A Midweek Chicken Roast

Our garden is starting to produce plenty of goodies, in particular courgettes and this week I've had a couple of nice meals based around them (serves 2).

Ingredients
2 skinless chicken breasts (or 1 monkfish tail)
4 rashers of streaky bacon
2 red onions quartered
2 red or yellow pepper cut into large chunks
2 medium courgettes cut into large chunks (I used a yellow spherical one)
2-4 sage leaves
Olive oil

Cut a pocket in each chicken breast and insert the sage leaves. Wrap the streaky bacon around the breast and secure with a skewer or cocktail sticks. Heat the over to about 180 degrees and mix the vegetables with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast vegetable in the oven for 15 minutes then add the chicken breasts and turn the oven down to 160. Roast for 20-30 minutes until the chicken and vegetables are cooked through.

Serve with a simple green salad and/or crusty bread to mop up the juices.

The Awesome Courgette Monster

You turn your back on the garden for 5 minutes and suddenly everything starts to crop. I have already harvested half a dozen round yellow courgettes (each the size of a tennis ball) and the same of long green ones. Then I found hiding under the mixed salad leaves a whopper of a green courgette.

An Assortment of Courgettes

I'll probably make this into a vegetable curry at the weekend Most of the yellow ones have already been claimed by the wife to take into work for her boss or to give to our neighbours. I have been able to roast some with red onions, peppers and tomatoes and served them with herby couscous and fried hallumi cheese and they were very tasty. Good texture, quite firm and tasty. Broad beans, planted late, are just about ready. Interestingly they have not been attacked by blackfly instead slugs have been eating the leaves. The mixed salad leaves are doing well and the runner and french beans are flowering nicely. Jerusalem artichokes are taller than me and the sweetcorn is shooting up. Onions, beetroot and leeks are filling out nicely so I should be cropping all the way through to Christmas.

Aubergine Bake

We love aubergines we do. They take up the savoury flavour of anything they are coked with and in particular fit in well with aromatic North African spicing. So after a brisk bit of work in the garden I threw this together.
Serves 2-3

Ingredients
1 medium aubergine cut into 1/2 cm rounds
250g minced beef (or lamb)
1/2 a pepper (diced)
1/2 a courgette (diced)
1/2 a can of chopped tomatoes
1 large onion (finely chopped)
6 button mushrooms (diced)
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon corriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
olive oil
salt and pepper

For the topping:
1 egg
50ml milk
50ml yoghurt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
handful of grated chedder

Fry the meat in a little oil until brown, add the onion, courgette, mushrooms and pepper and fry until softened. Add the spices and tomatoes and simmer gently for about 15 minutes.
Fry the aubergine slices in olive oil until softened and lightly browned.

In an oven proof dish layer the sauce and the aubergines. Beat the topping together and spoon over the top of the meat and aubergine layers. Bake in a moderate oven for 20-30 minutes until browned and bubbling. Serve with a green salad or peas and garden beans.

For a vegetarian option replace the mince with cooked lentils, beans or extra vegetables.

Chicken Stretching

Been a while since I blogged, work has been very busy, but it hasn't stopped me from cooking and thinking about food. Over recent years we have cut back on the meat we've eaten, instead buying less, better quality meat. Also I hate waste so when we have a roast chicken I like to make the most of it!
This weekend I roasted at free range corn fed chicken with some onion wedges, bay leaves, sage, thyme, onion, and new potatoes, adding a punnet of cherry tomatoes for the last half-hour.
Plenty of leftovers after this which went on to make the following meals:

• Monday work lunch of couscous, herbs, red onion, pepper, chicken and tomatoes
• Monday supper of a soup (made with chicken stock from the picked over carcass) of chicken, carrots, onion, canned tomatoes and sliced spring greens (with a portion for my lunch the next day).
• Tuesday supper of chicken curry (chicken, grated onion, carrot, spring greens, apple, dried fruit, cumin, coriander, fennugreek, turmeric, cardamom and creamed coconut), with a portion left over for my lunch the next day.

So from one chicken we got nine meal portions (and could probably have made 10-12 as they were generous portions) not including the little treats the cats persuaded me to dispense! 

What's Growing?

I've just about filled the two vegetable beds with the plants for this year. Some I've grown from seed, some are perennials and some I've bought from the local allotment association (HAAGA) and from Ryton Organic Gardens. This year I'll be growing in the vegetable beds:

• Rhubarb - found this in the garden when we moved in many years ago buried under all the rubbish left by the previous owners. Not so good this year as the weather has been very dry.
• Jerusalem Artichokes - planted a few tubers a couple of years ago and now have a small forest of plants. Great for soups or roasted with beef or chicken.
• Courgettes - Two different types this year; a yellow globe type and a more standard green one.
• French, Broad and Runner beans - Heritage seeds from Ryton, it will be interesting to see how they taste.
• Onions - grown from sets from HAAGA
• Leeks - Heritage plants from Ryton, these will see me into winter
• Salad Greens - a mixed set of leaves

Bean Poles in place - annoyed cat in foreground

In planters:

• Aubergines - small lilac globes some being grow in the greenhouse and some in the sunnier area by the greenhouse.
• Tomatoes - Several heritage types from Ryton including one called Giant Green Sausage growing on the patio in large, deep planters.
• Herbs - several types of mint, sage, hyssop, rosemary, bay and lime balm.

Trees:

• Two apples - an old Cox type (was in the garden when we arrived) and a Egmount Russet - my favourite apple.
• Victoria Plum - far too large for our garden because of the rootstock it is on but it produces buckets of juicy flavourful fruit every year. Plenty for me and plenty for the birds!

Jerusalem Artichokes at the front centre

Hopefully we will have the perfect mix of sunny warm days and warm wet nights this summer and a bumper crop of goodies!

Norfolk Nosh

Been a while since I wrote anything, lots of things going on; work, three sick cats and a holiday in the wilds of East Anglia have all got in the way. Our holiday on the border between Norfolk and Suffolk provided us with some very fine food offerings. The asparagus season was in full swing and signs proclaiming this fact could be seen almost every 100 meters. I love asparagus but only eat it in season as the taste, like sweetcorn, fades away quickly after being harvested.

Asparagus featured in our first, and probably best, meal of our week away. Our first two nights were spent at the fabulousOld Rectory Norwich. The evening meal (and the following morning's breakfast) were fabulous. I started with a salad of asparagus, black pudding, soft boiled egg and salad leaves while my wife had a crab tart of sublime lightness and intensity. For my main I had a fillet of local beef with roasted shallots, spinach and fondant potatoes while Liz had a large fillet of sea bass with asparagus, new potatoes and seasonal vegetables. The beef was both tender and full of flavour and the sauce from the meat juices fabulously tasty. For pudding I had a delicate vanilla panna cotta with macerated strawberries and lavender shortbread and Liz had a gooey chocolate fondant. Both were fantastic.

Sunset on the walk back from the Locks Inn

We then moved from the luxury of the Old Rectory to the more basic conditions of a self catering converted cowshed. Set in the owners' smallholding it was very peaceful and relaxing. Best of all it was only a 15 minute walk from a great pub. The Locks Inn has atmosphere to die for. The old, main part of the inn is tiny and lacks any form of artificial light, so we had to rush our postcard writing before the sun went down! The food (beef chilli and rice, vegetarian goulash) was flavourful and hearty and was complimented by some very good beer from the small, local Green Jack brewery.

Sole Bay Inn Southwold

Other good food and ale was to be had at the Sole Bay inn in Southwold, a very pretty town on the coast with beach huts, a funky pier and a interesting selection of shops. At its heart is the Adnams brewery and you can smell the aroma of brewing beer throughout the town.
In Norwich Totally Thai is a very good Thai restaurant with a good selection of classics. On the way back to London we stopped at a farm shop for breakfast. Breakfast was good and there was a fine range of produce to take home. A bonus was the small petting zoo of pigs and sheep in the car park!

Steak and Cabbage Stir Fry

As we are away on holiday (Norfolk) next week it makes sense to use up everything in the fridge. No veg box this week so we just had a small head of pointed cabbage in the fridge. Along with a piece of steak from the freezer (left over from the Beef Stroganof a few weeks ago) I had enough for a tasty supper.

Ingredients (for 2)
1 piece of frying steak (sliced into strips)
1 head of pointed cabbage (or a small Savoy, or a bag of spinach, kale or spring greens) coarsely chopped.
1 onion (sliced)
1 clove garlic (chopped)
1 thumb sized chunk of ginger (cut into matchsticks)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 star anise
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of Thai sweet chilli sauce
3 tablespoons of black bean sauce (or oyster sauce)
a splash or two of water

Heat a wok still hot and add the oil. Add the garlic, star anise and ginger then the onions and stir fry briefly. Add the steak and stir fry for a few minutes. Add the cabbage and briefly stir fry again. Add the soy, chilli, black bean sauce and the water. Stir fry to coat the meat and cabbage.

Serve with rice or noodles dressed with sesame oil and a glass of cold beer.