Butter Lemon Cake with Ginger Beer Icing

We've been a little lemon-obsessed here recently. Only a couple of nights ago we ate lemon and mushroom carbonara, and my 100th post meal was chicken with a lemon-basil sauced pasta. When Tom washed up this morning, he smelled the leftover lemon juice and declared that he wanted a lemon cake. Given that a couple of weeks ago I vowed to make cake fortnightly (and then completely forgot about it), this seemed like a good cake to start with.

Thin, subtle and buttery, with a completely-unintentional crispy bottom (and an icing disaster which turned out to be not-so-catastrophic after all), I could eat a lot of this cake in one sitting. It's not horrifically sugary or lemony, and there's a very slight tang from the ginger beer spice-mix. The spice mix, incidentally, is one my mother bought at Habitat and sent me. The ingredients list is "ginger, sugar, cream of tartar," so I imagine a tiny bit of ginger and cream of tartar would be the non-pre-bought-mix equivalent.

This isn't strictly an original recipe of mine, but I did have a very specific list of ingredients in my head  - coconut milk, butter, eggs, fresh lemon - which didn't match any recipe I could find. Hence the following is a hodgepodge.

Butter Lemon Cake with Ginger Beer Icing

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 1 20cm square cake

For the sponge:

1 cup butter

1.5 cups brown sugar

4 eggs, separated

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup coconut milk

1 lemon

For the icing:

1/2 cup butter

80g icing sugar

1 teaspoon ginger beer spice mix

1/2 lemon

2 tablespoons cream

Lemon and Mushroom Carbonara

I had big, if vague, plans for dinner last night. There was going to be chicken, and marmalade, and caramelized onions were going to get a look in, and who knows what other exciting things. It was going to be a hodge-podge of super.

And then I looked in the fridge and in the freezer and instead of having four chicken breasts, like I thought, we had exactly zero. So I decided to do burger and chips. But we don't have chips. So I actually had to cook. Carbonara seemed the best way to go, to use up bacon and cream, and then we bought some mushrooms a while ago, and a lemon had been sitting mournfully on its own in the fridge for god-knows-how-long, and - well, dinner happened.

Dinner was good. It was fragrant (I love the smell of lemon) and spicy with the chilli powder: eminently refreshing, and nice to cook. It was slightly too sharp for me, by which I mean after I ate half my meal my throat was burning, so I've scaled back my measurements a little for this recipe, but Tom enjoyed it. The enokitake mushrooms (which Tom will eat! Hurrah!) are chewy, so be warned if that's not your thing, but add a delicious meatiness to a nearly-vegetarian meal. (Feel free to leave the bacon out and call it 'pasta with lemon mushroom sauce', if you prefer.)

Lemon and Mushroom Carbonara

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

150g spaghetti

1 tablespoon butter (plus some oil, optional)

1 bunch enokitake mushrooms

1/2 onion

1 clove garlic

4 rashers bacon

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 cup cream

1 teaspoon oregano

2 teaspoons chilli powder

1 lemon

1/4 cup grated Parmesan plus more for serving

1 egg

Seasoning

100: Roasted Chicken and Asparagus with Lemon-Basil Pasta

Today's recipe is a bit of a mouthful, to celebrate my 100th post to this blog. I'd say that's roughly 100 recipes - maybe a little more - I've cooked in just under five months. Which is quite impressive, especially given how often I cook enchiladas. Of course, only a few of my recipes are properly usable so far, by which I mean written out clearly with pictures, but that is definitely changing.

The last recipe was for slow-cooking, but today's is ready in the amount of time it takes your oven to roast a couple of chicken breasts (just under 25 minutes for me, in my 20litre oven with three minuscule breasts) (chicken breasts, that is). A well-stocked fridge should usually have everything to make this already - maybe not the asparagus, but feel free to substitute another vegetable - and luckily, for once I did have that well-stocked fridge! I stir-fried the leftovers (about one bowl of pasta) with bacon this morning and it was delicious.

A very summery meal.

Roasted Chicken and Asparagus with Lemon-Basil Pasta

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2 with leftover pasta

3 small chicken breasts

6 asparagus spears

200g pasta

1/4 onion

2 garlic cloves

125ml white wine

2 tablespoons flour

200ml cream

1 tablespoon basil

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon milk (may not be necessary)

Oil

Seasoning

Milk Chicken with Roast Vegetable Mash

I feel like I've not been in the same 'cooking' frame of mind, recently, as I have been for the last... well, year, I suppose. I didn't enjoy the second chilli con carne meal because it felt like a microwave meal, which (it turns out) I am oddly averse to. I've made simple meals, like a carbonara pasta bake, which I didn't post because I've made both carbonaras and pasta bakes in the past. Nothing special.

Last night I was thinking of doing chicken enchiladas, which we've also done before (but which I didn't write up because Tom was the main chef that night - my original enchilada recipe is here, though), when I decided that this slump must end - at least temporarily. I found this recipe from Everybody Likes Sandwiches, and read it, and all the other recipes it links to, and decided to put it with this recipe from BBC Good Food.

It was good. Not mindblowingly awesome, like so many of these recipes promised - I was disappointed that it wasn't the best chicken either of us had ever tasted, but I suppose it might work better with an entire bird (as intended) than three breasts (as I used). Tom's superior mashing skills played a major role, as always, in making the mashed vegetable mix absolutely delicious. Next time I would try properly roasting the sweet potato in peeled chunks, as suggested by the original recipe, but yesterday I simply didn't want to peel the sweet potatoes. Or cut them. I don't like dealing with raw sweet potato.

Milk Chicken with Roast Vegetable Mash
Serves 2, with extra sauce

3 chicken breasts
Seasoning
1 teaspoon butter
1 heaped teaspoon cinnamon
1 heaped teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon lemon juice/vinegar
2 cups milk

2 large sweet potatoes
3 garlic cloves
4 potatoes
Milk
Seasoning

I pricked the sweet potatoes and put them on a baking tray with the garlic cloves with a little oil. Put them in the oven at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, I sprinkled salt and ground black pepper into a bag with the chicken breasts, and rubbed the chicken through the bag until it was lightly coated in seasoning. Melted the butter on a low heat in a saucepan and fried the chicken on both sides until each breast was white. (I didn't bother draining the fat as there was barely anything to drain.) Added cinnamon, oregano, lemon juice and vinegar (the lemon juice ran out while I was pouring) and the milk, and heated through for a moment. Tipped the chicken and warmed sauce into an oven-proof dish, covered with foil, and put in the oven. By now the potatoes and garlic had been in the oven for twenty minutes - I removed the garlic, and put the chicken and potatoes on at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes.

I peeled the normal potatoes and cooked them in water at a fairly low heat for thirty minutes. After half an hour, the foil came off the chicken and the heat was increased to 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit). Twenty minutes later (at which point the chicken had been cooking for 50 minutes and the sweet potatoes for 70 minutes), I removed the sweet potatoes from the oven. The chicken stayed in. Added broccoli to the boiling potato pan and cooked for ten minutes. Drained the potatoes and broccoli, and removed the broccoli on to the foil, leaving some green broccoli residue in the pan. The garlic cloves were squeezed out of their skin and added to the normal potatoes along with the flesh from the sweet potatoes, and the vegetables were mashed together with milk and seasoning.

The chicken was removed from the oven (after having been in for roughly an hour) and served.

Gallimaufry Pie

I'm quite pleased about this recipe for many, many reasons. It is first on the list of my must-make oven recipes, for one. It was delicious. I get to call it a cool name (my various substitutions and additions would lengthen the original title of Winter Squash and Caramelized Onion Biscuit Pie by quite a bit). And this marks my fiftieth post, which feels like some sort of anniversary worth celebrating.

The pie was brilliant, although slightly dry - I didn't have enough mayonnaise so that's probably why. Nor did we have a proper topping as I was too lazy to roll out the remaining dough because it meant getting not only my hands dirty (again) but getting the counter dirty as well. It took about an hour and a half from start to finish, although I was working at a leisurely pace.

Gallimaufry Pie
Serves 2 hungry people, or 4 with a salad

Filling:
1 small pumpkin
2 large sweet potatoes
7 rashers of bacon
Dried oregano
1 egg

Mayonnaise
1 teaspoon mustard
Lemon juice
Lemon vinegar

1 onion
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Balsamic vinegar


Dough:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon vinegar
Seasoning

I halved the pumpkin and sweet potatoes, sprinkled salt, pepper and oil over the cut sides, and roasted them at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes. In the meantime I mixed the dough ingredients together and used half of them to line the bottom of a round dish. (If you're not stupid, you'll grease the dish first. I didn't, but it meant that we were rewarded with difficult-to-scrape-off delicious crispy bits.)

I made the mayonnaise mixture, which was fairly paltry as we had almost no mayonnaise left, by combining mayonnaise (probably about 2 teaspoons worth), 1 teaspoon mustard, a big squeeze of lemon juice and a couple of drops of lemon vinegar.

Sliced the onion and fried on the lowest possible heat for about ten minutes before adding the brown sugar and a squeeze of balsamic vinegar and stirring that through.

Removed the pumpkin and sweet potato from the oven and scooped the inside of 1 potato and half a pumpkin into the pie dish. Layered with three rashers of bacon, half of the caramelized onion, half of the mayonnaise mixture and a hefty sprinkling of oregano. Repeated, using the remaining pumpkin, sweet potato, bacon, onion and mayonnaise. Seasoned with salt and pepper as well as oregano.

Dolloped the remaining dough on top without bothering to roll it out - it was more like having (American) biscuits on top than a pie crust, although the dough spread and ended up covering most of the pie. Brushed the dough with one beaten egg and put in the oven at 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit) for half an hour.

Chicken Tetrazzini

On Wednesday night I made chicken tetrazzini, adapted heavily (as usual) from this BBC Good Food recipe. It was good, and creamy, but I still have some cream left over! Argh. Again, I forgot to put broccoli in the dish (like Tuesday's Moroccan chicken, and Thursday's chicken with leftover gravy and rice) so we can all conclude that I have a blind spot in my mind when it comes to vegetables. And I love vegetables! Anyway, the recipe.

Chicken Tetrazzini

Serves 2 (laaaarge portions)

2 chicken breasts

250g pasta

Handful of chopped onion

2 tablespoons flour

300ml chicken stock

200ml cream

Glug of plum wine

1 egg

Seasoning

Other flavourings: soy sauce, 1 sachet ketchup, chilli powder, lemon vinegar, honey, handful of grated cheese, possibly others to taste

I fried the onions in a little bit of oil, adding salt (as per Nigella's recommendation) to release the onion's juices and braise more than fry them. Added the chicken and browned on each side. Removed the chicken, added flour to make the onions into a roux, and whisked in the chicken stock (with a fork - it still worked!). Brought to a boil and added the chicken back to the pan.

I put the pasta in heavily salted water for fifteen minutes and let both pans simmer. When the pasta was nearly cooked, I drained it and added it to the chicken pan, along with the cream, wine, and a beaten egg. The mixture simmered for about ten more minutes while I added other flavours to taste.

An attempt at 'roast' potatoes

Last night we made BBC's Moroccan chicken (which I'm positive I've made before, but don't seem to be able to find in the archives here) with my imaginative attempt at stove-top 'roast' potatoes. We boiled the potatoes until cooked and then fried them in a fair amount of oil, over a high heat, covered. This worked brilliantly for the sweet potatoes but not so well for the normal ones - perhaps more frying time would have been better for those. The sauce with the chicken was delicious but could have benefited from some thickening up. If I'd felt a bit more together yesterday, I could easily have added some of the excess cream from the toffee sauce (the leftovers of which, incidentally, will not freeze into shards!), but there you go.


Stupidly, neither of us considered cooking vegetables until it was too late. We very much lamented the absence of broccoli but were too hungry to wait any longer to eat.


Sweet Chicken with Roast Potatoes
Serves 2


2 chicken breasts
Cinnamon
Curry powder
Chilli powder
Honey
Lemon juice
2 cloves of garlic
Vegetable stock
Soy sauce
Splash of Korean plum wine
Seasoning


Mix of sweet and normal potatoes


I marinaded the chicken in a mixture of cinnamon, curry powder, chilli powder, honey, lemon juice and seasoning for about thirty minutes while the potatoes were peeled, chopped and boiled with salt. The potatoes were drained once cooked, put back into the pan and bashed about a bit, and then put into a pan with about half a cup of hot oil. This was covered with foil (in lieu of a lid) and left for another twenty minutes or so, stirred occasionally.


Meanwhile, I chopped the garlic and fried it in the potato-boiling pan, which had little starchy bits of potato around the side from where the potatoes had been bashed. Added the chicken and marinade, and browned on each side. After about ten minutes, I added a cupful of hot vegetable stock mixed with one teaspoon of honey and one of lemon juice. Added some soy sauce to darken the sauce. Once cooked through, the potatoes and chicken were served, sadly without broccoli.

Happy Hallowe'en!

This food is too good to be eaten only at Hallowe'en. Both came from the BBC Good Food website, and were delicious. The toffee apple wedges were particularly spectacular, and so easy! We have leftover sauce and have frozen it to make into caramel-esque shards. The sticky chicken and pumpkin was going to be served with an attempt at Nigella's rostini (fried gnocchi as quick roast potatoes!) but our substitute had begun to grow mould, so we had it with pasta instead.

Toffee Apple Wedges
Serves 2; from this recipe

Large lump of butter
Lots of brown sugar
250ml cream
1 large apple
Lemon juice
Cinnamon
More sugar

I melted the butter over a low heat and added enough sugar to heavily coat the bottom of the pan. This mixture became quite mud-like but after some stirring on the heat, it starts to get more liquidy. At this point I added the cream and whisked quickly with a fork over high heat for about five minutes so it thickened a bit. The mixture was left to cool. The apple was cut into wedges and tossed in lemon juice, cinnamon and sugar. Once the butterscotch mixture had cooled a little, we dunked the apple wedges and ate them without grilling.

Sticky Chicken and Pumpkin
Serves 2, from this recipe (very much adapted)

2 chicken breasts
1 small pumpkin (ours was green and slightly avocado-esque - very odd)
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 sweet potatoes
Chilli powder and thyme
Between 1/2 and 1 glass of black raspberry wine
Balsamic syrup
Vegetable stock with added gravy powder
Small pack of walnuts
Honey
Seasoning

I chopped the pumpkin into bite-sized pieces, the garlic into teeny bits, the onion into about eight wedges and the potatoes into chunks. Mixed in a pan with the chicken, seasoning, thyme and chilli powder, and fried for just under five minutes. Added the wine and a lot of balsamic syrup. Mixed some dried vegetable stock with gravy powder, added 300ml boiling water, and poured into the pan. Added just enough water to nearly cover the vegetables. Brought to a boil and left to simmer for twenty minutes. Broke the walnuts into pieces and added to the pan, along with some honey. Reduced further until the sauce was thick and sticky and served with pasta.

Chicken with Lemon Noodles

I was going to have an easy dinner of frozen dumplings with rice last night and then stumbled across this recipe for 'chicken with lemon-leek linguine.' I liked the idea of the chicken so went for this.

Floured Chicken with Lemon Noodles

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts

Flour

Italian herb mix

Seasoning

2 servings of noodles

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

300ml chicken stock

Lemon vinegar

Lemon juice

Milk

Italian herbs

Seasoning

Put the chicken breasts in a plastic bag and bashed with the back of a hairbrush until slightly thinned (which took ages!). Tipped enough flour to coat, along with the herbs and seasoning, into the bag and shook. Chopped 1 onion into thin half-moons and minced the garlic cloves. Boiled the noodles in salted water. Fried the onion, garlic and floured chicken until the chicken was cooked through, before removing the chicken. Added lemon vinegar to the pan to deglaze, along with the stock and lemon juice. Reduced a little before adding a tiny bit of milk, Italian herbs and seasoning. Reduced further. Drained the noodles, mixed noodles and sauce, and heated through. Returned the chicken to the pan and fried on each side for a couple of minutes before serving.

Honey Mustard Pork

I've added a 'Pages' gadget on the left hand side, below 'Recipe Websites' and above 'About Me.' At the moment there is only one page, 'Oven Recipes', which will list recipes I come across and am desperate to cook but can't until we get an oven! The oven recipes page currently only has one link, which is irritating because I know I found a gorgeous, mouthwatering oven-baked meal yesterday but apparently I forgot to bookmark it. (Edit: ignore that! Recipe found and linked. I'm extremely pleased with myself.)

From this BBC Good Food recipe. Another stovetop meal.

Honey Mustard Pork with Mashed Potato
Serves 2

1 400g pack of pork
Lemon vinegar (or vinegar and lemon juice)
Wholegrain mustard
Honey
Chilli and cinnamon spices
Thyme
Seasoning

4 potatoes
Butter
Milk
Seasoning

Chopped the pork into chunks and marinaded in lemon vinegar, wholegrain mustard and honey for about twenty minutes. Peeled the potatoes, cut into chunks, and boiled in salted water until soft. Heated some oil in a pan and poured the pork with marinade in. Kept on a medium heat and stirred often. Added the chilli, cinnamon, thyme, and a spoonful of the potato water. Seasoned. Drained and mashed the potatoes with lots of milk and butter until creamy, seasoned. Served.

Sticky Pork with Lemon Risotto

Tonight's dinner was an odd one. I originally conceived of the idea whilst in a temple, so it's clearly a dish that God meant to exist. My plan was to marinade a large, flat piece of pork in soy sauce, honey and tomato sauce, cook it lightly, put a couple of spoonfuls of cooked rice with vegetables in the middle, wrap the pork around it, and seal it in the pan with some of the sauce draped over it. That way you could cut open a ball of pork and find rice inside! It would be like a giant inside-out rice ball.

Sadly, it turned out that the large, flat piece of pork we'd bought was mostly in little bits. I couldn't be bothered to make a million little inside-out rice balls. So I combined some recipes I vaguely know and steamrollered on: the pork marinade is mostly from my mother, who I think got it from Nigella, and the lemon risotto is from an amalgamation of risotto recipe titles I've glanced at in the past.

We both really enjoyed this meal. Even if the soy sauce-y pork didn't go brilliantly with the lemon risotto, the flavours were stunningly intense. I would be happy to eat this risotto on its own for a lunch, as well - it's the first time I've had a risotto that's been refreshing! It would be nice with chicken.

Sticky Pork with Lemon Risotto
Serves 2.5 (extra pork)

1 400g pack of pork
Soy sauce
Honey
Orange juice
Tomato sauce (passata)
1 tsp wheat flour
Chilli and cinnamon spices
Seasoning

Butter
Half an onion, chopped
2 handfuls of rice
Lemon vinegar
Chicken stock
Rosemary
Lemon juice
Broccoli
Seasoning

Chopped the pork into large bite-size pieces and put in a bowl with quantities of soy sauce, honey, orange juice and tomato sauce. I honestly don't know what these quantities were, although the soy and tomato sauces dominated - I added more honey to the pan at a later point after tasting the sauce. Added the flour, spices and seasoning to the sauce and mixed well. Covered and left for about twenty minutes.

Melted the butter on the stove on a low heat and cooked the onion till soft. Added the rice and stirred. Added lemon vinegar, probably about 1/4 of a cup, and stirred. Put a tablespoon of chicken stock powder and a sprinkling of rosemary into a jug, made chicken stock, and added bit by bit, stirring in between. After about ten minutes I put the pork and the marinade juices into another pan and left on a medium heat. Ten minutes later I added some broccoli stems to the risotto and continued to cook, tasting and adding lemon juice and seasoning periodically. Once cooked, I drained the risotto to get rid of some of the excess starch, served both the rice and pork, and ate with chopsticks.

Sunday meal for 9.5: lemony pork

We are finally eight again! As much as I miss my friends, I do not miss the hefty amount of work that goes into cooking for so many. I'd finally gotten used to eight when the number was suddenly raised. Also, my dad is away for a couple of days, so dinner is ONLY for seven tonight. I'm excited.

Anyway, I cooked dinner on Sunday for 10, although one guest hadn't tried pork before and didn't want to start then. The potatoes I have made twice before, and I think this was the best batch yet.

Based on this recipe for lemon picatta pork, served along with Nigella's Hasselback potatoes (which were mentioned last time).

I sliced the potatoes in a wooden spoon, as recommended, and covered them in oil, salt and pepper. I believe there were a little over 2kg worth of potatoes. They went in the oven at 180 degrees C, and sat there for forty minutes (while I had fun with my friends) before I started on the pork.

16 pork steaks, sliced lengthways into three strips each. Dredged in flour before being put on the stove on a high heat (with oil) for 10 minutes. At this point they were almost entirely cooked through, with some slightly pink still. Pork was put to one side; 2 finely chopped onions and 2 minced garlic cloves went in the pan with some more oil. The recipe suggests to season the shallot so I added garlic pepper and ginger. When soft, I added a cup of lemon juice, half a bottle of white wine, and roughly a litre of chicken stock. Once it began simmering, on a medium heat, I put the pork back in and let it cook for about half an hour.

On tasting, the sauce was too sour and lemony for me, so I added about half a cup of cream. This made the sauce tangy rather than sour.

At the 1 hour mark for the potatoes, I put the temperature down to 150 degrees C - there were other factors to serving up (we were using the table for an intricate card game - I won!) and I was worried that the potatoes would burn if left at 180. As it turned out, they would probably have been fine, but still.

Also served with spinach, carrots, and some leftover broccoli/cauliflower bits, which were boiled in salted water for about 10 minutes.

Overall the potatoes spent about an hour and a half in the oven, although smaller or fewer potatoes or a full-size working oven should cut that time. My boyfriend prefers them crispy, too, so that is another factor which ups cooking time. There were about 3-5 per person, including the non-pork-eating friend, which is enough for a normal serving but not enough considering how delicious they are! The pork was moist, for pork, probably due to the flour-dredge - which is something I shall have to start doing more often.