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This was a Chinese meal with some additional extras.
The chicken was roasted in the oven with mushrooms, onions and spring onions (scallions) with honey and coriander.
I served the chicken with home made egg fried rice, basically take some cooked rice and fry with chinese five spice, spring onions and beaten egg.
I also cooked a selection of mushrooms including shitake and oyster mushrooms.
A very simple dish which is probably either best served with rice or gnocchi.
In a large frying pan, fry off some pancetta bacon and onions. Once these are cooked, remove from the pan, turn the heat up and fry off the mushrooms.
Now add a tub of creme frache and some cooked chicken. Add the bacon and mushrooms. Freshly ground black pepper to season.
Serve.
Last night I cooked a very nice (and quick) meal.
I took some sirloin steak, I actually prefer ribeye but sometimes you have to have what is available and not what you want or prefer.
I heated the frying pan without oil, the steaks were oiled though and then placed in the hot pan.
In a separate pan I fried some pancetta and onions, once they were nearly cooked, I remove them, turned the heat up and added the mushrooms so they fried rather than steamed.
Once the steaks were cooked I removed them from the pan, and put them on a warm plate to rest (really important to let steaks rest for a few minutes before serving they will be a lot more tender).
I then added the onions, pancetta and mushrooms to the steak pan and a couple of large spoonfuls of creme frache.
Then in a pan of rolling boiling water I put some gnocchi.
In two minutes the sauce was ready, the gnocchi was ready, so serve.
Delicious.
This is an excellent choice as a vegetarian main course, or as an accompaniment.
Take some portobello mushrooms (these are the big flat ones) remove the stalk. Add some olive oil and butter. Cover the mushrooms with breadcrumbs, fresh herbs and parmesan. You could if you wanted add garlic as well.
Bake in the oven for about twenty minutes until the topping is golden brown.
Serve.
In a frying pan cook off some pancetta bacon, remove from the pan. Cook the chicken, I usually use chicken thigh (bonless and skinless) cut into a size which is about the same as the pasta I am using. Cook the chicken over a relatively high heat. Remove the chicken and then add the onions, cook until softened. Now cook the mushrooms.
Whilst this chicken and mushrooms are cooking cook the pasta. I used fusilli (pasta twirls) and cooked until al dente.
Once the mushrooms are cooked, add back the pancetta and chicken, add some creme frache.
Mix the chicken mixture with the cooked pasta and a good handful of freshly grated parmesan and some freshly ground black pepper.
Serve.
This is a very quick meal to cook and shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, probably even less.
Take some chicken and cut into pieces the same size as gnocchi. You can use chicken breast, personally I use chicken thigh partly because it is cheaper, more so because it has a much better flavour.
In a large hot frying pan, add a splash of olive oil, then add the chicken.
In another pan add some pancetta. You can use the cubed pancetta, though when I cooked this I used the sliced pancetta cut into small strips.
Ensure that the chicken is cooking and remove the cooked pancetta from the other pan to the chicken. Add some freshly chopped parsley and some freshly ground black pepper.
Keep the heat up in the pancetta pan and pan fry the mushrooms in the fat from the pancetta (you may need to add a little olive oil).
In a pan of rolling boiling water add the gnocchi. Cook for two minutes.
Add the cooked mushrooms to the chicken and mushrooms and then add a couple of spoonfuls of creme frache.
Drain the cooked gnocchi, spoon over the chicken, mushroom and creme frache mixture, toss lightly.
Spoon onto plates, add freshly grated parmesan and ground black pepper to taste.
This is a very quick recipe which shouldn’t take longer than twenty minutes from entering the kitchen to sitting at the table and you should even be able to do it in less than fifteen!
Take two pans of boiling water, in one add some carrot, some onion, some parsley, a few black peppercorns (or I suppose you could use a stock cube). Poach four boned and skinless chicken thighs for about ten minutes (you could use chicken breast, but I prefer the flavour and taste of the thighs).
Add the pasta to the other pan of boiling water. I now never add salt or oil to my cooking pasta. All adding oil does is form an oily scum on the top, the myth that it stops the pasta sticking is just that a myth. After cooking if you toss the pasta in olive oil, this will stop is from sticking together, but that is after cooking and it is drained. I also don’t add salt, some add salt for flavour, but as I was using pancetta and parmesan and these are quite salty, there is no need to add extra salt.
So the two pans are simmering away, take a hot frying pan and add a handful of chopped (or diced) pancetta and a splash of olive oil. As the pancetta cooks, add a finely chopped onion and continue to cook until the onion is nice and soft. Now you could remove from the pan, but personally I keep the onions and pancetta in there and add a handful of sliced chestnut mushrooms. After the mushrooms are nearly cooked I add some ground black pepper and half a handful of finely chopped flat leaf parsley. Leave for a minute before removing all the mixture from the pan.
Remove the chicken from the poaching liquid and slice into chunks. With the frying pan, turn the heat up, add another splash of olive oil and quickly add the chicken to add some flavour. After a minute add three large spoonfuls of creme frache.
Drain the pasta, to the pasta add a handful of freshly grated parmesan, the pancetta, mushrooms and onions. Spoon in the chicken and creme frache and toss the pasta around.
Serve, adding grated parmesan and ground black pepper to taste.
I do like a nice rice salad.
The problem I have with some you can buy is that they are either too salty or too wet! So where possible I try and make my own.
This is a very simple recipe and you can adjust quantities to taste, how much you want, how much you have in the fridge.
Cook some rice.
I use basmati rice, in the main as it is so simple to cook, and cooks in ten minutes.
While the rice is cooking, in a frying pan add some olive oil and then add pancetta, onions, red pepper and courgettes. After that has cooked for a while add some mushrooms.
Ensure that they are cooked through and turn off the heat.
Now you could add the pepper, mushrooms, even the courgette raw, but I prefer to have them cooked.
Once the rice is cooked, drain and then to stop it cooking further and to cool it down rinse well with cold water.
Put the cooked rice in a bowl, add some mayonnaise and some creme frache.
Then add the cooked mixture.
Stir with a spoon until the rice and cooked mixture is evenly coated. As with a lot of salads though you could serve this straight away, it will improve if you leave it in the fridge for a few hours.
Excellent.
This is a simple easy recipe for cooking chicken.
One of the key things about cooking chicken this way is that it stays really nice and moist with lots of flavour.
Firstly take four chicken thighs, now you could use a whole chicken, half chicken or other chicken pieces. I much prefer chicken thighs over the breast meat as it has a lot more flavour (in my opinion).
Continue reading “Chicken with mushrooms, tomatoes and courgettes”
Today I roasted some pancetta covered organic chicken thighs on a bed of onions, red pepper, mushrooms and courgettes. This was splashed with some olive oil and seasoned with black pepper.
Whilst this was in the oven, I softened in a frying pan, some finely chopped onion with pancetta. When the onion was nicely soft, I added some red wine and beef stock before simmering it down. Beef stock over chicken stock just because of the colour rather than flavour. I then reduced and reduced this.
When I was happy with the sauce I whisked in some butter (with a fork as it happens rather than a whisk) and then added a tin of Epicure Organic Puy Lentils. I needed to add a bit more stock at this point.
I was really impressed with the Epicure Organic Puy Lentils and will certainly be buying them again, I guess it would be potentially tastier to use dried lentils, but I personally was quite happy with the tin.
So I put the lentils on the plate, placed the chicken on top and surrounded it with the roasted vegetables. I served this along with carrots and green beans.
Really tasty.