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Pasta in a classic Tomato Based Sauce - Oh Scrub that....

Pasta in a classic Tomato Based Sauce - Oh Scrub that recipe, eat well on universal credit

These boneless Chicken Thighs were in the yellow sticker fridge. So initially we intended to do a Pasta sort of gig. Somewhere at some time our plans were lost in the translation! Looked and tasted quite a lot like a Stir-fry to us…….

Spicy Chinese Chicken

Marinade Ingredients:-

4 Boneless Chicken Thighs, cut into cubes
1 Egg
1 Tbsp of Garlic & Ginger Paste (Sue made her own)
2 Tbsp of Soy Sauce ( Gluten free for us)
1 Tsp of Chilli Powder
2 Tbsp of Cornflour

Sauce Ingredients:-

1 Small Red Onion, sliced
2 Tsp of Garlic & Ginger Paste
1 Green Chilli, de-seeded and chopped
3 Tbsp of Tomato Ketchup
1 Tsp of Honey
1 Tbsp of Sweet Chilli Sauce
1 Tbsp of Soy Sauce (Gluten free here)
A handful of Cashew Nuts, chopped
½ a pack of Baby Sweetcorn
4 Mushrooms, sliced
3 sheets of dried Kelp, soaked and cut into strips
1 Nest of Rice Noodles
Green of Spring Onions to garnish
Sesame Seeds to garnish
Oil to fry

Method:-

(1) Combine all the Marinade ingredients.
(2) Stir in the Chicken and stir well.
(3) Place in the fridge for ½ an hour.
(4) In a large frying pan heat Oil on a medium heat.
(5) Fry the Chicken until crispy and cooked through.
(6) Remove and set aside on kitchen paper to drain.
(7) Add the Onions and cook until softened.
(8) Add the Garlic & Ginger Paste and Chillies – cooking for a further minute.
(9) Add the Mushrooms & Sweetcorn and stir in.
(10) Add the Honey, Soy Sauce, Chilli Sauce & Ketchup and allow to simmer.
(11) Boil the Rice Noodles and drain. Running cold water over them.
(12) Boil ¾ of the Kelp until softened.
(13) Fire up a fryer and heat to 170c.
(14) deep fry the remain Kelp until crispy and set aside.
(15) Deep fry the Chicken to re-heat and brown, until eat piece floats.
(16) Remove and drain.
(17) Run boiling water through the Noodles and add to plates.
(18) Add the boiled Kelp and layer the Chicken over the top.
(19) Pour over the stir-fried sauce.
(20) Garnish with the chopped Nuts, Sesame Seeds and Fried Kelp.

We really enjoyed this, even though it is far from the Italian gig we had planned. The deep fried Kelp worked really well. But when we do this sort of thing again it needs to be served as a side. The steam from below very quickly destroyed the crispy texture and it reverted to its natural slightly vegetative state. (Read it went soggy!)  



 

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Cauliflower & Chicken Soup

Even if I wanted to I couldn't give a recipe for this! Well I'll have a go...


Ingredients:-

Cauliflower Cheese (Rescued from a box in the freezer)
Chicken and Mushroom Pie filling – possibly?! (Rescued from a box in the freezer)


Method:-


(1) Defrost.
(2) Demolish in the blender.
(3) Heat in a pan.


Served with a bit of greenery from the balcony box this was actually a very hearty lunch. We may have to postpone our experimental cooking until later this evening!

 

Cheese, Hams and Onion Parcel

The Ham in this recipe is a third of the small smoked Ham joint we opened the other day for the Ham & Egg salad from the local Continently shop. To be fair this isn’t the most photogenic Pastry gig we’ve ever created. Party because the Gluten free pastry was left overs we’d frozen and possibly because we jammed too much filling in it! But it was really tasty regardless of looks.

Ingredients:-

Pasty ( Pre rolled will do just fine )
2 medium Potatoes
1 medium Onion, chopped
Ham, cut into fine strips
Cheese, grated
Margarine
Salt & Pepper to season

Method:-

(1) Peal and quarter the Potatoes.
(2) Boil until reasonably soft, drain, mash and set aside to cool.
(3) Fry the Onion in a little Margarine until softened, season with Salt & Pepper.
(4) Add the Ham strips to the Onion and simmer gently for 5 minutes than set aside to cool.
(5) Roll out the Pastry on a floored surface.
(6) Once the filling components hard reasonably cool mix the Ham & Onions with the grated Cheese and add the mashed Potatoes.
(7) In the middle of your rolled Pastry add the filling in a sort of flattened heap.
(8) Fold the edges and sides of the Pastry to create an open parcel.
(9) Move the parcel to a foil lined oven tray and fold the foil around the edges of the parcel to prevent  if from spreading in the oven.
(10) Place in the oven at 180c for 30 to 45 minutes until the pastry is browned and slightly crispy.

We served ours with home made chips, Peas and Brown Sauce. It looked a bit like an open Pastry after all!

 

Heart shaped Cottage Pies

We only had about 250g of minced Beef left from the Brunch Burgers we made as a bit of a joke on Friday. But that’s not an issue. We fished the heart shaped pie formers out of the draw and made mini Cottage Pies.

As a side we had the very red looking Red Cabbage. We’ve discovered that we actually prefer it as a veg just acidified with a bit of Vinegar and sprinkled with Salt and Pepper, but not boiled. The crunch and acidity work really well with mince dishes which otherwise have a very soft texture.

Served with Carrot, peas and lashings of gravy (Added after I tokk the picture) this was a hearty (Pun intended) meal.

Our Cottage Pie recipe is here

Ham & Egg Salad

After Fridays silly Brunch Burger experiment we were snacking on left over burger for most of the morning yesterday and to be honest we could easily have skipped dinner. But we had home made Coleslaw, some Salad and some leftover Polish Ham in the fridge. So I cobbled this together. I sliced the Ham and mixed it into the Salad with a but of Mayonnaise, popped the Coleslaw over the top, melted a bit of Cheese over a Waffle each and plonked half a boiled Egg on top.

Sorted and all the leftovers have been used up…..

Brunch Burger

Ummm – Don’t ask! Actually there is a strange login behind these rather excessive burgers and no we didn’t eat them all in one sitting. We’ll be snacking all day I’m guessing….

We don’t throw anything away unless it’s totally dead. But this means that the freezer slowly gets clogged up with bits and bobs we’ve saved. So in the hope of clearing a bit of space we went rummaging / freezer mining. Here’s the list of (Uninspiring) ingredients we extracted…

Freezer Finds:-

1 pack of pre-made Gluten free buns.
½ a pie worth of Pork Pie filling with Beetroot juice.
A forgotten box of Potato Waffles.
A pack of Polish Smoked Ham.

Not a very promising collection of ingredients. But there was the foundation of The Brunch Burger lurking in there somewhere….

So with the addition of a bit of fresh minced Beef, fresh Salad, some grated Cheese, a couple of fried Eggs, a bit of left over Chilli sauce, some hand cut chips and a few home made Onion ring - we set to work.

The assembly! (This is hardly a recipe, as you would know it!)

(1) Sue made some Thousand Island sauce.
(2) I coated and pre-fried the Onion Rings.
(3) Sue hand pressed both the Pork and Beef burgers and put them in the fridge to rest.
(4) I Cut and pre-fried the Chips.
(5) Sue fried the burgers and put them under in the oven with the grated Cheese over the top to melt.
(6) Sue cut the Ham very thin then grilled it.
(7) Assembly commenced!
(8) Sue grilled the buns.
(9) She spread the Thousand Island sauce over the bottom half bun.
(10) Added Salad and sliced Tomatoes.
(11) Next came the fried Waffle with heated Chilli sauce.
(12) The burgers with melted Cheese were added next.
(13) Pop the fried Egg and top bun on and secure everything with a skewer.
(14) Add the Onion rings on top and server with chips and home made Coleslaw.

Sorry this reads more like a Haynes manual for a 1960s Mini. But nobody in their right mind is likely to follow this as a recipe really!


 

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