Chicken double chickpea curry

I’ve been making versions of this dish for a few months now since I discovered the original recipe on the BBC Good Food website. We love chickpeas in our house and I am particularly fond of kala chana or brown chickpeas. If you’ve not tried them, you should – they are smaller and have a bit more bite to them and a slightly nuttier flavour. Supermarkets tend to stock them these days, sometimes in the ‘international’ food section or just in with the other pulses. The original recipe only contains one tin of normal chickpeas but more and more often these days I find myself adding an extra tin of pulses to recipes like this. It’s economical as the dish goes further and I just prefer the less meaty result. I like to think my husband is coming round to my way of thinking.

I’ve made this recipe using chicken breast as originally suggested and it was lovely and probably very low fat but I think all in all I prefer the result you get when using chicken thighs. I’ve tried cooking it on the bone with the skin on but we’re trying to lose a bit of weight round here so skinless, boneless thigh meat is our happy medium – moister and tastier (to my mind) than breast meat but without the skin a reasonably low fat option.

Making my own curry paste always struck me as too much hassle in the past but using the food processor it’s really very straightforward and the whole dish can be made in under an hour. You can adjust the spiciness by leaving out some of the chilli – the boy, who is 5 and not mad keen on very spicy food enjoyed eating this.

• 2 onions, quartered
• 3 garlic cloves
• 3cm piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons of medium curry powder
• ¼ teaspoon of turmeric
• 2 teaspoons of paprika
• 1 red chilli, seeded and roughly chopped (or less if you prefer less heat)
• Fresh coriander
• Chicken stock cube/powder
• 425ml boiling water
• About 500g of boneless, skinless chicken thigh fillets
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 tin kala chana/brown chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• Small pot of natural yoghurt

Put the onions, garlic, ginger, chilli and spices into a food processor and blend them into a paste. Add a tablespoon of water to help it blend if you need to.

Cook the paste in a large heavy based pan over a medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring it frequently.

Add the stock and the boiling water and mix it in.

Add the chicken and simmer for half an hour or until the meat is tender.

Add the two tins of chickpeas and cook for another ten minutes.

Serve with basmati rice and naan or chappatis. Drizzle with the plain yoghurt and sprinkle some chopped fresh coriander on top.

“Turning the Tables” and a tasty tea

I’ve not posted in a couple of days as things have been pretty hectic round here. It was the boy’s fifth birthday party on Saturday so we were getting prepared for that and then afterwards – recovering.

Friday started off relaxing enough with a visit from my friend Jo and her daughter. We caught up over coffee and some of the mint chocolate cookies I made and froze for later the other day. Jo has a lovely blog called Binds You to Me where she writes about family and interiors(and lots of other stuff) and makes me jealous with her impeccable taste and gorgeous home. She brought me an amazing book as a present “Turning the Tables” which contains recipes and reflections on food and cooking by fabulous women like Angela Carter and Miriam Margoyles. It brought back fond memories of childhood when my mum’s bookshelves were full of books from feminist publishers, few of which sadly survive today. I’m looking forward to reading it and attempting some of the recipes.

Later on Friday was taken up by making up party bags for Saturday’s festivities and then suddenly realising it was nearly 5.30 and we hadn’t thought about tea*. The recipe below (so simple it barely qualifies as a recipe) is a quick and tasty tea that we quite often fall back on. If you don’t have chorizo, smoked streaky bacon would be nice too.

*A note on the use of the word tea – tea is used here in the good Scottish sense to denote the evening meal.

Pasta with chorizo and tomatoes

• 200g chorizo, chopped into small pieces
• 200g cherry tomatoes, halved
• Garlic purée or a crushed clove of garlic
• Salt and pepper
• Long pasta – spaghetti or similar
• Tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil

Fry the chorizo in a little oil until it has begun to crisp at the edges.
Add the tomatoes to the hot pan along with the garlic.
Allow to cook down until the tomatoes are collapsing and you have a sauce-y consistency. Add the balsamic and let it cook off.
If the sauce is a little dry looking then add some of the hot pasta water.
Once the pasta is ready, drain it and add it to the sauce in the pan. Toss it around until it’s all coated and then serve with plenty of Parmesan and black pepper.

 

Easy lamb steaks with aubergine

I’ve made this a few times recently because it’s very simple and makes a tasty tea for nights when you don’t want to spend much time in the kitchen. My husband likes it because it has a big bit of meat in a starring role which he considers one of the essential qualities in any meal. It’s vaguely based on a Delia recipe which I remember involved all sorts of complicated aubergine salting which I don’t bother with in my version. It’d probably be better with fresh herbs but I quite often don’t have any so dried is what I used.

• 2 lamb steaks
• 1 medium aubergine
• 1 vine tomato
• A generous handful of cherry tomatoes – I’m loving the multicoloured ones some of the supermarkets are selling now
• Some dried rosemary and oregano(or whatever dried herbs you fancy)
• garlic puree
• salt and pepper to season

Preheat the oven to 200/gas mark 6. Chop the aubergine into cubes and fry in an ovenproof dish until it is beginning to brown at the edges and soften. Put the dish into the preheated oven.

Chop the cherry tomatoes in half and roughly chop the big tomato. After ten minutes or so, add them to the aubergine in the oven along with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, a squirt of garlic puree and the dried herbs.

If you have a griddle pan, use it to griddle the lamb chops so they are just sealed and marked, if not just brown them in a pan.

Add the lamb to the vegetables and put it back in the oven for 5-10 minutes depending how you like your lamb.

Take it out the oven, season, and let it rest for a few minutes before serving.

Serve with nice bread to mop up the juices.

Mint chocolate chocolatey cookies

Everyone is well aware of pregnancy cravings but you don’t hear so much about the cravings you get after the baby is born. This time during my pregnancy I couldn’t get enough lemonade ice lollies, whenever we found them in the shops I bulk bought them. This continued right up to the last few weeks of my pregnancy, which is why I now have a twelve week old baby son and a freezer drawer full of them. Once the baby had arrived I was struck by the overwhelming sweet tooth that I remembered from immediately after the boy was born. At one point in those first few weeks i was getting through a packet of bourbon biscuits and an entire banoffee pie a day. Clearly this couldn’t continue indefinitely and thankfully the intense sugar cravings have subsided somewhat. At the moment all that remains is a new found fondness for anything mint chocolate flavoured. Mint choc chip ice cream, mint chocolate ice cream bars and mint flavoured 70% dark chocolate.

Inspired, I decided I wanted to attempt some baking for a change and make some mint choc chip cookies. Casting about for ideas i found recipes that suggested using food colouring to colour the cookie dough so that it was green and the cookies sort of resembled mint choc chip ice cream. There’s something distinctly off-putting about green biscuits though and it seemed a bit, well, obvious. I decided mine would be a more sophisticated affair (natch!). This recipe is adapted from a Nigella recipe from Nigella Express and also available here. I changed some of the chocolate for mint flavoured dark chocolate and omitted the vanilla from the original recipe. Just for kicks I dyed some sugar green with food colouring and sprinkled it on top of a few, adds nothing to the taste so it’s fine not to bother but it looks pretty. They turned out pretty well, Nigella knows her stuff and the mint flavour was a subtle but sophisticated twist.

Mint chocolate chocolate cookies

• 150g plain flour
• 2x100g bars 70% cocoa solids dark chocolate
• 2x100g bars mint flavoured 70% cocoa solids dark chocolate
• 30g cocoa powder, sieved
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 125g of softened butter
• 75g light brown sugar
• 50g white sugar
• 1 medium egg cold from the fridge

Preheat the oven to 170/gas mark 3.

Break the two mint chocolate bars and one of the plain bars into little bits – think (very)generous chocolate chip kind of size, which is pretty much as small as you can snap them by hand. If your mum is visiting, get her to do it while you measure the other stuff. (Thanks mum!)

Put the flour, cocoa, bicarb and salt in a bowl and mix them together.

Cream the sugars and the butter in a bigger bowl.

Melt the remaining bar of plain dark chocolate in the microwave (1 minute on full power in mine, then a good stir did it).

Add the melted chocolate to the creamed butter and sugar. Once they are combined mix the egg in too.

Add the dry ingredients to the larger bowl and then the chocolate chunks/chips.

Put a tablespoon of white sugar in a wee bowl and add a few drops of green food colouring and mix it about until the sugar is dyed green.

Use an ice cream scoop to spoon generous mounds onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment. This amount makes about 12 cookies. Sprinkle some of the green sugar on top and then bake them for about 18 minutes. They’re done when the point of a knife comes out fairly clean rather than wet with cake mix, I struggled to find a bit without a big lump of melted chocolate in to test this theory however. This is no bad thing.

Let them cool on the tray for five minutes then move them to a wire rack to finish.

Eat them on their own or with a big scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

P.S. I took Nigella’s advice and only baked six, I put the rest in scoops on a little tray and froze them, once they’re solid I’ll stick them in a sandwich bag and have frozen cookies ready to bake whenever I fancy which is pretty cool.

Mince and tatties and the legend of “Valmont” pie

When my older son (the boy as opposed to the baby) was at nursery we would frequently ask him about his day only to be told that despite having left nursery minutes earlier he couldn’t remember. He’s already proving similarly reticent about school. One thing he would share with us about nursery was what he’d had for lunch that day, especially days when he’d had his favourite – “Valmont pie”. What was this sophisticated sounding dish we wondered? We asked for more information but he wasn’t telling. I looked online to try and track it down and eventually discovered that his nursery menu contained the very similarly (yet less excitingly) named Belmont pie but no clue as to what it was. The dish didn’t seem to exist outside their menus. It remained a mystery.

Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying the boy for his first session at school dinners and there it was on the menu – Belmont pie! The boy picked macaroni cheese (another perennial favourite) and some delicious looking homemade lentil and vegetable soup. I got a portion of the pie and a taster of the chicken curry. Belmont pie it turns out is just good Scottish mince with a wee puff pastry lid served on the side, and very good it was too. All the food was lovely – clearly cooked from scratch with good ingredients. Another mum and I remembered none too fondly the processed crap that we had at our school dinners (stewed sausages, burgers in gravy, overcooked baked beans and chips with everything at my school) and marvelled at how kids these days don’t know they’re born and so on. It turns out I’m the grown up now- not a kid these days, which still surprises me, when I accidentally remember.

I wasn’t massively surprised that the boy’s favourite dish was a variation on mince: mince and tatties is a Scottish classic and always popular for tea in our house. My mince recipe, like most people’s, is a variation on my own mum’s version. We like carrots in ours and a bit of flavour from a bay leaf and some dried thyme which is perhaps not strictly in keeping with tradition but tasty all the same. My mum’s dad was famously so opposed to vegetables, even as a grown man, that he didn’t even like onion in his mince, thankfully everyone in our house is considerably less fussy. The boy is back tonight from his first full day of school and a weekend spent at his dad’s so we celebrated his return with “Valmont” pie.

Mince (for mince and tatties or indeed “Valmont” pie)

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2-3 carrots, diced
• 500g lean steak mince
• 1 tablespoon of plain flour
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon of dried thyme
• 500ml beef stock
• Salt and pepper to season

In a big pot that has a lid, fry the onion and the carrots over a medium heat in the oil until the carrots have softened a bit and the onion is translucent. Take them out for now and set them aside.

Turn up the heat a bit and brown the mince. Once it’s browned, stir in the flour and mix it all into the mince letting it soak up the fat and cook for a minute or two.

Add the carrots and onions back in, along with the stock, the herbs and the seasoning.

Bring it to the boil then turn it down to a low simmer and stick the lid on. Let it cook for at least an hour but longer if you can. Check on it now and then and add more liquid if it needs it.

Serve it with buttery mashed potatoes (tatties) and a green vegetable, we like peas best. If you’re having “Valmont” pie, bake some puff pastry squares and stick them on top.

Sunny food for a (mostly) grey day

My older boy is at his dad’s this weekend so it’s very quiet at our house. After my brioche breakfast me and the baby boy had a lazy morning while his daddy caught up on some sleep.

The dull grey skies brightened up a little in the afternoon so I gently persuaded Barry that a weekend constitutional was in order. We (I?) decided we’d do a walk we’ve done before that takes us past the many fantastic food shops our part of the city has to offer.  If there’s one thing my husband enjoys almost as much as walking it’s looking in loads of shops. He’s a very tolerant man.

I put the baby in the carrier where he promptly fell asleep and we set off. We took the subway four stops and set off walking back. First stop was Lupe Pinto’s deli where we picked up some gorgeous chorizo which inspired our evening meal. I looked at the authentic paella pans and promised myself one at a later date. I mused over how long it would take me to use up the smoked paprika I had at home so I could justify buying some that comes in a pretty tin.

We visited most of the other food shops along the way and I hope to blog about them in future. Barry picked up a couple of second hand books which dulled the pain of window shopping somewhat and we made it back to the amazing Cottonrake bakery near our house as they were closing. We were just in time to get their last chocolate torte (for me) and a sausage roll for Barry to have as a late night snack (although he was a little disappointed they’d sold out of their stornoway black pudding ones).

Chicken and chorizo paella

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 100g dried chorizo cut into little cubes
• A teaspoon of garlic puree or a couple of crushed cloves
• 2 skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size
• ½ -1 teaspoon smoked hot paprika, depending how spicy you like things (or 1 teaspoon normal paprika if you don’t have smoked)
• A pinch of saffron
• 750ml hot chicken stock
• 200g paella rice
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
• 2 peppers, diced
• Chopped fresh parsley
• Lemon wedges to serve with it

In a large, shallow, heavy based pan (or a paella pan if you have one obviously!), fry the onion in the olive oil till it’s soft, next add the chorizo, the garlic and the chicken.

Cook until the chicken is sealed, then stir in the paprika, the tomatoes and the peppers.

Pour the rice in and stir it round so it’s evenly distributed.

Put the pinch of saffron into the hot chicken stock and let it begin to colour it.

Pour the stock into the pan and simmer until the rice has absorbed the liquid and is just tender, usually about 20 minutes. Give it the occasional stir if you like but if it sticks a bit don’t worry – the crusty bits from the bottom of a paella are highly prized by those in the know. Add more liquid if you need to.

Sprinkle a bit of parsley over once the rice is done and serve with lemon wedges on the side and some decent bread.

Brioche for breakfast

I’ve been trying to lose a bit of weight since the baby arrived so usually breakfast is a bowl of muesli, something healthy to keep me full and fend off snacking. Then I woke up one morning last week with a craving for brioche and strawberry jam. I briefly considered making my own brioche and found this recipe by Dan Lepard which uses an entire packet of butter, which has a certain gluttonous appeal. I’m not much of a breadmaker though so cheap, processed supermarket brioche would do me fine. They taste exactly like the ones I used to eat on summer camping holidays in France when I was a kid. I’ll be hungry again in half an hour but it is Saturday after all.

Green lentil and polish sausage soup

The weather has started feeling a bit more autumnal where we live, there’s a wee chill in the air the last couple of days. The boy started school a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been taken back to that start of the school year feeling from when I was young. The last few summery days seem to have gone and in time honoured fashion the colder weather has turned my thoughts to making soup. I picked up some green lentils on a whim in Waitrose the other week and scanned the ‘net for some ideas. This is based on an Ina Garten recipe that appears all over the place. The original recipe suggests kielbasa sausage but by the time I got to the supermarket I had kabanos in my head so that’s what I bought.

 

• 200 g green lentils
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 leek, quartered and sliced
• 1-2 teaspoons garlic puree (or 2 or 3 crushed cloves – I used puree from a tube because I’m lazy)
• Sea salt
• Black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1600 ml chicken stock
• 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 180g packet kabanos chopped into 1/2cm slices
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (or red wine vinegar if you have no balsamic)
• Parmesan cheese, freshly grated

Soak the lentils in boiling water for 15 minutes then drain and rinse till later. I chopped my vegetables while they were soaking.

In a big soup pot (I have a low pressure-pressure cooker I use for this sort of thing), fry the onions and leeks with the garlic, a few twists of fresh ground salt and pepper and the thyme in the olive oil for about ten minutes or until the onions are translucent. Chuck in the carrots and celery and cook for ten more minutes. Pour in the chicken stock (homemade would be good but I just used stock powder), the tin of tomatoes, the chopped kabanos* and the lentils. Simmer covered until the lentils are cooked. In the magical low pressure cooker it took about half an hour, it might be longer in a ‘normal’ pot. Add the vinegar and give it another five minutes or so.

Serve with grated Parmesan and crusty bread (we had sourdough with lashings of butter).

*most versions of this recipe suggest putting the sausage in once the lentils are cooked but I got a bit carried away and put them in with the lentils and the smokey flavor right through the soup was lovely.