Chicken & Mushroom Pie

Ok guys n Gal’s lets get cooking!

First let’s break down what we are going to need:

Filling

2 Large Chicken Breasts
Selection of Mushrooms (Enough to cover your pie dish)
1 Red Onion
50ml Single Cream
2 Garlic Cloves
A Bunch of Thyme
Some Medium Dry White Wine
½ a Cube of Chicken Stock

Pastry

200g Flour
100g Butter
2 Table Spoons Cold Water
Pinch of Salt

First we need to make our pastry. The pastry will need to rest in the fridge for about 30 minutes before we use it. Put the flour through a sieve into a mixing bowl. Add a pinch of salt. Break up the butter and rub it into the flour. When you have finished you should be left with a slightly lumpy powdery mixture. A little trick to know what it is fully mixed is to grab one of the larger clumps and break it up. If it is mostly butter then you need to rub it for a little bit longer. When you are satisfied, add the 2 table spoons of water and mix into dough. You may need to add a little tiny bit more water to bind it all together but I must stress you WON’T need more than a tea spoon extra if any! Wrap you dough in cling film and put in the fridge.

Now for the filling. Finely chop about ¼ of the red onion & crush the garlic, finely slice the mushrooms and chop the chicken into cubes. Lightly dust the chicken with some flour.

Heat the pan and add some olive oil. Fry your chicken, onion and the cloves of garlic in the pan. Once the chicken has browned off all over add the mushrooms, 100ml of chicken stock and a generous splash of white wine. Simmer this for about 5 minutes allowing the wine to reduce down. Finally add some chopped thyme and about 50ml of cream. Mix in and take off the heat.

Preheat your oven to 200c (Gas Mark 6). Dust your worktop with some flower and take your pastry out of the fridge. If you don’t have a rolling pin you can make use of the wine bottle from earlier. Make sure you either drink the wine or re-cork the bottle first, I opted to drink it! Roll out the pastry until it is about 3-4mm thick. Place this on top of the pie dish and gently lower it in. Once the pastry nicely coats the inside of the dish cut the excess off the edge of the bowl. Don’t throw this away as we will be using this for the lid.


Add the Chicken mix to the dish. Roll out the remaining pastry. Place your pie dish on top of the pastry and cut around it. Don’t worry if the lid isn’t big enough to cover right to the edges because you can fold the sides down. Whisk some egg and milk together. Use a teaspoon and put some of the egg mix around the edge of the lid and then fold down the sides. Coat the whole pie with egg to glaze. Put a few holes in the pie lid to allow for steam.

Put your pie in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until the top is golden. Serve with mash, peas, carrots and good old bisto gravy!

Pan Fried Venison in Red Wine Sauce

Ok Guys & Gal’s lets get cooking!

First let’s break down what were going to need:

2 Venison Steaks
New Potatoes
Asparagus
Baby Carrots
2 Cloves of Garlic
Rock Salt & Cracked Pepper
Ground Nut Oil
Butter

















Extremely tasty and healthy. Venison is a lean, juicy and gamey meat. This meal is extremely simple but the natural flavours of the ingredients will really get your taste buds going!

Ok firstly we are going to need to prepare the vegetables for sautéing. Cut the potatoes into slices and chop off the bottom part of the asparagus (about 4 inches from the tip). Boil some water and put both the carrots and potatoes in. After about 7-10 minutes depending on the size of the vegetables (mine was 7 minutes but you may want to use larger vegetables) add the asparagus and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Once the vegetables are par boiled you can transfer them to a bowl. If you only have one frying pan then I suggest sautéing the vegetables in a large sauce pan. Heat a knob of butter in a pan and add some finely chopped garlic, once melted throw in the vegetables and leave them on a medium heat, tossing or stirring regularly. Be sure to keep an eye on them as butter can easily burn.


As the vegetables are sautéing you can cook the venison. First season them with some salt & pepper. Heat some ground nut oil in either a small frying pan or grill-pan. Place the venison steaks into the pan and cook them on a high heat for 2 minutes on each side. This will give you a medium rare steak. Add a further minute each side to increase to medium, this meat is best eaten with a pink middle. Towards the end add a knob of butter to the pan and spoon over the venison several times. Take the steaks out of the pan and let them rest on a warm plate.


Poor away any excess oil/butter from you frying pan/grill pan and add about 150ml of red wine and a crushed clove of garlic to the pan. Return to the heat and simmer this whilst you finish the vegetables. Season to taste.










Put the vegetables onto the plate and place the venison on top. Spoon on some of the red wine sauce and enjoy!

Lemon Sole with Chunky Med Veg

Ok Guys & Gal’s lets get cooking!

First let’s break down what were going to need:

1 Whole Lemon sole (or 4 filets if you don’t want to filet your own)
1 Lemon
1 Courgette
1 Pepper (any colour)
5 Shallots
Charlotte Potatoes
1 Tin of Whole Plum Tomatoes
1 Clove of Garlic
Rock Salt & Cracked Pepper
Olive Oil
Knob of Butter
Flour
















This is a simple rustic Mediterranean inspired meal that is ideal for the summer months (If we get any this year!)

First of all let’s prepare the sole. Only take note if you have decided to buy a whole fish. You can get your fish monger to prepare the fillets for you or you can purchase the ready prepared filets from your local supermarket. This is fresh caught Cornish sole bought from a local fish monger in a town called St Agnes (Near St Ives).

Take a flexible sharp knife and use it to scrape the skin from had to tail to remove the scales. Then give it a quick wash. Use a sharp pair of scissors to cut the fins off both sides.


There is a natural line, following the backbone, running down the body of the fish. Using this as a guideline, run the knife down from head to tail, cutting down to the bone.











Using the tip of the knife, gently slide it down along the bones from the backbone to one side using sweeping movements to slice the fillet off. Repeat on the other side, then turn the fish and repeat again to get 4 fillets in total. Note the top fillets will be thicker than those from the underside of the fish so will require a longer cooking time.


To ensure our fillets stay in one piece whilst cooking, we are going to leave the skin on.

Chop up your vegetables into nice chunky pieces. Put them into a casserole dish and season with salt & Pepper. Put a tin of plum tomatoes into a pan, warm through and add 1 clove of finely chopped (or crushed) garlic. Pour the mix over the top of the vegetables and put into a pre-heated oven (200c) for around 25-30 minutes. 10 minutes in put you potatoes in some boiling water and boil for about 15 minutes.


Once cooked put a generous portion of the vegetables on the side of a warm plate. Put some flour onto a plate and season with Salt & Pepper. Cover each filet in flour on both sides with the flour. Heat a frying pan with some olive oil in. Fry the fillets skin side down for about 1 - 1 1/2 minutes and then turn them over for about 30 seconds.


Arrange the fillets on the plate as pictured below. Serve with a wedge of lemon and a knob of butter on the potatoes. Yum!

New Recipes Coming Soon!

Hello everyone. Sorry for not posting any new recipes for a while. This week I have written 3 new recipes and will be cooking them in sunny (we hope) Cornwall. If all goes well they will be posted in the usual manner next weekend. The recipes I will be cooking are:

Filet of Lemon Sole with chunky Mediterranean vegetables and boiled Charlotte potatoes.

Pan fried venison with sautéed new potatoes asparagus and baby carrots served with a red wine sauce.

Lamb cutlets with potato and petit pois mash served with a mint sauce.

See you soon!

Tangy Pesto Pasta

Quick, easy and positively yummy! Thanks to Harriet for the inspiration!

Ok guys n Gal’s lets get cooking!

First let’s break down what we are going to need:

250g of Conchiglie dried pasta (Pasta Shells)
100g of Organic Crème Fraîche
4 Teaspoons of Green Pesto
5-7 Sun dried Tomatoes (Depending on size)
150g Organic Spinach
2 Cloves of Garlic
75g Organic Pine Nuts

This is an extremely simple afternoon lunch for 2. Organic ingredients will ensure you get the best flavour so please, where possible, use organic produce. Trust me you will not be disappointed.

1. As this is a very quick meal you can prepare it whilst the pasta boils. Put the 250g of pasta into a large saucepan with some salt. Bring this to the boil and then simmer for 7-10 minutes (Usually indicated on the packet)

2. Coarsely chop the sun dried tomatoes and garlic. Put some of the Oil from the Sun dried tomatoes into a heated pan. Be warned, the oil is going to spit due to small seeds and bits in the oil. To reduce this, please put the Sun dried tomatoes, chopped garlic and pine nuts into the oil straight away.

3. Fry this for around 2 minutes, stirring or tossing as you go. As this is cooking add the crème fraîche and green pesto to a bowl and mix. By now the pasta will almost be ready. Put the spinach into the pan with the tomatoes and pine nuts. Mix this together and wilt it down. This should take no longer than 1 minute. Once wilted please take the mix off the heat.

4. Now the pasta is cooked, strain it, transfer it back into the saucepan and add the pesto mix. Now depending on the size of your pans you can either add the tomato and spinach mix to the saucepan or add the pasta mix to the frying pan, it doesn’t matter either way. Mix everything together and serve.

5. I personally think some grated Parmesan cheese would be a nice topping for this pasta dish but, alas we are on a diet so cheese-less it must remain. Enjoy.