Successes and failures - a typical cooking week or so!

What BBC Good Food thought it should look like.

Now, where was I when it all went pear-shaped?

Aaah yes, it was Friday of the week before last (how DOES the time slip past so quickly?) and we were due to have the Sticky Chinese Chicken and Thai Carrot Salad.  Hmmmn, well, that all went very much to worms, I'm afraid.

The chicken went well enough - although it was far from "sticky", but very nicely flavoured all the same.  The Thai Carrot Salad was just such a disaster!  The dressing seemed to be weighted very heavily in the Fish Sauce direction and, having spent over a week trying to purchase rice vermicelli noodles, found that they didn't react in the way that the instructions on the packet intimated that they would.  The carrot mixture, on it's own, was barely edible - but having introduced the noodles to the equation, it became totally inedible.  So that wasn't a successful attempt - which was very disappointing, after the spectacular success of the New Potato, Bacon & Goat's Cheese salad.

The Pork with Lemongrass & Cinnamon didn't happen, which was a shame, but I just didn't feel up to making it.

However, the Pot Roast Chicken just had to be made as the dinner for the following day was relying upon it - not to mention Sunday's dinner!

I really love cooking pot-roast chicken.  There’s something so homely and comforting about having a chicken chuckling in a stock pot on your cooker.  I think it’s also the smell of the herbs and vegetables that go to make up the stock ingredients, combined with the knowledge that the chicken will emerge from its bath both subtly flavoured and succulent. 

I always roast the chicken for a half hour at 200deg prior to dunking it into its bath of gorgeous stock ingredients.  I think it imparts some of the “roasted chicken” flavour without resulting in the sulphurous effect that can be brought about by just roasting alone.

For the stock, I used onions, garlic, celery, thyme, parsley, basil, black peppercorns and included a star anise for that lovely and very distinctive flavour it imparts.  The smell, as the chicken cooked, just improved as the 90 minutes (it was a big chicken!) went on.

I'll be blogging the whole process as my next blog post, hopefully!

The sausagemeat balls were a bit of a disaster, unfortunately, as we didn't manage to get sausages from our local butcher - and the Tesco versions we did get were pretty darned pallid.  I'll have another go when I can get the butcher's sausages I was after to begin with.

It was very worthwhile taking the trouble to cook that chicken, even though I was feeling so rough, as the Coronation Chicken wraps we had on the following day were spectacular.  I included some lovely avocado in the wraps for us grown-ups - Son & heir has yet to obtain a liking for avocado - and with the lovely fresh crunchy lettuce they were just the job.

Which brings us to the start of this week's fare.

Rather cunningly, we decided to deviate from my self-set rule of not cooking separate dinners for everyone, and bought Son & heir a frozen pizza to have while we had a rather delicious Porcini Mushroom risotto.  Made by hubby's own fair hand, it contained the lovely chestnut mushrooms as well as the usual shallots and other ingredients.  For me, I was challenged a little bit by the grittiness of the dried Porcini.  As hard as you try to avoid including any grit from them, it just isn't possible to filter it all out - even with leaving the last of the soaking juice behind in the bowl.   Some people are challenged by fat in their food, I'm challenged by grit.  If an omelette includes even the tiniest bit of eggshell, I'm afraid that's enough to stop me stone cold dead in my tracks - and probably bring what I have eaten, back.  It's really such a shame, as the risotto was just SO mushroomy and gorgeous.  I loved the flavours - but could have done with having a comedy set of teeth, i.e. removeable, in order to eat it.

The next meal on the list was a Chicken & Cauliflower Curry.  For some reason, I decided to go about this curry by blitzing the onion, garlic and chilli before frying them off.  I suspect it's too much food t.v. that planted this particular idea in my mind.  I really don't know why I did it, because in the past whenever hubby has made a curry this way, I haven't really liked it because it leaves the sauce quite textural and almost gritty (again).  In fact, part-way through the cooking of this curry (shortly after the addition of some yoghurt, which promptly split) I was seriously considering consigning it to the bin.  However, I persevered and once the cauliflower began to cook, the whole thing came together quite nicely.  It wasn't bad, but I have to admit that I much prefer the "slice onions, fry, add garlic & chilli, fry, add spices, fry" approach to making a curry!

All was safe and sound by the following day's meal.  I have cooked the Sausage & Mozzarella Pasta Bake dozens of times now.  However, this time was a little different in that hubby was cooking.  I had to write the recipe out, as our printer has given up the ghost, and he even managed to read my writing correctly.  He turned out a lovely rendition of the dish - and for once, not having cooked it, I suppose - I could understand why the whole family like it so much!

We're up to Friday now, and owing to certain things happening rather suddenly (which I won't go into here, as I'm sure you'd be bored by it all), the planned Stromboli (regrettably, I failed to keep a note of the website which fired up my interest in the dish, or you could have seen it) fell by the wayside when I ran out of time in which to prove the dough required.  Pizza managed to fall into the gap again.

Yesterday, Saturday, I had planned on making a Quiche Lorraine.  Following a bit of comparing and contrasting various Quiche Lorraine recipes - from those with an ingredients list a mile long, to those with four or five ingredients - I decided on a fairly plain recipe.  I knew that the ingredients I had - Burford Brown eggs, Butcher's Bacon and a lovely strong piece of mature cheddar, were probably enough.  I will admit to adding a pinch of nutmeg, but that just seemed to make sense at the time!

The end result was a quiche of quite glorious proportions and taste, too - which I'll be blogging second on the to-do-list.  With a fairly simple salad, it made for a lovely meal.

Tonight's dinner is going to be roast bacon - I bought a lovely little roasting joint from Spring Fields Butchers on Friday - together with a Pasta Ratatouille bake.  I was after something a bit nicer than your average fare, but that was easy to prepare.  Hopefully I hit that nail on the head - I'll let you know later!

So far, I've boiled the little chap in some apple juice and water - approx 50/50 dimensions - with some thyme, a cinnamon stick and some pepper.  It smelled lovely when I got it out of it's bath to go into the roasting pan.  I'm currently cooking it long and slow - it will probably have had about two and a half hours in the roasting tin, by the time dinner is ready.  Fingers crossed, it will be falling apart tender by then.

All of which just leaves Monday.  I'm taking the car back to the garage to have the work done for the MOT pass on Monday, so we needed something easy to make and flexible - just in case we got the "come and get the car" call right at an inopportune moment from the dinner's point of view.

There's really only two meals that fall easily into that category - either spaghetti bolognese or chilli con carne.  As we've had a number of pasta dishes just lately, we opted for the chilli.  Hubby will be cooking that one as he's the Chilli-meister, so I'll be able to sit back and lick the wounds that the MOT will have undoubtedly caused.  If I had the money, I'd buy a new car every year, just so that I didn't have to go through this MOT nightmare annually.  It'd be worth it, I'm sure!

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Pasta Ratatouille Bake and how time flies!

I woke up this morning with two priorities in mind.  One was to bake some Muffins involving Quince in some way.  The other was to blog on the Ratatouille Bake we ate for dinner last night.

So far, it's got to 1.50pm and I've had a shower, had breakfast, been to Sainsbury's (extra-curricular trip, for flour), returned and caught up with my email whilst having a coffee, then had lunch, then had an extra-curricular trip to the Ashley Road to drop hubby off.  Only now, am I getting to one of those priorities.  Does this happen to everyone, or is it just me?

Yes, I could have got out of bed before 9 a.m. but I have been so totally dog-tired for the last two days that having a bit of a long sleep through was getting to be vital.  I'm always scared to become too tired, just in case - one day - my brain decides to melt as it did some 2 years ago when I had a mini stroke.  Don't want that to happen again, just in case next time it decides not to be mini!  Anyway.  Enough rambling about not having time - let's get on and tell you about the Pasta Ratatouille Bake.

I had tripped over this recipe on the Good Food Channel's website and it appealed to me for the following reasons :

1.  It provided three of your five-a-day vegetables in what appeared to be extremely palatable form;
2.  It used pasta, so was potentially a good alternative to using potatoes in a dish;
3.  It was oven baked with cheese melted over the top, which is very palatable for young Son.

I knew Son wouldn't enjoy the courgettes, but they were big enough for him to avoid.  I had hope that he would enjoy the broad beans, as they were a relatively new vegetable for him and, coming in frozen form, were easy to keep handy.

As it turned out, the dish was delicious and baked well with the pasta.  I used Spirali instead of the classic macaroni, largely because we already had some Spirali in the cupboard.  I also used Thyme instead of Basil, as my Basil plant had died over the last two days of sharp overnight frosts.  Even being kept in the kitchen didn't help it.  I admit that I also added a tablespoon of tomato ketchup to the sauce, just to add that little tang that the fresh tomato wasn't providing.  The last adjustment was that I grated over some sharp Cheddar cheese as well as the Parmesan, in order to up the cheese quota so as to appeal to Son.  The recipe makes a fair amount - way more than would feed 4 people - but nil desperandum as it made a lovely lunch the following day.

PASTA RATATOUILLE BAKE  (feeds 5-6)

Ingredients :

200g pasta (Spirali or Macaroni are good)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
2 courgettes, sliced (you may need 3, depending on how many you're feeding & the size of the courgettes.  Mine were big!)
200g broad beans (fresh, frozen or tinned)
1 tbps tomato ketchup
125ml vegetable stock (from a cube is fine, just don't add too much extra salt)
25g parmesan cheese, grated
10g sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Method :

1.  Preheat the oven to 180deg c/gas mark 4.

2.  Cook the pasta according to the instructions given on the packet and drain.

3.  Meanwhile, in a deep frying pan, heat the oil and cook the onion for 5-10 mins, until it's tender and golden.

4.  Add the garlic for the last 2-3 minutes and cook through.

5.  Stir in the herbs, tomatoes, courgettes, beans, stock, tomato ketchup and seasoning and simmer for 5 minutes.

6.  Combine the pasta with the vegetables and stir gently, then decant into a warmed casserole dish.

7.  Grate the cheese over the top, then oven-bake for 30-35 mins.

Excellent served with Sausages, Gammon, Pork Chops.