Chicken Saltimbocca

I was going to post a picture of my inspiration for this dish - which would have been a copy of Niki Segnit's The Flavour Thesaurus propped next to a flourishing sage plant - but I am completing the miraculous feat of posting a recipe the very night I cooked it, and it is too dark to take that particular photo right now. Saltimbocca is an Italian cooking style which uses pancetta and sage and sometimes lemon on a fillet of something (veal, plaice... or boring chicken). Most recipes require cocktail sticks to hold everything together, but I just swapped the placement of some ingredients round because I didn't like the idea of cooking or eating around a piece of wood. I also added a lot more sage than is typically called for, and am very happy I did so. I'm not sure how you would really taste one sage leaf per person.

But never mind, because here's a very simple and quick recipe which looks fancy just because of all the little sage leaves in it. Made with fresh herbs from my own balcony 'garden'!

Chicken Saltimbocca

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts

10 sage leaves

4 slices bacon

1 tablespoon flour

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 cup white wine

1/2 cup cream

Seasoning

Asparagus Hash Quesadillas

I have another recipe waiting in the wings to be published but this one was too exciting and spring-like to wait. Inspired by SmittenKitchen's asparagus pancetta hash, these quesadillas are bright and filling and surprisingly un-messy to eat. The bacon could easily be omitted for a vegetarian take, and the amount of grated cheese you add is totally up to you - I used about a quarter-cup per storey, which worked perfectly for me but was not quite enough for Tom.

They could technically be oven-free if you fried the quesadillas rather than baking them - this recipe on Pioneer Woman shows you how to do it, with pictures. Also, the amount specified below was enough for dinner for us (one double-decker quesadilla each), but I hasten to add that I knew we each had a quarter of a reduced-price about-to-go-off cheesecake to eat afterwards, so dinner was a little on the small side.

Asparagus Hash Quesadillas

(Printable Recipe)

Makes two double-decker quesadillas

2 tablespoons oil

3 large potatoes

1/2 onion

2 garlic cloves

130g asparagus

6 rashers bacon

1 teaspoon mixed herbs

1 tablespoon cream cheese

6 tortilla wraps

Grated cheese

Seasoning

Creamy Tomato Soup

I have a few backlogged recipes to catch up on, unsurprisingly, but this most recent meal is crying out to be blogged as soon as possible. I've made tomato soup from this BBC Good Food recipe before as a pasta bake sauce and as a soup, and it's worked really well. Unfortunately I don't have any baking soda, although the milk trick works really well, so substituted with cream. A really great easy soup, even better with grilled cheese on toast.

Creamy Tomato Soup

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 2 small or 1 large portions

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic

1.5 teaspoons basil, fresh or dried, divided

3 cups tomato sauce/passata

1/2 teaspoon parmesan dust (optional)

1 tablespoon cream

(OR 1 tablespoon milk with 1 pinch baking soda)

Seasoning

Orange-Scented Chilli

Despite my only blogged recipe for chilli con carne, I am a firm believer in sweet potato in chilli. I hinted recently at a vegetarian version with sweet potato, but even the meaty ones should have some. Unfortunately, I didn't have any sweet potato when I decided to recreate this amazing recipe for orange-scented chilli so turned it into a meat-lover's fest. The orange truly does wonderful, wonderful things to it. Also, Tom had the leftovers on toast with a hard-boiled egg (of all things) the next day, and that was pretty spectacular too.

Orange-Scented Chilli

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 onion

1 clove garlic

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon chilli powder, plus more to taste

250g mince

1/2 cup red wine

2 cups tomato sauce

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 tin kidney beans

Juice and peel of 1 orange

Seasoning

Pasta Florentine

You have no idea how much I wish I'd cracked an egg into this dish, just so I could call it carbonara florentine. I love dish names - I'm seriously considering making a pineapple crumble, even though I hate pineapple, because it has a cool name - and 'pasta florentine' just doesn't have the right ring. Why don't you try it with an egg and get back to me on how it works?

Without the egg, it was really good. I enjoyed it immensely and hope you do too.

Pasta Florentine

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 servings pasta

1 tablespoon butter

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons seasoned flour

4 rashers bacon

1 handful spinach or other green leaf

1 individual-serving-sized pot plain yoghurt
1/2 cup cream
25ml rum
Seasoning

Veggie Burgers

I was going to make bean burgers again at the weekend, except I didn't because it's actually way too hard for me to soak those un-soaked chickpeas we've got. And it's not like I have any excuse - the same day I intended to soak the chickpeas, we took the time to create paper ties and scrap-fabric chokers attached with a 21st birthday badge in order to attend Tom's brother's wedding (congratulations to whom, by the way) via Skype. So intead we made vegetable burgers. They were good. And huge. And served with Jansson's Delight.

In other news, would anyone like the recipe for a vegetarian chilli con carne with sweet potato? I based mine off this recipe, but changed it a lot, as usual - my only worry is that I used a packet of barbeque seasoning and curry cubes, as the original spices are impossible to get here. I feel like it would be difficult for you to recreate elsewhere because I used prepackaged stuff.

Anyway: on with today's recipe...

Veggie Burgers

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 6-8 burgers

2 sweet potatoes

1/2 head broccoli

2 cloves garlic

1 tin red kidney beans

1/2 cup milk

2 tablespoons tomato sauce or paste

1-2 teaspoons chilli powder

1 teaspoon mixed herbs

2 slices bread, made into breadcrumbs

1 egg

1 cup flour, plus more for shaping

1 tablespoon oil, plus more for frying

Seasoning

Bean Burgers

What to do with a bunch of chickpeas? Whizz them up with kidney beans and turn them into bean burgers. Obviously. I was planning on doing a roast chicken (more on which tomorrow) but as it hadn't completely defrosted, I was stuck with a bowl of chickpeas (which had been soaking for two days, which means I bought them raw and not in a can!) and the knowledge that when Tom came home to bean burgers for dinner, he would be a very happy man. Indeed he was. His genuine enthusiasm was quite endearing.

Anyway, for some reason I'd decided not to blog this recipe, hence the lack of in-process pictures. Also the fact that you may need to play around with quantities a bit to get the texture of the burgers right. Regard the below as guidelines (fairly accurate guidelines, but guidelines nonetheless) and enjoy a meal which is tasty and meaty (except it's not!) and actually - in my case - going to be quite easy to do again, as long as I remember to soak the chickpeas first.

Bean Burgers

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 6 large burgers

1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic

2 cups chickpeas

1 can kidney beans (410g)

1 tablespoon mixed herbs

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon powdered stock

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I used crushed Pringles)

1 egg

2 tablespoons tomato sauce

1/2 to 1 cup flour, plus more for your hands

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon oil

Seasoning aplenty

Garlic Chicken Macaroni

A garlicky recipe to end my Thursday (and probably begin yours).

Garlic Chicken Macaroni

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 servings macaroni

1 onion

4 cloves garlic

2 tablespoons garlic sauce, divided

1 teaspoon mustard

2 chicken breasts

1 tablespoon seasoned flour

2 cups cream

1 tablespoon hot sauce (I used ssamjang)

Seasoning (herbs, salt, pepper)

Bacon Vegetable Stew

A recent dinner had to be converted from a soup recipe to a stew recipe. Regular readers may already know why. Although Tom has been pushing his boundaries recently, with forays into the worlds of mushrooms (twice) and anchovies, I thought messing with his aversion to soup might be a step too far. Thankfully it was easy enough - just skip the blending part, really - and dinner was wonderful. The mint adds depth and freshness to what is otherwise a stodgy mess of vegetables. I really enjoyed the comforting mix of surprisingly complex flavours. And yes, I blended the leftovers for soup the next day. With a cup of wine. It was even more wonderful.

As I type this, I am nibbling away on something baked and brilliant, which I promise to share with you tomorrow. What a cliffhanger!

Bacon Vegetable Stew

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4

1 tablespoon butter

10 rashers bacon, separated

1 onion

500g leeks

1 clove garlic

4 potatoes

2 sweet potatoes

1 litre stock

50ml rum

2 fresh mint leaves

100ml cream

Seasoning (salt, pepper, mixed herbs)

Rustic Grape Butter

A while ago, we bought a kilogram of green grapes, reduced to half-price because of the sell-by date. And then we put them in the fridge and left them to go mouldy, like the good fruit-eaters we are. They were taking up so much space that eventually I agreed that something needed to be done with them (at least the non-mouldy ones), Googled "what to do with grapes" and found this page with a recipe for, amongst other things, grape butter. Which sounded amazing.

I had some of the butter this morning, with real butter on brown bread, and it was really good. Healthy. Fruity and not too sweet - I added much less sugar than called for in the original recipe. It's got texture to it, so it might not be so appleaing to young children, but I'm imagining it adorning all kinds of dishes. Especially savoury ones that call for a hint of fruit. Mmmm.

Tom kept the water than the grapes and apple were boiled in as a drink, but it could be discarded, or used in other ways as you see fit.

Rustic Grape Butter

(Printable Recipe)

Fills 1 jar

500g seedless grapes

1 apple

1.5 tablespoons brown sugar

Water

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

Balsamic Orange Chicken

Wow, this meal was easy to make. No chopping required - it's ready in the amount of time it takes to boil some rice. I made it because my co-teacher gave me seven or eight oranges, and because BBC Good Food suggested this.

I was surprised by how tender the chicken was, despite the comments on the recipe - I often cook chicken like this, by frying it before building a sauce around it and poaching it, but this meal really did make for very tender chicken.

Balsamic Orange Chicken

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 servings rice

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 large oranges

100ml chicken stock

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon butter

Seasoning

Birthday: Sweet Wine and Garlic Pasta

My birthday dinner. It was gorgeous. Subtle and delicious. I'd accidentally bought a bottle of semi-sweet sparkling wine, and while it was okay, it wasn't my drink of choice on my twenty-first birthday, so into dinner it went. My version of this meal differs slightly from the original in that it is more friendly to a two-hob kitchen with minimal washing up. I have no idea how many pans they were using in the original, but it was too many!

Oh, and it was Tom's first purposeful at-home foray into the world of mushrooms! I decided that I wanted mushrooms on my birthday, and he ate them, with no complaints, and just the observation that they were a bit chewy. This is a major milestone.

Sweet Wine and Garlic Pasta

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 an onion

250ml sweet wine, separated

200ml chicken stock

1/4 teaspoon each of any herbs on hand

1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon butter, separated

1 handful enokitake or other mushrooms

1 tablespoon cream

Lemon juice (optional)

Seasoning

6 garlic cloves

150g spaghetti

Birthday: Cookie Dough Truffles

Yesterday was my birthday, so half of this week was spent cooking up a storm in preparation. It was very exciting. I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings exercising my right arm and shoulder muscles by creaming butter and sugar together on the first two days, and beating single cream until it was softly whipped on the last. (I did cheat in the end and use the blender, but not until I'd been beating it non-stop for forty minutes. Dedication.)

The first recipe was Love & Olive Oil's chocolate chip cookie dough truffles. They looked easy enough to make in bulk for school; also, they looked delicious. They were pretty easy to make. I also bought 100 of the tiniest muffin cups known to humankind, so they were easy to distribute to students yesterday.

Cookie Dough Truffles

(Printable Recipe)

Makes about 90 tiny dough balls

1 cup butter

1.5 cups brown sugar

2.5 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

70g chocolate bar

For coating:

250g chocolate

Apple and Blue Cheese Soup

When my parents were at university, they made stilton and cider soup. When I was at university, I also made stilton and cider soup. It was rich and decadent and the kind of soup that you could spread on toast. Out here in Korea, after buying Blue Cheese! in Seoul, it was the first thing I wanted to make - with, of course, substitutions. I mentioned earlier how we are in a cider-free country (except for the fact that Sprite is known as 'cider', which I swear was only done to annoy me). So, apple it was.

I made this soup alcohol-free, because I did make it just after getting out of bed this morning, but feel free to use cider yourself, or use white wine to deglaze the pan after the onion has softened. Adding a potato will thicken it, and be careful not to over-salt - just keep tasting it until it's right. The blue cheese will make the back of your throat burn slightly as you eat it, which I like, but will make you wary of eating too much.

Apple and Blue Cheese Soup

(Printable Recipe)

Makes 3-4 servings

1 tablespoon oil

Half an onion

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoon flour

200ml milk

250ml apple juice
1 apple

1 teaspoon chicken stock powder

60g blue cheese

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

Spaghetti Carbonara

Here is a quick re-do of my essential spaghetti carbonara recipe with pictures. As you will see later, my culinary energies were focused in a very different direction to boring old 'dinner' last night.

Spaghetti Carbonara

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

150g spaghetti

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

6 rashers smoked bacon

2 chicken breasts

1/2 glass white wine

100ml cream
1 egg

Oregano and chilli powder

Seasoning

Grated cheese to serve

Cut the onion in half and into crescent-moon slices. Crush and roughly chop the garlic. Fry on a low heat.

Boil the kettle to put the spaghetti on while you roughly chop the chicken and bacon into equal-sized bits and add to the onion pan. (If the pasta is not yet cooking, put it on now.) Stir, and allow to cook until the chicken is nicely browned.

Add the white wine and simmer for a while.

Add the cream and seasonings, to taste. Once the pasta is cooked, add some of the pasta water to the chicken pan, and quickly drain the spaghetti. Break the egg into the chicken pan and stir through so that everything turns a sunny yellow.


Add the spaghetti to the pasta pan as well. Stir and allow the mixture to heat through before serving.

Spicy Shredded Chicken

Yesterday morning, we went to Tesco and found out that both chicken and milk had gone up in price by fifty percent. Each. Combined with a couple of bad days at work, and I don't know where I'm going to find the energy to do Friday unless this morning turns out to be super.

So bad days call for lazy, comforting cooking. Amazingly I stumbled across the easiest recipe for chicken ever two nights ago, which made the apartment smell fantastic as it cooked. The chicken itself ended up not being too spicy, despite the addition of three chillies to the cooking liquid. As you will see, we had the chicken in tortillas with rice, mashed kidney beans, guacamole (made by Tom), and grated cheese. Eat it yourself in sandwiches, risottos, soups - anything. And enjoy the smell.

Spicy Shredded Chicken
(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

(Makes 4 very chicken-y tortillas with sides)

3 chicken breasts

1 large onion

3 cloves garlic

2-3 green chillies

2 large or 3 small bay leaves

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 pinch cinnamon

Water

Seasoning

Roughly chop the onion, garlic and chillies, removing the seeds from the chillies if preferred. Put everything in a large pan with enough water to nearly cover the chicken, and put on a high heat.

Once the water starts to boil, adjust the heat to a simmer. Cover the pan with foil, or a tilted lid, and cook for thirty minutes. Relish the smell.

Remove the lid and cook for a further ten.

Take the chicken out of the pan and shred, using two forks. Continue reducing the cooking liquid if you want to use it as a sauce, or just cut your losses and spoon out some spicy onions to go with the chicken, discarding the rest.

Rice, beans, guacamole, chicken, and spicy onions.

Serve immediately, or cool and keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

No-Fish Fishcakes with Garlic Hasselbacks

So what are no-fish fishcakes? They are my attempt (based, of course, on ideas from Niki Segnit) at creating crab cakes that Tom the fish-hater will eat. They are made from sweet potato, bacon, breadcrumbs, mayonnaise and lime juice, and are really quite good. Served (as they were) with garlicky Hasselback potatoes and caramelized onions, they were amazing - the combination of flavours was superb. I was very happy with last night's dinner, and I didn't even have to prise a crab into several pieces to make it.

This recipe isn't, however, quite perfect as is. The cakes were fairly soft, although it wasn't the end of the world. To create a cake that truly holds its shape, you could add perhaps a tablespoon of flour at the mixing stage, or (as Segnit suggests) deep-fry them. I'm currently struggling with a few concepts related to food texture, so if I come up with any other suggestions, I'll let you know.

Oh, and I fried the bacon in melted butter, just because. Oh my god, it smelt so good. No doubt it was particularly unhealthy, but it felt like a bacon-in-butter night, and I'm so glad I did it.

No-Fish Fishcakes with Garlic Hasselbacks
(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

(Makes 9 cakes and 7 Hasselbacks)

7 small potatoes

3-4 garlic cloves

2 large sweet potatoes

1 pack bacon (10 rashers)

1 slice of bread

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1 tablespoon lime juice

Oil

Butter (optional)

Flour

Seasoning

Balance each small potato in a wooden spoon and make cuts through it, as detailed here.

Nobody will know I re-used this picture from before.

Thinly slice the garlic cloves and put a sliver of garlic in between each 'chip' in the potatoes. One clove should be enough to stuff two potatoes.

Like this.

Put the potatoes on an ovenable tray, drench in oil, and heavily sprinkle with salt. Put them in the oven at 200 degrees (390 Fahrenheit) for forty minutes. (They will need extra cooking time, but we'll come to that later.)

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes and put them in salted boiling water over a high heat. Fry the bacon (in butter!) until it has reached the texture you like.

Make the bread into breadcrumbs - I used the blender - and put it a mixing bowl. Season.

Carefully remove the bacon from the buttery heat, allowing the fat to drip back into the pan, and either chop it finely or blend it into oblivion. Mix with the breadcrumbs.

The forty minutes' cooking time for the potatoes should be up around now. Turn the oven down to 150 degrees (300 Fahrenheit) and cook for a further thirty minutes, topping each potato with a pat of butter if you feel like it.

Back to the cakes:

Drain the sweet potato and mash it thoroughly, with a splash of milk if necessary. Tom swears that the secret to mashing is to keep mashing until it's smooth, and then mash for a minute longer. Tip the sweet potato into the bacon-breadcrumb mixture, and add mayonnaise, lime and more seasoning before shaping into cakes. I made nine, each of them a little smaller than the palm of my hand. Wrap the cakes in clingfilm and refrigerate for twenty minutes.

Flour the cakes very lightly on each side and cook in the buttery bacon fat from earlier, adding oil if necessary.

The cakes should only need two to three minutes cooking time, turning once. Make sure they are heated all the way through - as long as you don't actually burn them, it's probably better to over-cook than under-cook.

Serve with the garlic Hasselbacks and caramelized onions.

Apple Mustard Risotto

Risotto has been one of my favourite lunches for a long time - it was one of the first meals I posted, not that I strictly wrote recipes back then. It's the sign of someone who doesn't have to go to work until after 2pm. If I ever have a real job, I'll miss lunch risottos.

So yesterday I made an apple and mustard risotto, after trawling through a bunch of links and somehow finding my way to Cookie & Kate's apple cheddar quesadilla. Oh, I miss cheese. Anyway, more things happened and I ended up using apple in a risotto. (I also used apple in a peanut sauce for dinner, which was also delicious, but there are no pictures of that meal - partly because Tom burnt his contribution - so it's like it never existed!)

 Apple Mustard Risotto

(Printable Recipe)
Serves 1

1/2 an onion

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 an apple

1/2 a glass white wine
1 cup rice

400ml stock (roughly)

1 tablespoon mustard

Seasoning

Chop your onion and apple, and fry in butter until softened. Add the rice to the pan and stir to coat the rice in the butter - it should go translucent. Pour the white wine in and allow the mixture to simmer for a few moments.

A very liquidy pan.

Add stock to the pan little by little, waiting until the rice has absorbed the liquid before adding the next 100ml or so. Stir as regularly as possible. Usually I just dump all the stock in in one go because I have better things to do with my life, but you do run the risk of oversaturating the rice that way.

The rice has absorbed more of the stock.

Towards the end of the cooking time, add the mustard - it should need about five minutes in the pan to heat through and allow the rice to absorb some of the flavour without being totally overwhelmed by it.

Season the risotto, and taste - after twenty-five minutes it should be nicely edible. Serve.

Throw some extra apple chunks on to garnish.