Buttermilk Chicken

I'm absolutely loving the Nigella Express book I got in the January sales. I'm pretty sure I've made loads more out of it than any other cook book I have.

I found some chicken drumsticks in the freezer and immediately thought of this recipe and I'm glad I did, because it was beautifully juicy and tender and full of flavour. Thank you again Nigella!!!

Buttermilk Chicken
Source: Nigella Express, Nigella Lawson, p274

Ingredients
12 chicken drumsticks
500ml buttermik
60ml vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, skinned and bruised
1 tbsp crushed peppercorns
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Recipe
1. Mix together the buttermilk, 60ml oil, garlic, pepper, salt, cumin and maple syrup.
2. Place the chicken in a ziplock bag and pour in the mixture. Squish everything around to marinade
3. Leave to marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes but if possible overnight
4. Preheat oven to 220˚C. Place chicken pieces in a roasting tine lined with foil, shaking off the excess marinade
5. Drizzle the 2 tbsp oil over the chicken and roast for 30 minutes.

Pan fried glazed pork chops

I was given Jamie Oliver's "Ministry of Food" book for Christmas and have only recently been making stuff from it. There's some great recipes in it and a lot of the book suggests varieties on each recipe too to help with learning and trying new things.

This is a straightforward recipe and a really delicious one and with some variety in the choice of glaze. I used mango chutney but you'll see some other ideas in the ingredients list.



Pan fried glazed pork chops
Source Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food, p 230

Ingredients
2 pork chops
olive oil
salt and pepper
apple sauce/mango chutney/apricot jam/maple syrup/honey to glaze
lemon juice (optional)

Recipe
1. Trip the skin off the edge of the chops and cut into 2 long strips.
2. Rub the pork chop with salt and pepper and heat a little oil in a pan.
3. When the pan is hot add the strips of skin and move about. Remove when crispy and golden.
4. Lay the chops in the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes on each side, turning every minute.
5. Spoon a large spoonful of your glaze over each chop and keep turning to be sure both sides are evenly glazed. Cook until golden red.
6. Remove from the pan and leave to rest for a minute before serving.
7. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the top to balance out sweetness

Soy Honey Cocktail Sausages

Last Sunday was a manic day. to start with little Stewie (our wee dog) had to get taken to the vet - he had a run in with a tree at the park the day before. After that I had to rush to church then to the shop to pick up some bits for the afternoon. Shortly after getting lunch we had to go pick up a drugged up Stewie from the vet and then straight after that I had to get back down to church for a band rehearsal for our youth service so I was kept busy at the rehearsal, then the service and then we had our youth group meet after that too!!!!! What a day of running here there and everywhere, and in the middle of that I had to make dinner for our band! So I had some cocktail sausages, oven chips and a Nigella recipe to use.

Unfortunately after making them I only got to have one but it was so good I've bought in some more cocktail sausages with the plan of having them all to myself! And I also wasn't able to get a photo because they were all scoffed so quickly so I'll add a photo when I remake this one.

And here's a photo of the second batch.... still sooooo good! And with perfectly well again Stewie craving over them in the background!



Soy Honey Cocktail Sausages
Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson, p322
Ingredients
1kg (75) cocktail sausages (I had a pack of 60)
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
125ml honey

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 220˚C. Separate sausages if linked and spread over a roasting tin
2. Mix together the honey, soy sauce and sesame oil. Pour over the sausages and mix well to cover.
3. Roast for 25 minutes and turn half way through.

I'm sending this to Giz and Psychgrad for the Tried,Tested and True 3 event.



I'm also sending this into the blog event I started and still run with the help of some excellent guest hosts every week - Bookmarked Recipes. This week Maggie from Doghill Kitchen is hosting.

Flourless chocolate brownies - with strawberry

I'm sure like most other food bloggers I love getting a new cookbook. I've been longing for Nigella Lawson's book Nigella Express so when I spotted it in the January sales reduced from £25 to £7 I just couldn't resist!!!!

As soon as I got home I got my little post its out and tabbed every recipe I want to try, which ended up being almost every recipe in the book.

I've made and tried her pancake mix and loved it. It's handy having the mix sitting ready to use and actually knowing what's in it compared to what you get in a shop.

The second recipe I've tried from this book is the flourless chocolate brownie one only instead of adding walnuts I added sliced strawberries which turned out delish! I spread the batter into a bigger pan than Nigella suggested and ended up with 24 thinner brownies that the 16 that would have resulted from using the proper sized pan so that I was able to take the brownies to youth group where they were pretty much swallowed whole!



I was able to save one for bringing home for myself to have with ice cream and chocolate sauce and I'm so glad I did because it was simply fabulous!

Flourless chocolate brownies - with strawberry
Sourced from Nigella Lawson's 'Nigella Express'
Makes 16 squares

Ingredients
225g dark chocolate I used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate
225g unsalted butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
150g ground almonds
100g chopped walnuts 10 big strawberries, sliced

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 170˚C.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over a low heat
3. Take the pan off the heat and mix in the vanilla and sugar. Leave to cool a little.
4. Beat the eggs into the mixture then stir in the ground almonds and strawberries.
5. Spread into a 24cm square baking pan.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top is set but it will still be soft in the middle - but it will firm up as it cools.

Turkey Fricassée

Early September I got an email asking if I would like a "review copy" of a cook book put together by the Cooks Academy in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland. Of course my answer was yes!!!! The book arrived in the post the day before we went to Egypt and was forgotten about until a couple of weeks ago (oops!!!!). So here I am blogging about it now.

I liked the idea of this book because it's a collection of recipes that Academy uses in their teaching that have proven to be popular with the students. It's also full of down to earth every day recipes and a lot of the great basic recipes like mac and cheese, lasagne and the one I'm blogging about here - turkey fricassée. However my only complaint about the book is the lack of photos: I always like seeing a photo of each recipe as part of the temptation to making it and also to know what it should look like instead of my attempt!

With so much surplus turkey over Christmas I couldn't help but make this a few days afterwards to use some more up. The only thing I did differently was to leave out the mushrooms for fear that the hubster would be poisoned.

Since I've still not found my camera I had to take pictures with the phone! If only I'd lost it before Christmas and could have asked for a new one as a gift from someone. Ah well - maybe I'll find one in the sales.



Turkey Fricassée
From Cooks Academy Cookbook by Vanessa Greenwood
Serves 4

Ingredients
600g cooked turkey
3tbsp olive oil
(250g button mushrooms, sliced)
3 smoked rashers of bacon, cut into small squares
1 medium onion, diced
200ml white wine
250ml chicken stock
25g butter
1 tbsp flour
400ml milk

Recipe
1. Prepare the white sauce by melting the butter in a small saucepan then stirring in the flour. Cook for 1-2 minutes then gradually add the stirring to avoid lumps. When the sauce thickens and bubbles remove from the heat.
2. Heat half the oil in a pan and sauté the bacon (and mushrooms) for 5 minutes, remove to a plate.
3. Heat the rest of the oil in the pan and sauté the onion for 5 minutes. Add the wine and leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add the turkey, bacon, (mushrooms,) stock and white sauce. Season and simmer on a low heat for 20-25 minutes.

Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake

This week my bookmarked recipe was somewhat decided for me, because this week I had to make a "wedding" cake. I say "wedding" because it's not a real wedding - my photographer friend Mark Goody needed a group to pretend to be at a wedding to try out some wedding photography and my young people got really excited about the idea, so it's part of our end of year bash for the group. They're all getting dressed up, our "bride" and "groom" are writing funny "vows" and I got to make a cake!!!!! Last week I took a vote amongst them to see what kind of cake they wanted, some wanted Victoria sponge and some wanted chocolate cake, so I'm making both!

For the Victoria sponge I added some extra vanilla and instead of using jam as a filling I mashed up a dozen raspberries and mixed them with 5 tablespoons of Dorie Greenspan's buttercream recipe from the Perfect Party Cake recipe and a tablespoon of caster sugar.

I know I've made a basic chocolate cake before but I wanted to try a different recipe. I have about 4 different chocolate cake recipes bookmarked in various places, but as soon as it was decided to make a chocolate cake I kept seeing other recipes that were quite tempting! Then I came across a book that was given to me when I was little - Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes with recipes by Roald's wife, Felicity and based on food that features in Roald's novels, stories and poems . I remember looking through this book a lot over the years and saying I'll make that one day.... well today was the day for Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake. It only seemed right that I make this chocolate cake seeing as I've had it bookmarked for so long!!! I remember the image I had in my head when I was reading about Bruce eating the chocolate cake in Matilda so I was very excited to be making this. However I didn't complete the whole recipe and left out making the coating for the cake so I could coat and decorate both cake with icing, but I'm sure I'll be making it again sometime because it looks delicious with the coating.

The photo from the book


And my cake.... excuse the mess around it please!!!


Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake

Serves 10-12

Ingredients
For the cake
8oz/225g plain chocolate
6oz/175g unsalted butter, softened
8oz/225g caster sugar
4tbsp/60ml/quarter cup plain flour
6 eggs, separated
For the coating
8oz/225g plain chocolate
8oz/225g double cream

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease and line an 8" cake tin (I used a 9.5" cake tin which worked great) with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or on low heat in a microwave. Once melted mix in the butter and stir until melted. Remove from the double boiler.
3. Mix in the sugar, flour and lightly beaten egg yolks.
4. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until white and stiff.
5. Gently fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Then fold in the rest.
6. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes. There will be a thin crust on the outside and when tested using a skewer, it most likely won't come out clean as the inside will still seem uncooked, however the cake gets more firm when it has cooled.
7. Allow to cool for a while until the tin can be handled and the cake removed safely. Remove the greaseproof paper. The cake will most likely sink slightly, mine deflated from a large dome to a level top.
8. Set up a new double boiler and melt the chocolate and cream together until well blended. Leave to cool for a little while then spread smoothly over the top and sides of the cake.

The finished "wedding" cake topped with the mini Ruth and Rob bride and groom from our wedding - I decided to make this cake more fun looking than 'weddingy'

I want to be a hairy biker!

I've recently fell in love with the hairy bikers... they usually have a slot on Saturday Kitchen and I look forward to this bit. They travel a lot and recreate the recipes they encounter on their journey and are hilarious to watch!

I'm adding their book to my amazon wish list now :o)