Manchego chicken Alfredo - super quick, two pot supper

This bowl of chickeny, cheesy, garlicky and creamy delight could almost be called a one pot supper, but regrettably the pasta needed to be cooked in its own pan - hence it became a two pot deal.  However, that in no way slows it down, oh no.  The sheer simplicity of the ingredients makes this as speedy a dinner to produce as any you could wish for.

With no onions to chop, no veggies to peel or slice, the only preparation that's required is to peel and chop some garlic, cut some chicken in half, grate some cheese and chop a bit of parsley.  I certainly can't claim that's in any way difficult - and oh boy, does it pay off by way of flavour!  Alfredo de Lelio, you sure knew what you were doing when you put the original dish together, all those years ago in 1892.

However, I suspect Mr de Lelio would be horrified to learn that I have removed the quintessentially Italian Parmesan cheese from the recipe and submitted, instead, a Spanish replacement - the gorgeous Manchego hard cheese.  Being a sheep's cheese, Manchego has a very different flavour to Parmesan, but equally there are similarities in both texture and colour plus they both melt in a similar way.

Son and heir is passionately opposed to Parmesan - he can't bear the after taste it brings with it, so consequently I was committed to finding a replacement for it or not indulging in pasta Alfredo at all.  I was intending on using Grana Padano, but having recently used some Manchego in cheese scones with every success, I decided to give it a go and I'm so glad I did.

So there we are.  A bit of a different spin on pasta Alfredo, but super tasty and super quick to make, too.  If, perchance, you can't find any Manchego but like the sound of the recipe and don't have anyone at home passionately opposed to Parmesan, then by all means use Parmesan.  You won't be harming the recipe at all, you'll simply be returning it back to its roots.

I only have one Cook's Tip for you, which is that when you drain the pasta make sure to keep some of the pasta water close by.  If (as sometimes happens), the sauce becomes too gloopy and thick, simply add a little of the pasta water.  Far better to use that than add more cream, or milk, or have to mix up some chicken stock.

Onwards to the recipe!

MANCHEGO CHICKEN ALFREDO   Serves 2

Ingredients :

250g small, open style pasta such as Conchiglie shells

1 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, halved horizontally
sea salt & black pepper, to taste
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
200ml dry white wine
250ml single cream
50ml double cream
half a tsp good quality chicken stock powder (or half a chicken stock cube)
125g Manchego cheese, grated finely
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped.

Method :

Bring a good quantity of salted water to the boil in a large saucepan and cook the Conchiglie shells to manufacturer's recommendation, draining once cooked.

In a large frying pan, heat the rapeseed oil and melt the butter over a high heat.

Season the two halves of each chicken breast with both sea salt & black pepper and carefully place into the frying pan.  Fry the chicken until it is a deep golden brown on both sides and cooked through.

Remove the pan from the heat and decant the chicken onto a warmed plate.  Cut the chicken into even sized slices and reserve to keep warm.

Replace the pan onto a reduced heat and add the garlic.  Stir and cook gently until the garlic is softened and lightly golden.  Add the wine (and a little bit extra for luck is definitely allowed) and allow to bubble and reduce by one third.

Add the single and double creams along with the chicken stock powder and stir gently to combine.  Once the sauce has heated through, is bubbly and slightly thickened, add the grated cheese, most of the parsley, the hot, drained pasta and sliced chicken.  Toss everything in the sauce until all is well combined.  Taste for seasoning and add more pepper if necessary.

Serve into warmed bowls with a sprinkle of the reserved parsley on top as garnish.

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Cheese making post no. 1 : Cream Cheese

This marks the beginning of a new venture for Rhubarb & Ginger - cheese making!  Not your actual cheddar (although I don't rule anything out!), that's a bit advanced for me just yet. No, I'm starting with soft cheeses.

You see, for my recent birthday my hubby bought me all the extra paraphernalia I needed for cheese making - cheesecloth, a digital thermometer, some vegetable rennet and the very important book of recipes. The book came from Lakeland and is written by Gerard Baker, a chef who I have seen on t.v. on occasion but who has more recently been on active duty as a chef and lecturer in Antarctica!

Home made cream cheese with smoked salmon & cucumber panino

So, getting back to the cheese.  I chose this recipe for Cream Cheese to start with as it seemed fairly simple and I could pretty much guarantee that so long as the cheese at the end of everything was good, the menfolk would eat it. All of which is fairly critical as I suspected we were going to have quite a bit to wade through!

The process itself is really very simple, which is nice.  You do need some particular items in order to make clean, untainted cheese - such as stainless steel pots, pans, a colander and cutlery, glass bowls, cheesecloth and a digital thermometer to ensure that the milk mixture reaches the right temperature. You also need to ensure that everything is absolutely spanking clean and free from all chemicals, so rinse - rinse everything copiously with clean water.

My first go - edible but unexceptional

Now I will admit that this was my second go at making cheese - the first one was a bit of a failure.  However, it was worth the failure as it taught me a lot about how to heat the milk, what quantities I can easily cope with and what to expect from the curds themselves. I shall pass on as much as I can in this blog post, so that your first go will be rather more successful.

So, the initial process is to heat the 500ml of whole, full fat milk and 500ml of single cream (light cream in the USA, table cream in Canada) together in the one pan. You're not heating it very much, just to 29°C, so the easiest way (avoiding the possibility of burning the milk on the bottom of the pan) is to employ a Bain Marie style arrangement with a pyrex bowl containing the milk/cream mixture sat on the top of simmering water in a pan underneath. This way, if the contents heat too quickly or too much, it is easy to remove from the heat.  In fact, my milk/cream zoomed up to 34° at the speed of light and I had to place the bowl in a sink of cold water to bring it back down to the right temperature.  Ah well, live and learn.

Home made cream cheese with smoked salmon and cress
oven bottom muffin

It was important to reduce the temperature as the next step was to add the live yoghurt (I used Yeo Valley yoghurt and very nice it was too!) and had the milk/cream been too hot, it would have killed the live cultures within it.  So, in goes the 200ml yoghurt and half a teaspoonful of diluted rennet.  Make sure to stir gently but regularly so that the rennet is mixed in quickly and effectively as it begins working quickly.  One of the things I learned in my first attempt with rennet was that my rennet - it is vegetable rennet - is very weak.  As a result, I used twice the amount required.  You will only know how your rennet performs by using it, unfortunately.

Following 30 minutes of exercising of what little patience I possess, I took a look inside the bowl.  Honestly, the satisfaction of finding a bowl full of coagulated curds and whey is quite ridiculous and almost as good as the next stage of cutting the curd.  It is worthwhile popping your (very clean) little pinky finger into the curd to check whether it splits cleanly before cutting the curd.  If it doesn't break cleanly, leave it for another 15 minutes or so until it does.

The next stage, cutting the curd, is my favourite bit.  ~shrug~  I have no idea why. Anyway, find yourself a super-clean, fine bladed, stainless steel carving knife type of knife and cut the curds into squares (well, rectangles in fact, but they look like squares from the surface!).  Believe it or not, this helps to release the whey from the curd.

A word about cheesecloth.  If you're using a new piece of cheesecloth, it is essential to give it a good rinse through to ensure that any loose threads have been cleared before using it in anger.  I usually do this bit before doing anything else and leave it sat on the side in a dish.

So the next bit is to line your stainless steel colander with cheesecloth and place it over a big bowl.  Then gently spoon the cut curds into the cheesecloth. About now, you should start feeling a little bit like a cheese maker.  *chuckle* Immediately, you will see the whey begin to drain from the curds - which is what you're after.  If you're in the U.K., you can probably leave the cheese out of the fridge for the next six or seven hours as it drains.  However if you live somewhere hot, it's best to put it in the fridge.  Good luck with finding room for a large bowl and colander in the fridge.  We had to play some serious fridge tetris to get ours in!  Take a look at it from time to time and drain off the whey.  I kept mine and drank it with a little cherry syrup added.  Major lushness.

You will need to put the cheese into the fridge overnight (complete with colander and bowl), however at around the 8 hour mark, it is worthwhile very gently turning the sides of the curd to the middle, just to ensure that the centre of the curds get to drain properly.  I did this just before it went into the fridge.  Sneak a flavour now too - isn't it divine?

The following day, simply peel the cheesecloth away from the cheese curds and spoon them into a storage bowl with good fitting lid.  Hey presto - your cream cheese is ready for use.  Break out the smoked salmon and celebrate, you're a cheese maker!

The yield you will get depends entirely on the degree of milk solids in your milk products.  I'm afraid I can't tell you how much mine made because we'd eaten a third of it before I remembered I should have weighed it.  I guess if you think of a standard 180g pack of Philadelphia cream cheese, I must have made approximately four of those - so around 700-800g in total.

What all this fuss has been about - home made cream cheese!

Another thing is your milk.  Without doubt, raw milk is the best.  However, finding it is like finding rocking horse poo.  So don't be worried about using homogenised, pasteurised milk - it's what I used.  So long as the cream is accompanying the milk, the cream molecules will be able to help the homogenised cream molecules work in the required fashion for cream cheese.

I suppose I'd better provide a smaller, more concise version of the above recipe, *chuckle*, but I'd recommend if you're new to this process, you read all the above before getting cracking.

CREAM CHEESE   

Ingredients :

500ml whole, full fat milk
500ml single cream
200ml live plain yoghurt
0.5 tsp rennet, diluted in 15ml warm water.

Method :

To begin with, rinse a large piece of cheesecloth through and place to one side in a bowl.

Place a large pyrex bowl over the top of a saucepan containing a small amount of simmering water.  (Or use a double boiler, if you're lucky enough to have one)  Add the milk and cream to the bowl and slowly bring to a temperature of 29°C (84°F) stirring gently all the time.

Remove from the heat and stir the yoghurt into the milk mixture.  Mix the rennet with the water and stir them into the milk mixture, making sure to stir right through to the bottom of the bowl.

Set the bowl aside in a warm place for 30 minutes.  The milk should have coagulated into curds and whey.  Test the curds by inserting your pinky finger to break the curds.  If they break cleanly, proceed to the next step.  If a bit of a ragged break, leave the curds for another 15 minutes.

Take your knife and gently cut the curds in a chequer board pattern, so as to create squares.

Line a stainless steel colander with the rinsed cheesecloth and set it over a large bowl.  Gently spoon the curds into the centre of the colander.  You will see the whey begin to drain.  Set the cheese aside to drain, checking it from time to time and emptying the bowl of whey.

At the end of some 8 hours (or overnight), gently fold the cheese from the sides to the middle, so as to help the draining process.  Place the whole lot (colander, bowl and all) in the fridge overnight or until the curds have virtually stopped draining.

Spoon the drained curds into a super-clean, lidded storage container and plan your lunch.

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Leek & bacon tart - a quiche-alike!

One of my favourite vegetables is the leek.  Now I know that friends would say there's not a vegetable that I don't like - and I admit they have a point.

However, leeks are right up there in my top 10, along with things like the humble spud and the princely asparagus.

So, when I decided that I must explore egg enriched pastry dough (which is a very lovely thing that finishes with a biscuity texture), I naturally pondered on what to put in said pastry.  Naturally, I contemplated such things as pasties, sausage rolls - even a rhubarb & strawberry pie (which has to be done, very soon).  However, we all like a quiche and even if the pastry was a complete disaster (which it wasn't), I figured you can at least eat the filling out of the middle and save dinner that way.

Having just made a couple of Quiche Lorraines (for different occasions) recently, I was after something more interesting than the standard egg, cheese & bacon.  Consulting my copious list of "recipes gleaned from t'internet", I came across this one - Leek Tart, from the Cooking in Plain Greek blog.  Now, as I've said up there ~nods upwards~ leeks are one of my favourite veggies and I remembered this recipe. I'd had it sitting in my list for probably years, just waiting for a moment such as this.  Curiously, it also uses an egg enriched pastry dough!  Oooh, it was meant to be.

Now because I'm me and you wouldn't expect anything else, now would you?  I tinkered about with the recipe for the filling.  Well, you see, I had 100ml of single cream that had no home to go to and just made sense to put it in this recipe.  I also had more bacon than 100g available to me - and everything is made better with more bacon, right?  I looked up the cost of Gruyere cheese, as I know it has been pricey in the past - and it hadn't improved any.  However, there on the same online shopping page, was Gouda cheese - and for a lot less money.  Well, it seemed to make sense, so that's what I went with.

It even looked fairly pretty before it was baked!

Well, I was jolly pleased with how the whole experiment turned out.  The pastry was light and crisp, with a touch more substance to it, finishing up slightly more biscuity than a standard lard/butter shortcrust pastry.  I shall definitely be using it in more recipes.

The filling became interestingly fluffy from the addition of the yoghurt.  As I mixed it into the eggs, the whole lot thickened - somewhat alarmingly at first - which caused the filling to be a lot less "wet" than a usual quiche filling often is.  Interestingly, our son's opinion of the tart was that the filling was more "wet" than normal, but not in a "runny" kind of a way, but in a juicy-leeks-and-bacon kind of a way.  I know exactly what he means - and I like it!

True, this tart isn't the cheapest to prepare - the butter, eggs, bacon, cheese and cream all add up.  However, it is a deep fill tart and a quarter of an 8 inch tin goes a long way, so you can afford to be cautious with your portion sizes.  I dare say you could easily feed five, if not six, if you're careful with your cutting.

Mmmmmnnnn, there's a good half of my tart left in the fridge.  I can tell, it's not going to have a long wait before it sees me again.

LEEK & BACON TART    (serves 4)

Ingredients :

For the pastry

200g plain flour
100g cold salted butter
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp water
pinch of sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

For the filling

1 tbsp olive oil
100g thickly sliced smoked bacon
3 medium leeks, halved and finely sliced
1 large banana shallot, chopped finely
100ml Greek yoghurt
100ml single cream
2 eggs
freshly ground black pepper
60g Gouda cheese, grated.

Method :

Put the flour, butter and seasoning into your food processor and process until the contents resemble fine breadcrumbs.  Add the egg yolk and the water and blitz again, until the contents form a clump.

Decant out onto a large piece of cling film and form into a ball and cover with another big piece of cling film.  Then, roll the pastry out flat until sufficiently large to line your 8 inch pie dish, or tin.

Remove the top layer of cling film and drop the pastry into the dish, pastry side down.  Ease the pastry into the dish with the cling film attached and once securely lining your dish, remove the cling film.  Trim the pastry to fit and crimp the edges in a pretty pattern.

Pre-heat the oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.

Cut a piece of baking parchment to slightly bigger than your pastry lined dish, then crumple it into a ball and smooth out on top of the pastry.  You'll find crumpling it like this allows it to fit the dish better.  Tip in a good quantity of baking beans (to prevent the pastry from bubbling) and place the pastry case into the oven to part bake for 15 minutes.  Once the time is up, remove from the oven, remove the parchment paper and baking beans and set the pastry case aside to cool slightly while you prepare the filling.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and add the bacon.  Fry over a high heat until all the water has evaporated and the bacon is just beginning to turn golden.  Reduce the heat to moderate and add the leeks, shallots and more black pepper.  You may need to add a little more olive oil at this stage - I use a little extra virgin olive oil for flavour.  Once the leeks are softened, remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly.

Place the yoghurt, cream, eggs and black pepper into a bowl and whisk to combine.

Add a small amount of the grated cheese to the bowl, along with the leek mixture from the frying pan.  Stir quickly and gently, to combine.  Then, pour the filling into the pastry case, taking care to distribute the leeks and bacon evenly.

Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the surface of the leeks and put the whole thing into the oven (middle shelf) for some 35-40 minutes, or until the surface is nicely golden and the centre feels firm and not at all squishy.

Set aside for 10 minutes or so to settle before serving, or alternatively allow to cool and serve at room temperature with salad.

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Pasta Carbonara - far too lovely to be healthy!

Blame for this one, quite firmly, lies with son & heir.

You see, every week we ask him whether he has any requests for the menu plan.  Ordinarily, he immediately responds with "pizza", closely followed by "steak and chips".  However, on this one instance, he suggested Pasta Carbonara - which was so unusual, that we just had to reward his suggestion by following through and making the dish.

Well, you couldn't not!  I mean to say, we'd asked for the suggestion hadn't we?  It would have been rude to have turned it down flat (much as we do for the "steak and chips" suggestion - but we'll skip lightly over that fact).

Now it had been over a year since I'd made a Carbonara - and this was because of hubby's egg sensitivity.  The last one I'd made, he just couldn't cope with both the raw egg taste and the knowledge that what he was eating was basically, raw egg.  Albeit raw egg mixed with cream, bacon and parmesan - and thrown over hot pasta which was supposed to cook the egg.  I was always dubious about that - and hubby's reaction confirmed my suspicion that the "hot pasta" didn't do a terribly good job.  Plus the fact that the cold cream/egg mixture always took the heat out of the pasta and everything wound up a little bit cool.

So, having agreed to a Carbonara, I started to worry about hubby's reaction to it - and how I might get around the raw egg problem.

Now I'm no genius, as it took a good three or four days of worrying, before I hit on the solution.  A bain marie.

Using a bain marie would not only solve the raw egg problem, but also solve the cold pasta problem!  Aha!

What you do - and you're probably way ahead of me now - is get the shallot and bacon cooked off in a frying pan, then when a separate pan of salted water boils, dunk in the pasta.  Get a small pan going, with a little bit of water inside, simmering away.  Place a large bowl over the top - making sure the water doesn't touch the bowl.  Into the bowl, add the cream, eggs, parmesan and black pepper - and whisk gently but consistently while the gentle heat cooks the eggs without turning them into scrambled and the whole beautiful emulsion gets slowly warmed through.  The end result is a simply gorgeous, slightly foamy, warm mixture that coats the hot pasta perfectly - and it remains that way, i.e. hot!

The worth of this new (well, it's new to me) process for making Carbonara was summed up by hubby, who declared he had never - get that, "never" - had a better tasting, more unctuous, positively sinful Carbonara.  Now that, is truly high praise.

We aren't all that keen on spaghetti and, since the arrival of Mafalda Corta pasta in our local supermarket, haven't looked back.  I've used this shape of pasta in lots of other dishes recently and it was most acceptable in this Carbonara.  Because of the ruffles that each flat noodle length has along its edge, the pasta is able to pick up the coating sauce without leaving any behind - which makes for a very satisfying mouthful.

The dish was made all the better by our fabulous butcher's bacon.  The rashers are huge - and not only that, but are thick too.  Just perfectly robust for a good bacon hit in amongst the richness of the cheese, cream and egg.

If only it wasn't so bad for you, it'd become a staple on the menu plan.  However, with the use of copious amounts of butter, cheese and cream, it can only be a "once in a blue moon" dish.  Oh, but what a dish!

I'm sure a blue moon is imminent - so stock the fridge up with bacon, cream, eggs and parmesan.  You know you want to!

PASTA CARBONARA (serves 3)

Ingredients :

375g pasta (I used Mafalda Corta)
knob of butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
9 rashers of back bacon, trimmed of fat and chopped fairly small
2 whole eggs, plus 1 yolk
220ml single cream
40g parmesan cheese, finely grated
freshly ground black pepper.

Method :

1.  Heat a frying pan over a medium heat and add the bacon pieces.  Cook until the fat has rendered out, then add the butter and shallots before the bacon can brown.

2.  Cook on a gentle to medium heat until the shallots are softened and transparent, but don't let them brown.

3.  Set aside to keep warm, but not cook any further.

4.  In a large saucepan of salted boiling water, add the pasta and cook for 9-11 minutes or until tender, with a slight bite.  Once done, drain and return to the pan.

5.  While the pasta cooks, heat a small amount of water in a small saucepan until simmering.

6.  Into a large, preferably pyrex, bowl add the eggs, cream, parmesan (leaving a small amount to sprinkle over the finished dish) and a good amount of freshly ground black pepper.

7.  Place the bowl over the simmering water in the small saucepan, making sure the water doesn't touch the underside of the bowl.  Whisk and stir, whisk and stir, until the mixture is demonstrating signs that the cheese has melted into the warmth of the liquid ingredients and the whole emulsion is becoming slightly foamy.

8.  Once the pasta is done, decant into a large serving bowl and add the sauce.  Toss the pasta in the sauce, ensuring every piece of pasta is covered - and finish with a sprinkle of the remaining parmesan cheese.

Serve.

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