Hump Day in a hurry!!!

Hey lovely people!

So it's Wednesday and that means it's food & drink time. Today I am feeling a bit under the weather so it's very much a no makeup and pyjama day, and I really don't want to move off the couch for too long so I'm feeling quite inspired by Jamie Oliver's concept of 15 minute meals. With that being said, I don't want a boring old run of the mill dinner, I want some good grub... So here is what I've narrowed my choices down to:

Golden Chicken, Braised Greens & Potato Gratin

For the gratin
800g potatoes
3 onions
olive oil
1 organic chicken stock cube
½ bunch fresh sage
100 ml single cream
30g Parmesan cheese

For the chicken
4 x 120g skinless higher-welfare chicken breasts
few sprigs fresh rosemary
2 rashers smoked higher-welfare streaky bacon

For the greens
200g baby leeks
200g baby spinach
200g frozen peas

Method

Ingredients out • Kettle boiled • Oven grill on high • Food processor (fine slicer) • Medium lidded pan, high heat • Large high-sided roasting tray, high heat • Large frying pan, medium-high heat

Start Cooking

Finely slice the potatoes in the processor, then tip into the medium pan and cover with boiling water and the lid • Peel the onions, finely slice in the processor, then tip into the roasting tray with 2 tablespoons of oil, crumble in the stock cube and season with salt and pepper • Tear in the sage leaves and stir regularly, adding a splash of water if they start to catch

On a large sheet of greaseproof paper, toss the chicken with salt, pepper and the rosemary leaves, then fold the paper over and bash and flatten the chicken to 1.5cm thick with a rolling pin • Put into the frying pan with 1 tablespoon of oil, turning after 3 or 4 minutes, until golden and cooked through • Drain the potatoes well in a colander, then tip into the onion pan, stir together and arrange in a flat layer • Pour over the cream, then finely grate over the Parmesan and pop under the grill on the top shelf

Halve the leeks lengthways, rinse under the tap, then finely slice • Put into the empty lidded pan on a high heat with 1 tablespoon of oil, stirring often • Finely slice the bacon and add to the chicken pan, tossing regularly • Stir the spinach and peas into the leeks and once the spinach has wilted and the peas are tender, pile on a board or platter with the chicken and bacon on top • Serve with the gratin.

Pork Tacos, Spicy Black Beans & Avocado Green Salad

For the pork

350g skinless higher-welfare pork belly

1 heaped teaspoon fennel seeds

1 heaped teaspoon sweet smoked paprika

For the beans

olive oil

1 good pinch cumin seeds

spring onions

cloves of garlic

1 x 400g tin of black beans

For the salad

1 fresh red or green chilli

2 little gem lettuces

½ a bunch fresh coriander

1 ripe avocado

1 large ripe tomato

1 eating apple

low-salt soy sauce

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 lime

To serve

Lingham's chilli sauce

4 tablespoons fat-free natural yoghurt

8 corn taco shells

Method

Ingredients out • Large frying pan, medium-high heat • Medium frying pan, medium heat

Start Cooking

Cut the pork into 1cm dice and tip into the large frying pan with the fennel seeds, paprika, salt and pepper, and stir regularly • Put 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the cumin seeds into the medium frying pan • Trim, slice and add the spring onions, squash in the unpeeled garlic through a garlic crusher, then stir in the beans and their juices, and simmer

Finely slice the chilli, lettuce and most of the top leafy half of the coriander, then halve, destone, peel and chop the avocado, along with the tomato • Toss and pile all this on a platter, coarsely grating or matchsticking the apple on top • Ripple a little chilli sauce through the yoghurt in a small bowl

Stir, mush and season the beans to taste • Drizzle the salad with a little soy sauce, the extra virgin olive oil and lime juice, then toss together • Drain the fat from the pork pan, then serve everything straight away, with a pile of taco shells and all the other elements, sprinkled with the remaining coriander leaves.

So there are two pretty delicious looking and sounding recipes for a fast and efficient "hump day" dinner. But of course, it would be a shame not to include a little alcoholic tipple to wash down all of that scrummy food now wouldn't it??? So on that note I have chosen another easy recipe, one that won't take too long off the couch just like the dinner options above.

Wicked Champagne Cocktail

3-4 pomegranates 

caster sugar, optional

1 bottle Champagne, chilled 

Method

You can use good Prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) rather than Champagne for this recipe, and quite honestly, you'd never know the difference. Also, you get great results from puréed peaches or even strawberries instead of pomegranates, but I always think it's best to stick to what's in season.

First of all, cut your pomegranates in half and take their seeds out. The easy way to do this is to hold one half of a pomegranate cut-side down in your hand and bash the top of it with a spatula so the seeds come tumbling out – make sure you've got a bowl underneath to catch them all!

Whiz the seeds for 5 to 10 seconds in a food processor, pour through a sieve and you'll have some lovely pomegranate juice. If the pomegranates are particularly sharp, feel free to stir in a little sugar to sweeten, although I usually don't.

All you need to do is put about 5cm of pomegranate juice into a Champagne flute, then top it up with your Champagne.

You should by this time, be well and truly stuffed... and if not... then maybe a little dessert would go down a treat. But to save yourself the added hassle of having to cook a delicious dessert from scratch, you should just take this little short-cut and buy yourself one of these bad boys:

This is of course a Gü Pud, of the Chocolate Mousse variety. If you haven't already tried it then OMG you are in for a treat. It is a rich intense dark chocolate ganache mousse and it will be the only mousse you will ever eat again!

Anyway, after all that food you will no doubt be stuffed and will most likely want to to lie down and rub your belly. But it was sooooooooo worth it eh???

Take care lovelies. x

Hump Day Recipes

Hey Lovely people!

After my last Wednesday, I decided that I would continue on with the theme of sharing some of my favourite chefs and recipes with you... I mean what is better than some good old grub to get you through Hump Day???

So this weeks chef of choice is the wonderful and charismatic Jamie Oliver!!!

I love him... not only because his recipes are just fab... but because he makes it all look so effortless! Now I know that it's absolutely not effortless in the slightest, but the style and flare he shows in the kitchen, and the way he just throws the ingredients together without care or hesitation, gives me hope that I can produce meals with the same punch and pizzazz!

Anyway Danielle stop rambling and get on with it! Lol

This weeks choice of recipe is the fabulous Perfect Roast Chicken. Now I know that a lot of you will be like "What? That's soooo boring"... but let me tell you, there is no better dinner (in my opinion) than a good Roast... and Chicken is always top of the charts for me!

Perfect Roast Chicken
with lemon, fresh herbs & veg

Ingredients

1.6 kg higher-welfare chicken

2 medium onions

2 carrots

2 sticks celery

1 bulb garlic

olive oil

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

1 lemon

1 small bunch fresh thyme, rosemary, bay or sage, or a mixture

Method

To prepare your chicken

Take your chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before it goes into the oven. Preheat your oven to 240°C/475°F/gas 9. There's no need to peel the vegetables – just give them a wash and roughly chop them. Break the garlic bulb into cloves, leaving them unpeeled. 

Pile all the veg and garlic into the middle of a large roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil. Drizzle the chicken with olive oil and season well with salt and pepper, rubbing it all over the bird. Carefully prick the lemon all over, using the tip of a sharp knife (if you have a microwave, you could pop the lemon in these for 40 seconds at this point as this will really bring out the flavour). Put the lemon inside the chicken's cavity, with the bunch of herbs.

To cook your chicken

Place the chicken on top of the vegetables in the roasting tray and put it into the preheated oven. Turn the heat down immediately to 200°C/400°F/gas 6 and cook the chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes. If you're doing roast potatoes and veggies, this is the time to crack on with them – get them into the oven for the last 45 minutes of cooking. 

Baste the chicken halfway through cooking and if the veg look dry, add a splash of water to the tray to stop them burning. When cooked, take the tray out of the oven and transfer the chicken to a board to rest for 15 minutes or so. Cover it with a layer of tinfoil and a tea towel and put aside. Now is the time to make your gravy. 

To carve your chicken

Remove any string from the chicken and take off the wings (break them up and add to your gravy for mega flavour). Carefully cut down between the leg and the breast. Cut through the joint and pull the leg off.

Repeat on the other side, then cut each leg between the thigh and the drumstick so you end up with four portions of dark meat. Place these on a serving platter. You should now have a clear space to carve the rest of your chicken. Angle the knife along the breastbone and carve one side off, then the other. 

When you get down to the fussy bits, just use your fingers to pull all the meat off, and turn the chicken over to get all the tasty, juicy bits from underneath. You should be left with a stripped carcass, and a platter full of lovely meat that you can serve with your piping hot gravy and gorgeous roast veg.

There you have it - the most delicious Roast Chicken dinner you can imagine - I should know, I've tried it 100 times.

To find more delicious recipes like this just visit JamieOliver.Com... I guarantee you will find so many amazing and easy recipes there that you'll be dying to try!

Take care lovelies. x

Happy Hump Day!

Hey there lovely people!

How are you all doing on this fine day???

So after having read this months Vogue cover to cover, I thought I would share a bit more about my love and fascination with the amazing Nigella Lawson, who was this months cover feature.

My love affair with cooking started when I first moved out of my family home and into a flat with my other half when we were 18. It was an exciting and nerve-wracking time for me as I really hadn't had much experience in the kitchen up until that point. I had however, always loved watching cooking programmes on TV and in those early days this is where my inspiration in cooking came from.

I quickly became a fan of amazing chefs like Jamie Oliver, James Martin, and Rachel Allen to name but a few. But the best of them all... or certainly the most voluptuously sexy, charismatic and eloquent of them all. :D

How seriously beautiful is she??? I'm not quite sure if its her cooking skills that I am so bowed over by or just how much she oozes utter perfection when she cooks.

Either way, I thought I would share my favourite dessert recipe that I have tried and tested over the years... just to help you get through hump day!

Now this first one is by no means healthy or low in calories in any way... but it is my absolute favourite dessert and is super easy to make and anyway let's be honest, a healthy dessert is over-rated!

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cheesecake

Ingredients

for the base

·         200 grams digestive biscuits

·         50 grams salted peanuts

·         100 grams dark chocolate chips

·         50 grams soft unsalted butter

for the filling

·         500 grams cream cheese

·         3 large eggs

·         3 large egg yolks

·         200 grams caster sugar

·         125 ml sour cream

·         250 grams smooth peanut butter

for the topping

·         250 ml sour cream

·         100 grams milk chocolate chips

·         30 grams soft light brown sugar

Method

• Preheat the oven to 170°C/gas mark 3/325°F.
• Then process the biscuits, peanuts, dark chocolate chips and butter for the base in a food processor.
• Once it comes together in a clump, turn it out into a 23cm / 9inch springform tin and press into the bottom and up the sides to make the crunchy crust.
• Put in the fridge while you make the filling.
• Process the filling in the cleaned or wiped-out processor bowl, putting in the cream cheese, eggs and egg yolks, sugar, sour cream and peanut butter and whizzing to a smooth mixture.
• Pour and scrape the filling into the base in the chilled springform tin and cook for 1 hour, though check after 50 minutes. The top – only – should feel set and dry.
• Take the cheesecake out of the oven while you make the topping.
• Warm the sour cream and chocolate with the brown sugar gently in a small saucepan over a low heat, whisking to blend in the chocolate as it melts, and then take off the heat.
• Spoon and spread the topping very gently over the top of the cheesecake, being as careful as you can in case you break the surface of the cheesecake. (not that anything bad will happen; you’ll just have chocolate marbling the cake a bit.
• Put it back in the oven for a final 10 minutes.
• Once out of the oven, let the cheesecake cool in its tin and then cover and put into the fridge overnight.
• When you are ready to eat the cheesecake, take it out of the fridge, just to take the chill off: this will make it easier to spring from the tin. don’t let it get too warm, though, as it will become a bit gooey and be hard to slice.

 So there you go... hope you enjoy.

      Take care lovelies. x

  Check out Nigella.Com for loads more fab recipes!!!