage Pesto Pasta is her second entry for April’s challenge and I know my own family would absolutely love this. The recipe is simplicity itself but you just know it’s packed with flavour and would satisfy even the grumbliest of tummies.

And for her third offering, Helen from The Crazy Kitchen brings us this ever so easy Oven Baked Tortilla – a great one-pan meal, which Helen says is one of her favourite dishes to prepare when they’re away on holiday as it’s just so simple to do.

Pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes with vermicelli rice noodles — Pork, sweetcorn & tomatoes with vermicelli rice noodles

The brilliantly named Fun as a Gran came up with a wheat, egg, dairy and gluten-free dish of Pork, Sweetcorn & Tomatoes with Vermicelli Rice Noodles. I love the fact there is “no fancy measuring” and the recipe can be adapted up or down at the drop of a hat to cater for any number of people staying for dinner.

Here’s a great first-time entry from Spurs Cook: Pulled Pork Wrap with Tomato and Chorizo Salsa and Sweet Sweet Sweetcorn. I’m a big fan of slow-cooked pork, especially when it’s seasoned with a whole host of rich, warming spices like paprika, cumin, cayenne, chilli and fennel, and I’m intrigued by the idea of the sweetness of the sweetcorn intensified even more with the addition of honey. Got to give it a go!

retro pork — Very retro sweet and sour pork

How about this for a taste of summer sunshine? Chez Foti’s Very Retro Sweet and Sour Pork looks just glorious and I bet it tastes every bit as good as it looks. Sweet and sour flavours are always a firm family favourite and this looks so much better for you than the horrible battered version with a gloopy sauce you so often find in takeaways. Like Louisa, I think I might add a touch of chilli too in the adult version…

My Cheat’s Ciabatta Pizza is the next entry and to be honest hardly deserves to be described as a recipe as it’s just so easy to make. It’s simply sliced bread with your favourite pizza-style ingredients chucked on top and either grilled or baked in the oven. A quick and easy dinner to throw together when you don’t have time to make your pizza dough from scratch.

And last but most certainly not least is a second entry from Fun as a Gran – Red Rice Accompanied by Pork, Sweetcorn and Tomato – another dish that’s easily adaptable depending on what you happen to have in. It features lovely nutty red rice served alongside pork steaks in a sauce made from a can of chicken or mushroom soup. It reminds me of some of my favourite student recipes!

Well, who would have thought pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes could lend themselves to such very different dishes? I look forward to working my way through these over the coming weeks.

But of course, what you’re waiting to hear is the name of this month’s winner. And so I’m very pleased to announce that the winner of first prize in April’s Recipes for Life challenge, as chosen by SWALLOW’s cookery club, is…

Helen from The Crazy Kitchen for her Oven Baked Tortilla!

Huge congratulations to Helen for her well-deserved win, particularly as this means she’s now scooped first place two months in a row! The guys at SWALLOW said they liked her tortilla because it features a good selection of veggies and was just a little bit different.

Special mentions also go to Under The Blue Gum Tree’s BBQ Pork Ribs and Chez Foti’s Retro Sweet & Sour Pork, which the group said both looked and sounded gorgeous too.

So well done again to Helen – a little gift will be coming to you in the post in the next few days. Watch this space to find out the three set ingredients for May’s challenge, and let’s see if we can knock Helen off the coveted top spot – surely she can’t make it three in row? Or can she?!

If you’d like to find out more about the work of SWALLOW and perhaps get involved in their Twenty for 20 appeal as part of the charity’s 20th anniversary celebrations, please take a look at their funky new website.

Sausage chilli

April 23, 2013April 23, 2013Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged children, chilli, chilli con carne, family food, Garden Deli, recipes for life, sausage, vegetarian4 Comments

I feel a bit of a fraudster posting this sausage chilli on my blog.

Firstly, it’s not actually my recipe. It comes from Sarah over at The Garden Deli, who is as talented in the kitchen as she is in the garden. Sarah really wanted to enter April’s Recipes for Life challenge – the three set ingredients this month are pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes. As a vegetarian, she obviously found the pork element a challenge too far. And so we agreed that Sarah would create a vegetarian dish and I’d then try out her recipe to see if it would also work with meat.

The second reason I’m feeling a little fraudulent is because I wasn’t even the one to try cooking Sarah’s dish. I handed that honour over to my husband Jason. This means Sarah’s recipe received a proper testing. Not that Jason’s a bad cook. He’s actually a very good cook indeed and is probably one of the main reasons I got into cooking in the first place. No, it’s not a case of him being useless in the kitchen and needing clear instructions. It’s just that he is very thorough and precise and when he’s following a recipe, rather than his own instincts, he’ll follow it to the absolute letter.

The verdict? We all loved Sarah’s sausage chilli and can wholeheartedly confirm it works just as well with pork sausages as it does with vegetarian ones. Jason found the recipe instructions absolutely faultless (although his hands are clearly much larger than Sarah’s when it comes to measuring coriander by the handful) and he had no problems on that score. It’s a feast of colours, flavours and textures, and perfect for little ones as it has just the right level of spice without being too hot. This is my kind of tasty, healthy, family food and a recipe I’m sure we’ll be coming back to again and again. Thank you Sarah!

You can find Sarah’s original Sausage Chilli recipe here. We hardly played with it – simply substituted the vegetarian sausages for pork ones, and used frozen sweetcorn instead of tinned.

Cheat’s ciabatta pizza

April 22, 2013April 23, 2013Posted in Bread, Meat, RecipesTagged blog challenge, bread, children, ciabatta, cooking with children, pizza, recipe challenge, recipes for life, swallow charity8 Comments

Now that I’m working full-time again, the only chance I really have to play around in the kitchen is at the weekends. But then if I spend too much time in the kitchen, I feel bad that I’m not spending enough time with the kids. So wherever possible I try to involve Jessie and Mia in the cooking too.

On Saturday, after spending the afternoon in Bath shopping for new clothes (my girls are growing so blinking fast at the moment!), we rustled up some quick ciabatta bread pizzas for an easy tea. And the girls enjoyed deciding on their own toppings.

I’m not really sure whether to call these posh open grilled sandwiches or ciabatta pizzas – I guess they’re somewhere in between. And they don’t really warrant a recipe. I simply spread some passata on sliced ciabatta (you may prefer French bread or even a slice of cottage loaf) before the girls got going with their own special creations. Up for grabs was whatever we found in the fridge; leftover tinned sweetcorn, ham and salami, some chopped wild garlic leaves we’d picked from the hedgerows, black olives, capers and of course lots of mozzarella cheese.

Mia likes to play safe when it comes to food and kept her pizza topping simple. She isn’t a big fan of strong flavours like olive and capers. Despite that, she did go crazy with the wild garlic, and ate it all quite happily.

Jessie, on the other hand, has always been much more adventurous with food, and went for everything on offer. If there had been raw chillies, she’d probably have thrown some of those on there too.

Cheat’s ciabatta pizza

Serves 4 (2 adults, 2 children with leftovers perfect eaten cold for breakfast!)

4 small part-baked ciabatta, sliced widthways
350g passata or crushed tinned tomatoes
3 x 125g mozzarella cheese

And any toppings you fancy – we went for…

cooked ham, roughly chopped
salami, roughly chopped
tinned sweetcorn
pitted black olives
capers
wild garlic leaves, roughly chopped (or any other fresh or dried herb)

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6.

Smother the ciabatta with passata and decorate with your chosen toppings. Tear the mozzarella and place on top.

Place your ciabatta pizzas on a lightly greased baking tray and pop in the oven (or alternatively under a medium grill) for 10 to 12 minutes, until the bread is lightly toasted and the cheese has melted. Easy as.

As our ciabatta pizzas feature ham, salami, sweetcorn and tomatoes, I’m entering them into this month’s Recipes for Life, a challenge hosted by me and run in conjunction with SWALLOW, an amazing charity supporting adults with learning disabilities. Each month we set three ingredients and challenge bloggers to use these to come up with tasty, healthy and easy to cook dishes that can be made by SWALLOW members in their cookery class and at home. And this month’s three ingredients just happen to be pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes…

If you like this, you might also like to try…

April’s Recipes for Life challenge: get cooking with pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes

April 1, 2013April 29, 2013Posted in Competitions and challenges, Meat, RecipesTagged blog challenge, challenge, corn on the cob, garlic, lemon, pork, pork chop, recipes for life, relish, roast corn, rosemary, swallow charity, sweet corn, tomato12 Comments

Take part in the Recipes for Life food bloggers challenge and you could see your dish featured in a new charity cookbook!

We’re already into month three of the Recipes for Life challenge and I’m rather excited about the three ingredients we’ve been set for April by the SWALLOW cookery club. They are: pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes.

Like last month, they might not at first appear the most obvious of culinary combinations. But give it a few moments’ thought and I’d be surprised if a whole host of tasty meal ideas don’t start whirring around your brain!

The rules of the challenge are the same as before; simply come up with a wholesome, delicious and easy-to-cook recipe featuring this month’s three key ingredients, and which members of the cookery club at SWALLOW can cook themselves.

Through its Fit for Life programme, SWALLOW runs cookery courses for adults with learning disabilities, giving them the skills and confidence to prepare simple, inexpensive and nutritious meals. They are looking for new recipes to cook on the course, and ultimately to include in their new cookbook.

So what meal could you rustle up with pork, sweetcorn and tomatoes? You can use any pork-based product you fancy – a whole joint or chops, bacon or ham, sausages or mince. The sweetcorn can be fresh, on the cob, tinned or frozen. And the tomatoes can again be fresh, tinned or perhaps sun-dried – you might even get away with a puree or passata. So you see, it’s really a rather versatile shopping list this month.

Recipes for Life: how to enter

Display the Recipes for Life badge (shown above and below) on your recipe post, and link back to this challenge post.
You may enter as many recipe links as you like, so long as they are based on the three main ingredients selected for this month and accompanied only by basic store cupboard items.
Send your recipe URL to me at vanesther-at-reescommunications-dot-co-dot-uk, including your own email address and the title of your recipe or post. The closing date this month is Tuesday 23 April 2013.
If you tweet your post, please mention #RecipesforLife, @BangerMashChat and @SWALLOWcharity in your tweet and we will retweet everyone we see.
Feel free to republish old recipe posts, but please add the information about this challenge and the Recipes for Life badge.
As entries come in, links to these will be added to this page and at the end of the month there will be a round-up of all entries received.
SWALLOW staff and members will choose their favourite recipe at the end of each month, and the winner will receive a small prize.
A selection of recipes entered each month will be featured in the SWALLOW cookbook to be published later this year, helping the charity to raise much needed funds for its ongoing work.

Pork chops are a firm favourite in our house – they’re almost as popular as sausages. When I was told the trio of ingredients for April, I knew I’d have to get in there first with some chops. So here’s my entry to get things started…

Buy your pork chops from the butcher and ask for them to be cut nice and thick – they stay much more moist and succulent that way.

I like to roast my corn on the cobs in the oven in a little butter with whatever herbs I have available; the end result is so much sweeter and tastier than if you simply boil them.

The spicy tomato relish includes some optional extras such as olives and capers but don’t worry if you don’t have these or you don’t like them – the relish tastes just as good without. And some simple mashed potato on the side is perfect for soaking up all those delicious buttery, meaty juices.

Rosemary and garlic pork chops with roasted corn on the cob and spicy tomato relish

Serves 4

4 thick pork chops
3 sprigs rosemary
6 cloves of garlic, crushed
4 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon
salt and pepper

4 corn on the cobs
50g butter
fresh or dried herbs (I used fresh thyme and sage)
salt and pepper

For the tomato relish

1 tbsp olive oil
Half an onion, chopped
1 tsp paprika
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp red wine or cider vinegar
2 tsp sugar
salt and pepper
30g capers (optional)
30g black olives, roughly chopped (optional)
Handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped (optional)

Start by preparing the marinade for the pork.

Place the pork chops in a large dish. Pull the rosemary leaves off the woody stems, roughly chop and give them a good pounding with a pestle and mortar. Put the rosemary in a bowl with the crushed garlic and olive oil. Chop the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into the bowl. Chop up the lemon skin, give it a good bash with the pestle and mortar and add to the bowl with a little salt and pepper. Mix it all together before pouring onto the meat.

Get your hands in and rub the marinade all over the chops so they are well smothered. Cover and leave for a couple of hours.

Prepare the corn on the cob by firstly placing them on large sheets of foil. Generously smear each cob with butter, season and sprinkle over your chosen herbs. Wrap the corns in the foil, leaving a little room for the steam.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

When the pork is marinated, place on a wire rack over a roasting tray and bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, depending on how big your chops are. Turn halfway through the cooking time. The chops are cooked when there is no sign of pink inside and are nicely browned on the outside.

Roast the corn in the oven at the same time, placing them directly on the oven shelf. They should take around 20 minutes. Test the corn with a sharp knife and remove from the oven when they are just tender. Leave wrapped in foil until you’re ready to serve.

While the chops and corn are cooking, make the tomato relish. Heat the oil in a frying pan and gently soften the onion until it is golden. Add the paprika and cook for a minute or two before stirring in the chopped tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. If you are using, also add in the capers and olives. Cook gently for 10 to 15 minutes until the relish has thickened. Mix in the coriander right at the end.

Keep the relish warm until the pork chops and corn are ready and serve on warmed plates, ideally with some mashed potato on the side. That’s what I call proper family grub – it’s definitely finger licking good!

April’s entries

Slow Cooker Sweet & Sour Sausages from The Crazy Kitchen
Sausage Chilli from The Garden Deli
BBQ Pork Ribs with Sweetcorn Salsa from Under the Blue Gum Tree
Slow Cooker Pork Creole from JibberJabberUK
Sausage Pesto Pasta from The Crazy Kitchen
Oven Baked Tortilla from The Crazy Kitchen
Pulled Pork Wrap with Tomato and Chorizo Salsa and Sweet Sweet Sweetcorn from Spurs Cook
Pork, Sweetcorn & Tomatoes with Vermicelli Rice Noodles from Fun as a Gran
A Very Retro Sweet and Sour Pork from Chez Foti
Cheat’s Ciabatta Pizza from Bangers & Mash
Sausage Chilli (Again) from the Garden Deli and Bangers & Mash
Red Rice Accompanied by Pork, Sweetcorn and Tomato from Fun as a Gran

A Malaysian Chinese New Year Feast

February 15, 2013February 11, 2021Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged chicken, Chinese, curry, Malaysian, new year, Nonya, Penang, soup, soy sauce, vegetable4 Comments

I don’t know about you, but when I was little I wanted to be less like me and more like everyone else. More like my friends with their pale skin and mums who wore high-heeled shoes. Less like me with my Chinese eyes and mum who wore hand-painted baseball boots.

Growing up in Newcastle in the 1980s, I found myself being teased quite a bit, sometimes even bullied, for being part Chinese and being the daughter of artists. Both of which I’m fiercely proud of now, but back then I’d have given anything just to be normal.

Thankfully my children seem proud of their Chinese heritage, although the world does feel quite a different place now. In recent years we’ve started celebrating Chinese New Year and it’s becoming one of our family traditions, a chance to bring a taste of Chinese Malaysian cuisine to our little corner of rural Somerset.

Last year I cooked up quite an ambitious Chinese banquet for our New Year celebrations. It was delicious but a little stressful preparing so many dishes for one meal, so I decided to make things easier this year. So last weekend, I chose just a few recipes from a wonderful cookbook called Nonya Flavours, an excellent guide to the cuisine of the Straits Chinese community of Penang, the Malaysian island where my mother grew up.

We had a couple of chicken dishes – a sweet soy sauce chicken and a traditional chicken curry, served very simply with boiled rice and a nourishing vegetable soup. And it was perfect, proving that a fabulous feast doesn’t need to be complicated. The curry was fairly spicy and I was rather surprised that both my kids could handle it. Must be their Chinese blood I suppose…

Vegetable soup

2 litres water
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp Shaoxing (Chinese rice wine)
3 slices ginger
1 tsp white peppercorns
2 carrots, peeled and cut into decorative shapes
2 cloves garlic, crushed
10 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water and halved
300g pak choi, shredded
salt and sugar

In a large pan, bring the water to a boil and add the soy sauce, Shaoxing, ginger, peppercorns, carrot, garlic and mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes before adding the pak choi. Cook for another 10 minutes and season to taste with a little salt and sugar. Serve hot. We like to pour the soup over our boiled rice.

Sweet soy sauce chicken

2 chicken breasts, cut into bitesize pieces
20g sugar
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
salt and pepper
4 slices ginger
125ml water

Mix together the sugar, soy sauce and a little salt and pepper and pour over the chicken pieces. Make sure the chicken is well covered and leave to marinade for at least half an hour.

Pour the water into a wok over a medium heat and add ginger slices and the marinated chicken. Bring to a boil and simmer until the chicken is tender and cooked through – around 20 minutes. Add more water if the liquid dries up before the chicken is cooked.

Serve immediately with rice.

Nonya chicken curry

For the spice paste

1 green chilli
100g shallots, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsp dried turmeric
1½ tbsp coriander seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp fennel seeds

3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 star anise
2 cloves
½ cinnamon stick
8 skinless chicken thighs
250g potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
400ml coconut milk
100ml coconut cream
salt

First of all make the spice paste. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and mince well. Then grind using a pestle and mortar – you’ll probably need to do this in several batches – until you have a fairly smooth paste.

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the star anise, cloves and cinnamon stick for a minute. Add the spice paste and stir fry well. Add a couple of tablespoons of the coconut milk and fry over a low heat until fragrant.

Throw in the chicken thighs and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the potatoes and pour in the rest of the coconut milk. Simmer gently until the chicken is tender and the potatoes are cooked through.

Pour in the coconut cream and stir well. Season with salt to taste. Continue to cook until the gravy is slightly thick.

Serve with boiled rice. This served two adults and two children, and there were plenty of leftovers for the freezer to provide us with an easy mid-week supper.

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Middle Eastern chicken salad with hummus dressing

January 16, 2013December 14, 2018Posted in Meat, RecipesTagged chicken, chickpeas, cumin, dressing, herbs on saturday, hummus, middle eastern, olives, pinenuts, preserved lemon, salad, sundried tomato, thyme9 Comments

We get through a lot of hummus in our house, whether it’s the supermarket variety or the incredibly garlicky and insanely zingy homemade kind. The children love it. When they need a little snack in between meals, it tends to be a pot of hummus I reach for, plus a handful of chopped vegetables or breadsticks for dipping.

The other week I borrowed a recipe book from the local library called Make It Moroccan by Hassan M’Souli, and came across a tasty looking salad smothered in a hummus-based dressing. I’ve never thought of using hummus as an ingredient in anything before, so thought I’d give it a go. M’Souli’s original featured falafel and haloumi cheese but I’ve used marinaded chicken breast in my version instead, and it works a treat. The chicken breast is butterflied and cooked quickly in a griddle pan, so it is beautifully moist and succulent, while the hummus, chickpeas and toasted pinenuts give the salad a lovely, satisfying nuttiness.

Middle Eastern chicken salad with hummus dressing

Serves 4-6

4 chicken breasts, skinned, butterflied and flattened (cover with cling film and bash with a rolling pin)
a squeeze of garlic puree
handful of fresh thyme, picked
juice of 1 lemon
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp hummus
1 tsp cumin seed, dry fried and crushed
½ preserved lemon
1 head of lettuce, washed and roughly torn
large handful of green and black olives
large handful of sundried tomatoes
½ tin chick peas, rinsed and drained
handful of pine nuts, dry fried

Place the flattened chicken breasts in a dish and add the garlic puree, thyme, lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Rub the marinade ingredients into the meat and then leave for around 20 minutes.

Whizz up the hummus, cumin and preserved lemon in a food processor with the remaining olive oil until well combined and runny. Add a little more oil if you like to get the right consistency.

Throw the lettuce leaves into a large salad bowl with the olives, sundried tomatoes and chickpeas.

Heat a griddle pan over a fairly high heat and fry the chicken pieces for two to three minutes on each side. Slice into strips and add to the salad.

Drizzle over the hummus dressing and toss it all together. Finally, sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts and serve.

And as this recipe features fresh thyme, I’m entering it into this month’s Herbs on Saturday blog challenge, devised by Lavender & Lovage and hosted by me, Bangers & Mash.