Tonight's dinner : Simon Hopkinson I might love you ...

Why this sudden devotion to Simon Hopkinson (he of "Simon Hopkinson Cooks" on the t.v.)?  Two words : Piedmontese Peppers.  I'd seen him make them on his t.v. programme and saw how much he enjoyed them and was attracted to the idea from way back then.  So when I had tomatoes and peppers in the same space, both looking for a job to do, I remembered the recipe.

This evening's dinner consisted of a gammon joint, pot roasted slowly in apple juice with a bouquet garni and black pepper, along with Piedmontese Peppers (half a capsicum pepper, with slices of garlic, half a tomato, salt & pepper and rapeseed - or olive - oil), almondy green beans, steamed carrots and potatoes, with gravy.

Those Piedmontese Peppers.  Well, I can't remember the last time I ate something that so rattled my cage with delight in the way these did.  The only trouble was - I was the only one!  Hubby wasn't keen on the skins of either the peppers or the tomatoes, although he liked the flavours apart from too much garlic.  He felt the garlic clashed terribly with the gammon.  Son & heir didn't even try his pepper, having had a little taste of the anchovy on top.  I was SO disappointed about that.

So.  The next capsicum pepper I get, is going to be made into Piedmontese Peppers and I'm going to eat them on a socking great chunk of toasted ciabatta for a totally awesome and amazing lunch.  Then I'll blog them - and try not to go on .. and on .. and on .. about how gorgeous they are.

Aside from that, the meat was tender and luscious - just so juicy, from being slow cooked in the apple juice.

It was the first time I'd made the almondy green beans, too.  It's a bit of a shame that I chose the same day to make the peppers, as without them overshadowing the beans, I'd have been waxing lyrical about how gorgeous the beans were!  Cooked normally (in boiling salted water), when you drain them, you melt a big old knob of butter in the hot pan then add the toasted almonds (I toasted them first in the same pan), put the beans back and warm them through over a low heat.  Gosh but they were good!

With the Vegibox's fabulous carrots which are so mild and sweet and their lovely robust potatoes, everything about this evening's meal just hit the spot with me.  It's just as well somebody liked it all!

Risotto Primavera with herby glazed chicken

The emphasis of this recipe is on the Risotto Primavera, as I will admit to having used a shop bought chicken glaze.  Now don't you go telling me that you never use such a thing, I refuse to believe it.

The glaze we used was one of the Maggi range of "So Juicy" cook-in-a-bag products.  In fact, it was really not bad at all.  We tried the mixed herbs one, which seemed to have a significant amount of tomato in its mixed herbs, but with no artificial colours, flavourings or Aspartame in its ingredients, we were prepared to give it a go.

Owing to the cooking method, which involves your cooking the chicken sealed into a cook-in bag, the chicken comes out the other end enticingly moist and tender.  I'd definitely give others of the same range a go.

As a fairly foolproof and easy way of obtaining a very acceptable chicken dish, I recommend it to you!

Now the big question was what to put with it.  I'm always on the lookout for interesting and easy vegetable dishes that can be use as a side to a meat dish, for just these moments.

We had a number of meals planned that included potatoes already - and owing to hubby's antipathy towards the 'umble spud, I needed to find something else to use as the carbohydrate in this dish.

Hubby suggested vegetable rice, but son & heir isn't always terribly keen on that.  As hubby was the one who was going to be cooking this meal, I suddenly hit on the idea of a risotto.  Well, he is the Risotto Cooking King!  I remembered that I had picked up a baked Risotto Primavera recipe from a magazine, but knew he wouldn't be struck on the idea of doing a baked risotto (being a newly crowned risotto purist, and all that).  So we just used the recipe as a guide for the amounts and types of vegetables to use - and he made a straight, cooker top, in a saucepan, ordinary risotto - but using frozen peas, asparagus, fine green beans, tenderstem broccoli, mint, chives and parsley instead.

The combination of the highly flavoursome chicken and the clean, fresh flavours of the risotto with its herbs, were just perfect together.

Hubby even reserved a few asparagus spears for decoration, which was good because although it is great in a risotto, I do love the flavour of asparagus and it was a treat to have some to enjoy on its own.

I'll have to remember to use vegetable risotto in this context again in future.  I have used Risotto Milanese (saffron risotto) in this way in the past and it worked exceptionally well there, too.  The light and springlike flavours were a lovely break from the somewhat heavier mid-winter flavours that we've been enjoying before and since, thanks to the awful weather.  Hopefully, we'll get a chance to put them to the test in another combination very soon!

RISOTTO PRIMAVERA  (Serves 3)

Ingredients :

150g asparagus spears

2 handfuls of frozen peas

150g tenderstem broccoli

50g fine green beans

3 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil

2 banana shallots, very finely diced

25g butter

300g Arborio or Carnaroli rice

100ml of white wine

1.5 litres of vegetable stock (we used Essential cuisine vegetable stock powder)

10g fresh chopped parsley

10g fresh chopped chives

10g fresh chopped mint

50g grated parmesan

sea salt and finely ground black pepper.

Method :

1.  Bring a saucepan of salted water to a rolling boil and prepare the asparagus by snapping at the weak point (around one third of the way up the stem from the cut end).  Retain the woody ends for use in the stock and blanch the tipped ends for 60 seconds.  Drain (retaining the water) and then plunge into bowl of iced water to stop the cooking process.

2.  Repeat with the frozen peas, tenderstem broccoli and green beans - blanching for 3 minutes and adding them to the same iced water.

3.  Prepare the stock by adding the stock cube or powder to the cooking water and add the woody ends of the asparagus, cut lengthwise.  Bring up to a simmer and keep the stock over a very low heat until required, not allowing it to boil.  Remove the asparagus pieces just before use.

4.  Heat the olive oil and butter gently together in a large pan.  Add the shallots and cook until they are soft and transparent, not allowing them to brown.

5.  Add rice to the shallot mix and stir well to coat with the oils, then turn the heat up as hot as you dare - without burning - before quenching the pan with the white wine.

6.  Cook until the wine has reduced by two thirds and add a ladleful of the vegetable stock (minus the asparagus pieces).  Reduce heat to a simmer.

7.  Continue adding ladlefuls whenever the mixture runs dry, stirring well and keeping it moving to avoid catching on the bottom of the pan.

8.  Continue in this way until the rice is cooked al dente.  You may find you have stock left over, which is normal as different rices require different amounts of liquid.

9.  Drain the vegetables from the iced water and add them to the risotto to warm them through, stirring gently so as not to break them up.

10.  Add the parsley, chives, mint and grated parmesan, reserving a small amount of parsley for garnish.  Stir gently through and taste for seasoning.

11.  Serve and garnish with shaved parmesan and chopped parsley.

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Failed : Pan-roasted chicken dish

I thought it would be interesting to talk about the dishes that fail - and my thoughts on why they did so.

I had included on the menu for last night (Sunday) a pan-roasted chicken dish, gleaned from "A Glug of Oil" (see original blog post here).

Now before I go any further, I have to say that the failure of our dinner has nothing to do with Jan's excellent recipe.  Rather more, it has everything to do with the pathetic nature of Asda's frozen chicken portions - which was all I could get when shopping.

I set out to buy three chicken breasts, which I can't help but think would have been brilliant for the job.  Unfortunately, you needed to have mortgaged your house - or at the very least sold your car - in order to have been able to afford the fresh chicken breasts.  So my eyes turned to the frozen.  What a pathetic no-choice we had there!  It was either a monster bag of cheap-as-chips-full-of-salty-water-and-no-chicken pieces or a small bag of "chicken chunks" which were, at least, breast meat - even if they had a significant amount of the salty water injected into them.  *sigh*

I should have thrown the idea to the wind and gone for an entire chicken and just done a roast, but I had my heart set on the pan-roasted chicken thing.

I had a half a pack of streaky bacon, left over from an earlier dish, still in the fridge, so decided to wrap two chunks of chicken breast in each piece of bacon and pan-fry them as the recipe said.

Which was all very well, until I looked at the quantity I wound up with.  Let's say, it's just as well we had an enormous plum pie for dessert.

Oh, and I won't be bothering with adding shallots to my green beans again.  Can't see the point of that at all, as although the idea sounded good in practice it turned out to be tasteless and disappointing.

However, the real result of the whole meal was the Honey Roasted Butternut Squash (and a Parsnip, who crept in as an afterthought when it looked like we weren't going to get much for dinner).  Gosh, but that squash was good.  I'll definitely be doing that again!  :)