luke nguyen's bac ha chicken in ginger

Isn’t it nice when a punt on a random experimental dish goes spectacularly right? I’m not sure what I was expecting, but looking at chopped up chicken thighs bubbling away in the wok, whilst skimming  gloopy fat off the top, I have to say I wasn’t amazingly confident.

It certainly looked nice in Delicious, as does the pomelo and crab salad next to it (maybe one for the summer), but they’d obviously opted not to feature a picture of boiled off chicken residue. Neither was I convinced once I realised the promised ‘flavour-packed’ dish was going to come from only 4 other ingredients: ginger, garlic, fish sauce and oyster sauce.

But clearly there are witches in Vietnamese kitchens because once ladled onto a bed of rice, with a good grind of black pepper and a sprinkling of fresh chilli on top, the finished dish is utterly, utterly gorgeous: the chicken is tender, and the sauce is salty and pungent, with fruity and fiery heat from the chilli and black pepper. It’s also very quick and super easy, if you don’t mind spending 5 minutes skimming and disposing of unpleasant-looking chicken scum. And who doesn’t?

sources
bac ha chicken in ginger - Luke Nguyen, The Food of Vietnam c/o Delicious, January 2014

nigella lawson's curly-edged pasta with lamb

Sometimes there’s not much to say about cooking: You just sort of get in, check the weekly menu and get on with it.

Tuesday nights I tend to run home, so usually the options are either something that takes no more than 10 minutes to construct once I’ve had a shower – which is obviously easier in the summer – or something that can bubble away whilst I’m warming down doing nekked lunges in front of the telly.

As it's still nippy and wet, we're erring towards the heartier end of the scale, so whilst I’m applying beauty unguents and cucumbers to my eyes,  Nigella’s lamb ragu is simmering away on the hob.

Even better, it’s a good dish to use up not only the last of the oregano in the freezer, but I can sweep up three almost-empty packets of malfalda pasta that Ana insists on leaving at the back of the cupboard. WINNER!

sources
curly-edged pasta with lamb ragu - Nigella, Nigelissima, serialised in Delicious, November 2012, p22

seared steak and mediterranean vegetables

Another week dawns with the usual Monday struggle with starvation and culinary deprivation. Only this time black hole of low blood-sugar is deepened by the fact we’re not only battling gnawing stomachs (and grinding teeth, or am I the only one to do this?), but tummies that have rapidly got used to Norwegian excess and a heady weekend of Six Nations action. And by ‘action’, I mean beer.

Having had the Thai-spiced chicken in lettuce leaves for the past two or three weeks, we ring the changes and fall back on an old – if extremely pfaffy – favourite: seared steak and griddled vegetables. We will of course be having the thai chicken on Thursday.

Further changes are also made to the usual order of cooking the veg as mentally I needed to break out of the  ‘onions – peppers – courgettes’ routine. Tonight I reversed the order and felt in a much happier place, not that it made any difference to the flavour, and despite thinking it lessened the amount of smoke generated, it turned out to create just as much as normal.

Still, steak eh?

sources
seared steak on Mediterranean vegetables - Delicious One Month Healthy Eating Plan, February 2007, p12 

mushroom risotto

Do you know, I’m not sure I agree with Friday night Six Nations kick offs. They ruin the pace of the weekend, the anticipation of getting up on Saturday morning and wallowing in the paper’s speculation, getting the beers and snacks in for the game and/or, if you’re lucky, planning the wander to the pub to bellow at Alain Rolland in public.

Friday night kick offs mean you miss the build-up because you’re at work, all the excitement is replaced by panic as you try and get home in time to go to the offie, and you’ve got to juggle the needs of cooking dinner with national anthems and trying to pour as much beer down your throat as possible, which makes any sort of knife work a lottery. I wouldn’t mind if everybody had a go, but it’s seems only Cardiff council are happy to sign-off on these games, so it’s always Welsh games that engender this low-level panic and paranoia. Well, slightly more low-level panic and paranoia than usual anyway.

With one eye on the clock and the other on our budget, and if possible a third on the fact Al ‘is that coat my jacket’ is coming to watch and eat, tonight we go for a fairly quick mushroom risotto on the basis we’ve got all the ingredients in the fridge. Although as it turns out we don’t, and Ana has to pick up rice and pancetta on her way home, and I pick up more mushrooms and brewskis on my way back. Plus a stomach-settling scotch egg care of our guest who I also find lurking in Waitrose.

Due to the fact I spent more time watching the first 10 minutes of the game, and less time stirring, it’s not quite as creamy as usual but the addition of shitake mushrooms to the usual mix of dried porcini and chestnut certainly turns the flavour up. Perfect half-time stodge…

sources
It's my own recipe you know...

fried rice with squash, chestnuts and chard

There’s an element of luck to tonight’s dinner. We’ve never had the chicken and chorizo pie before, but in the same suggested Bonfire night meal planner is this rice and squash dish. Not that we’re planning to have it, but the ingredients are made up of the usual odds and ends we have going spare: half a squash, half a tub of cream cheese, rice, spinach or chard (okay, spinach) and parsley. All I need to do is get some chestnuts in the cupboard and we’re sorted for any future occasion when the pantry is bare. Even better, and completely coincidentally, Ana come across the same recipe whilst tidying up earlier in the week and said it looked tasty.

This is very lucky as not three days later I’ve inexplicable under-planned the week’s meals by a day, and we’ve got the following in the fridge:

· Half a squash left-over from the vegetable biryani

· Half a tub of cream cheese

· A bag of spinach and chard salad

In fact the only thing we’re missing is the parsley, and I’m not convinced at the very first attempt making it whether I can simply swop in the tarragon lurking in the salad crisper.

As it turns out, tarragon might not have been a bad addition. It’s a pretty easy thing to knock together and is quite nice, but it lacks a certain punchiness to make it really delicious. Ana’s suggestion of adding soy sauce is pretty inspired and certainly lifts it up, and I think melting some cheddar cheese on top would also add some more flavour, and maybe some chilli and/or ginger. Even better, I’m fairly sure you could use a variety of handy, left-over ingredients to make this – aubergine, courgette and mushrooms would all definitely work.

sources
 fried rice with squash, chestnuts and chard - Delicious, November 2011, p76

poached egg and new potato salad with crispy bacon and mustard dressing

sources
poached egg and new potato salad with crispy bacon and mustard dressing - Delicious One Month Healthy Eating Plan, February 2007, p10

melissa's morrocan chicken

I’m not sure but it must be the combination of Dave’s trainers and my new luminous hi-viz running vest, but for the second week running I shatter my personal bests on the trek home. That or the massive bowl of pasta I scarfed at lunchtime.

Any delay getting home, and particularly when I run, severely eats into the time available to relax in the evening. Obviously I’ve got to shower and sort out all the random bumpf into the correct washing piles, give Milo a hug once I’m clean, sometimes there’s some washing up to deal with and only then can you get around to cooking.

In these circumstances there is slim chance of even thinking about sitting down to eat before half nine, add in tidying up once you’ve cooked and you’ve pretty much nixed the entire evening!

However having suffered last night, the benefits of cooking 3 meals on a fasting day fully kick in this evening as tonight’s meal is the work of the moment.

Admittedly I massively ballsed up the cous cous to such an extent I had to sieve it like Celia Imrie in Bridget Jones, but even with that mild faux pas we’ve still eaten by half eight are ready to watch another episode of newfavouritescandidrama Beck by nine-ish. Until Ana decides to go to bed early half way through of course…

sources
melissa's moroccan chicken - the black book