Carluccios and ready made meals

No pictures to post today. Only words to describe what we ate and did. M wanted to go to a designer warehouse sale, Nicole Farhi so we had lunch outside. Carluccios. One of those franchise italian restaurants.

http://www.carluccios.com/CarlucciosSite/pages/home/default.asp

I quite like it, its relatively cheap and you get enormous portions of pasta. I had potato gnocchi with blue cheese and spinach, an excellent combination incidentally, something i would explore on my own when M isn't eating. M doesn't like spinach. M had lasagne. The sale was alright, M didn't manage to get anything, she did get something for me though. Its her new pet project, revamping my wardrobe. We came back late, massive grocery shopping, I have to cook dinner for M's friends tomorrow. Wanted to cook porridge but two hours to prepare chicken stock was too long a wait for us and so we decided to have pasta instead. Waitrose ready made tortellini stuffed with ham and cheese and a four cheeses sauce from Waitrose as well. I added the chicken meat from the preparation of the stock and some mushrooms and thats a complete meal.

Anyway, going to be a long day tomorrow. Hopefully, the menu I prepare is good enough for guests. Its potato and leek soup and chicken chasseur. If all goes well, I will post the pictures tomorrow.

Country chicken saute

To get M to eat vegetables is an extremely difficult chore. You can't just have boiled or stired fried vegetables. It has to look pretty. My creamed spinach was rejected as it looked disgusting according to her. One way I discovered is to fry some rice with a mixture of carrots, peas, sweetcorn and long beans. It looks quite colourful and so thankfully, she has no problems with that. For dinner today, its country chicken saute, comfort food in a way. I love casseroles as they feel so homly and earthy. To me this is what home cooking is all about. For this dish, fry some diced bacon till its browned. Remove from the pan. Dredge chicken portions in flour, salt and pepper and pan fry till they are all brown on both sides. Remove from the pan. Pan fry some mushrooms with butter. Return the chicken and the bacon to the pan, and add white wine and chicken stock. Simmer till cooked.

As I am also in charge of the washing up, I have this habit of limiting the number of bowls I used. So for today, I decided to pour the saute over the rice to reduce the amount of washing. It actually tasted really good, wonderful mixture of flavours; the sweetness of the vegetables and the rich taste of the white wine sauce. Yums.

Baked portobello mushrooms with bacon and cheese / Carrot soup

M and I love soups and mushrooms. In the past, when I went to restaurants, I tend to ignore the rest of the starters and go straight for soups. I have since managed to grow out of my obsession with soups and realised how wonderfully delicious the other appetisers could be. One of them is the classic baked mushrooms with bacon and cheese. I have seen this starter in almost all the franchise restaurants in England, eg Cafe Rouge, Bella pasta, Zizzi. Anyway, I chanced upon portobello mushrooms in ASDA, such mushrooms are incredibly expensive in Singapore and it was there at a corner, selling for 80p per pack. So of course I bought it. For this dish, all you need is to place some chopped bacon and minced garlic on the mushrooms. Lots of cheese on top and bake it till the cheese is melted and brown.



Since I am the cook, i decided to have both soup and mushrooms for dinner. I make it a point to cook soup at least once a week and I happened to buy two packets of carrots, buy 1 get 1 free and all. I needed to get rid of them before they started rotting and so I decided to make carrot soup. I used to dislike carrot soup although I suspect thats because I have never tried it before. During my Phd years, the school cafe served carrot soup once every week and without any other hot food to eat (only hot food is soup at the cafe) I tried the soup and I have fallen in love with it ever since. Chop up potatoes, onions and carrots and fry them with olive oil till softened. Add chicken stock, a pinch of nutmeg, lots of paprika if you like the kick, bay leaf and the juice of an orange. Simmer for around 40 minutes and puree the vegetables. Return the puree to the pan and the remaining liquid and reheat. To make this a proper meal, I added Orzo pasta to it.

M: We had cream cheese bagels to go with our soup and mushrooms. Oddly enough to finish them off before they went bad too.

Pork with cheese sauce and butternut squash

So its back to the food that M can eat since she's back from her course. I wonder when I will be able to have spicy or Chinese food. I was introduced to butternut squash mash in a Scottish Restaurant in Perth and from then on, mashed potatoes just don't do the trick for me. Butternut squash mash looks better as well.

Cut the butternut squash into chucks, season with salt and black pepper, drizzle some olive oil over it and roast it in the oven till its soft. Mash the butternut squash, add olive oil to give it a bit of consistency and season. This goes really well with a cheese sauce; I love the contrasts, the sweetness of the mash and the savory taste of the cheese sauce. So for the pork, season it with salt, pepper and sage and brown it on both sides. Remove from the pan and add white wine. Boil until its reduced by half, then add in cream and cheddar cheese. Return the pork to the pan and simmer till its cooked.

Chicken curry and prata

M has to go on course today and so I get to eat things I normally can't eat when she's around. Today, its chicken curry, the really spicy kind that i love. M can't handle the spice. D visited today to make use of the internet and so I cooked a huge pot of chicken curry and we had it with prata that he bought from the shops near his place. Its really dirt cheap 99p for a packet of 5 frozen prata and it doesn't taste half bad. It amazing when i came over to the UK seven years, it was practically impossible to buy it here. Now its everywhere, even in Asda. Since M isn't around and I suck at taking photographs, something D has constantly reminded me, I got D to take it for me. You be the judge, whether its alright. [M: The photo is actually quite good.]

Anyway, my chicken curry is probably the Chinese kind in that I fry diced shallots with sambal chilli, then add in chicken marinated with salt and curry powder. Fry it for a while till you see the oil released from the chicken. Add in potato chunks which have been fried with some salt. Mix it all together. Add water and simmer till the chicken is cooked. Pour in some coconut milk and season. Serve with nice fluffy crispy prata. Oh, D cooked the prata and he can actually flip the prata up and down on the frying pan. I keep expecting him to drop it on my kitchen floor. Luckily, he didn't.

Chicken-in-a-pot

This is supposedly a Bulgarian dish according to the cookbook, Chicken the best ever recipe collection. Its a very simple dish to prepare and really healthy as well. M loved it too. [M: we are a happy loving couple. yay. bliss.]. In a pot (obviously), place chicken portions, lots of tomatoes and minced garlic and cover, cook gently for 15 minutes. Add chicken stock, chopped onions, paprika, bay leaves, tomato puree, olive oil, white peppercorns. Cover and cook at very low heat for 2 hours. Played One Piece Grand Adventure with M, trashed her Nami on several occasions, I gloat, she whines, about how I am supposed to let her win. I ignore her. Add parsley and serve.

Stir fried pork with carrots and mushrooms

M loves porridge. Not any normal porridge. Teochew porridge. Chicken soup and rice in it. Frankly, I can't stand it as I find it bland and boring but I have managed to make the most out of this situation by having a chinese stir fry dish with it. M doesn't like Chinese food in general aside from the deep fried battered stuff like cereal prawn and salt and pepper squid. But strangely she's alright with my stir fried dishes if she has her favourite porridge with it.

This recipe was taken from my mom when I started my PhD. She wrote down some of her traditional recipes in an exercise book for me to use. Basically, fry spring onions (the white parts of it) with oil, add pork slices marinated with light soya sauce, salt, pepper and corn flour and stir fry it for a while until the pork is brown on both sides. Add carrots and mushrooms. Add a mixture of chinese wine, sesame oil, salt and sugar and cover till all is cooked. Garnish with spring onions.

Multi-mushroom pasta

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe that I saw on TV with my parents and I cooked it for them the next day. My parents are quite crazy about his shows and my mom has been cooking more and more of his dishes these days. I think his recipes are simple but lacking a certain twang (as he puts it): I normally have to add something extra but this pasta dish came out with no modifications. I cooked this dish in Singapore and M has been complaining that I should cook this for her as she loves mushrooms. Anyway, all you have to do for this is pan fry a variety of mushrooms with butter, olive oil and salt until they are cooked and the juices are out from the mushrooms. Add a bit of lemon juice, some parsley and mix spaghetti with it. Parmesan cheese and black pepper.

Grilled cheese sandwich

I used to eat this almost every day for lunch. Every week, I would buy a packet of Bernard Mathews Turkey Ham, a packet of Sainsbury's Mild Cheese slices, Tomatoes and use it for this sandwich. All it involves is placing all the ingredients on a slice of bread (wholemeal bread) with the cheese on top of course and grilling it for around 5 minutes till the cheese is bubbling and brown. Satisfying, hot and simple.