French style chicken

After the whole cake craziness it's time to go back to savoury dishes I think. Today's recipe uses my two trusty ingredients: chicken and bacon, but it's fresh and surprisingly light, thanks to the addition of gem lettuce, peas and creme fraiche. I found it on BBC Good Food (doesn't take a genius to figure out it's one of my favourite websites!) and it quickly became one of my to go to ways of eating chicken. I don't think I can vouch for this recipe's authenticity. The last time I was in France my experience of French cuisine came down to devouring baguettes all day long. Granted, they were super tasty and I sometimes dream about them.

All I know is, this French style chicken is tres tres bon mon cheries. So give it a try!

To make enough for two you'll need:

4-5 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, fat trimmed off
2-3 rashers of streaky unsmoked bacon, chopped into small pieces
4-5 spring onions
2 gem lettuces
2-3 tablespoons creme fraiche
500 ml chicken or vegetable stock
2 cloves of garlic, minced or finely chopped
2-3 handfuls of frozen peas
potatoes, to serve
olive oil
salt and pepper

Start off by frying bacon in the pan until crispy. Remove and set aside.

Use bacon fat and a tsp or so of olive oil to fry the chicken thighs. Place them in the pan on quite a high heat and step away. You'll be tempted to keep turning them (I always am), but remember, we want flavour so they need to brown nicely. Turn them after 4-5 minutes and brown the other side.

While the chicken is frying, chop spring onions and wash and halve the potatoes.

Add spring onions, garlic and bacon to the pan with the chicken and fry for 2-3 minutes.

Add enough stock to cover the chicken. Add pepper and salt to taste (I tend to skip the salt because bacon and stock are usually salty enough, so remember to taste as you go!)

At this stage, the longer you simmer the chicken the more tender it will be, I generally cook it until half the liquid evaporates. Turn the chicken every now and then so it cooks evenly. After about 15-20 minutes add peas and cook for a further 3-5 minutes.

Finally, add 2-3 tablespoons creme fraiche and roughly chopped gem lettuce.

Serve with boiled potatoes.

Bon appétit!

Ramblings

If it looks like I'm procrastinating and abandoning my blog, fear not. I've been busy sorting out a nightmare which is looking for a new flat. But we've done it and sealed the deal. I think we got a bit spoilt by living in a massive (by London standards) two bedroom place, so moving into a smallish 1 bed with next to no storage was bound to be a shock.

Ok, I'll admit it, I cried a little wondering where I'm going to put all my clothes, baking essentials (9 types of sugar and 4 types of flour anyone? 3 muffin tins?!), shoes (a sea of them) and all the things that we I amassed over the last three years of living here. Wiping tears from my eyes I suddenly realised that I'm silly. It's just stuff. Some of it is nice stuff, but still just STUFF. So I ruthlessly did what some fashion bloggers call wardrobe culling. I was like Julius Ceasar in the arena of tops, skirts, dresses, millions of scarves and more pairs of tights than a centepede could ever dream of wearing. Bin, keep, charity, bin, charity, keep, on and on it went and I ended up lugging three bags of clothes to a charity shop. I cried some more, cursing the London real estate market, Victorian builders who didn't think it necessary to include a walk in wardrobe in a 1 bed flat, landlords who charge extortionate money for what is basically a shoe cupboard. And then, two days later I realised I don't even remember which clothes ended up in a 'charity' pile. Surely this means I won't miss them? All of a sudden I felt better. 

At this stage, dear reader, you may ask (if you're not dozing off yet) why on earth would I be talking about clothes and wardrobe purging when this here is a food blog. Well, guess what? Kitchen cabinet culling is on the agenda. I never paid attention to lists of kitchen essentials listed in the beginning of most cookbooks, but I might start. And while I wish my kitchen looked like that:

source

I accept that I will have to make do with what I've got, be resourceful, get rid of some baking tins (I think one muffin tin is quite sufficient, wouldn't you agree? After all, I'm not running a muffin factory! Yet. Maybe one day) and be organised! By the way, do you know this blog? Amazing stuff for all people obsessed with organising things.

So, while having a kitchen so huge that it requires a GPS to get around would be awesome, a small kitchen won't affect the way I cook. The lovely Rachel Khoo creates amazing dishes in a kitchen the size of a broom cupboard and so does Deb from Smitten Kitchen. By the way, is it true that most New York apartments have teeny tiny kitchens? Hats off to you, NY food bloggers!

Phew, it was nice to share! Let me know what your kitchen essentials are! I hope you enjoyed reading my ramblings, even though the initial bit had nothing to do with cooking!

I've got a recipe to be posted very soon, but for now I'll leave you with a picture of the street I'll be living on from October. Nice and leafy, no?

Now forgive me while I go and grab the last piece of that chocolate brownie cake. It's been a hard day and I still need to decide whether I want two frying pans or one and a wok ;)

Oh, and this is a pretty funny picture. Pigeons travel on the tube too!

Chocolate brownie cake

Lazy Sundays are the best: you can catch up on sleep, do a bit of reading and be a bit naughty and treat yourself (brie cheese and avocado for me, yum!). If you're craving something indulgent and very chocolatey this chocolate brownie cake is absolute perfection. You only need a few ingredients and you won't have to slave away in the kitchen.
Again, I used a recipe from my beloved bbcgoodfood - it seems they used a really small tin, because my cake turned out quite flat - still pretty delicious!

You'll need:

225 g dark chocolate, broken into smallish pieces
3 eggs
65 g plain flour
200 g caster sugar
175 g unsalted butter
50 g pecans, chopped


Grease and line a loose based round cake tin and preheat the oven to 180 C/160 C fan.
Place 175 g chocolate, butter and sugar in a pan and melt on a slow heat, stirring gently. Leave aside to cool.

Once the chocolate mix is cooled, separate the eggs. Add yolks and flour to the chocolate mix and stir gently. Add chopped pecans and the leftover chocolate (chopped into small bits).

Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and  gently fold into the chocolate mixture.

Pour the mix into the tin, place in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes.

Dust with icing sugar and serve with creme fraiche or ice cream.

Enjoy!

Best ever carrot cake

I love carrot cake. I can kid myself it's semi-healthy (300 grams of carrot surely counts as 1 of your 5 a day, right? RIGHT?), it always works and is sure to impress. It's perfect if you never baked a cake before, absolutely foolproof. Oh, and did I mention it's delicious? Not too sweet, moist, covered with a delicate and soft cream cheese frosting. Ah. So if you want to: impress your other half / get oohs and aaahs from people in your office / surprise someone for their birthday / feel like a smug little baker (tick appropriate option) make this cake. Ok. Thanks.

 

The recipe comes from my trusted source. I use a standard spring form tin with removable bottom and use 1.5 quantities of ingredients for a cake that can be cut in half and sandwiched with frosting. I double the frosting ingredients because, well, you can never have too much of cream cheese goodness. The cake itself can be made the day before, cooled and stored in the fridge. It also keeps amazingly well for a couple of days and doesn't dry out. It's a cake that keeps on giving. Ok, I'll shut up now, you get it, it's an awesome cake.

You'll need:

For the cake:
450 g plain flour
3 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
300 g soft brown sugar
6 eggs
375 ml oil (I use vegetable oil)
2 oranges
1 lemon
300 g carrots, finely grated

For the frosting:

250 g butter at room temperature
100 g icing sugar, sifted
500 g cream cheese (I always use full fat Philadelphia)

a few pecans for decoration

Preheat your oven to 150 C/ 130 C fan and line the bottom of the springform tin with baking parchment.

Sift flour, baking powder, bicarb, sugar and cinnamon into a big mixing bowl and stir to mix everything together.

Whisk eggs with oil, then add zest of lemon and two oranges.

Add grated carrots to the oil and egg mix and stir.
Add the wet mix to flour, sugar and cinnamon then fold through with a spoon or spatula until all the flour is incorporated.

Pour batter into the tin and bake for 1 hr 20 minutes or until the skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool and make the frosting. Combine sugar and butter in a mixing bowl, beat with electric mixer until all the sugar is incorporated, then add cream cheese and whisk for a few more minutes until the frosting is smooth and well mixed.

Once the cake is cooled, cut it in half and sandwich with half the frosting. Spread the rest of the frosting on top, smooth with a knife and decorate with pecans.

Devour your slice and don't share :)


Apologies for the atrocious quality of the last picture - the cake was a leaving do present for my friend from work and the pics were taken with a phone.

Instagrub (and more)

puffed wheat and smoothie // red lips and stripes // carrot cake (recipe soon!)

more smoothies // cottage cheese, fruit and almonds // cool poster in a burger joint

the best burger ever! // more breakfast // smoky prawn chowder

Smoky corn chowder with prawns

What do you get when you mix prawns, bacon and corn? Indulgent deliciousness, that's what. 

I never made chowder before. I found the recipe on Pinterest (where else?) and impulsively decided I need chowder in my life. And after making it this week I can definitely say this: I need chowder in my life. Like, every day. Thick, creamy, packed with flavour, smoky, slightly spicy. Healthy (corn and prawns, hello!) yet indulgent and comforting. Convinced yet? 

Then let's begin!

The recipe makes enough chowder for two and is slightly modified from a recipe I found on a blog called Bev Cooks (by the way, something tells me I'm going to visit that blog very often). As the recipe used American ingredients and measurements I had to improvise and change a few things. I also added chipotle paste for extra smokiness and a little kick.

You'll need:

200 g raw prawns

75 g streaky unsmoked bacon, chopped into quite small pieces

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 heaped tsp of vegetable stock powder

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp chipotle paste

2 cobs of corn, kernels removed (about 200 g corn in total. If you can't find fresh corn, canned should do!)

3 heaped tbsps creme fraiche (I used half fat version)

pepper 

oil for frying

few basil leaves, chopped, to garnish

Start by prepping the veggies: finely chop the onion, mince the garlic and slice the kernels off the corn cob into a bowl.

Fry bacon in the frying pan until nice and crispy, then remove from the pan and place on a paper towel to drain off the fat.

You should have some bacon fat left in the pan - place your prawns in the pan and fry for about 1 minute on each side - be careful not to overcook them. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add a bit of olive oil to the pan if necessary, then fry off onion, garlic, chipotle paste, paprika and pepper for about 5 minutes. I didn't add any salt as bacon and stock are already quite salty.

Once the onion and garlic are softened add corn to the pan and fry some more. While the corn is frying, boil some water and make about 250-350 ml of stock. Add 3 tablespoons of creme fraiche to the pan, stir in, then add stock, reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes place half of the chowder in a bowl or a deep dish and quickly blitz it with a hand held blender (or pulse in a food processor). The mix should stay a bit chunky. Return the blitzed mix to the pan and stir. Mix in most of the prawns and bacon bits, stir again and serve, topped with reserved prawns, bacon and torn basil. Use some toasted bread or baguette to mop up the sauce. Delish.

Wednesday wishes and pinning

Recipes I really want to try soon:

bagels | pumpkin spice pancakes | butternut and sweet potato lasagne

And...some eye candy: kitchens to die for:

source unknown | source | source