Week 8 - Chicken Breasts in Almond Sauce

So, I have a confession, week 8 happened back in February, and I am only blogging it now on Easter Sunday. Poor form, I know. Week 8 was an attempt at Italian meat and 3 veg, with Chicken in Almond Sauce served with steamed garlic potatoes and steamed broccoli. Ok you busted me, meat and 2 veg. It was made for a couple of friends who joined us for dinner.

Let's face it, it's not an overly complicated dish. The chicken is seared and then cooked in the pan with lemon juice and a cover for 20 minutes. You then remove the chicken and in the juices you add almonds, butter, onion and garlic and cook until brown then add the white wine and cook until the wine has evaporated. I probably took the "until the wine has evaporated" a little too seriously and it ended up a little drier than I think it is intended, by that's why I'm an amateur!

On the whole this is an easy way to prepare chicken that it very tasty and combining with your favorite vegetables is a nice meal to serve to friends, but certainly won't knock their socks off. From this week forward I will be using a new system for scoring based on the below catergories and a score out of 10.

• Difficulty Rating - How difficult is the dish to make?


• Time - How long did it take to make?


• Taste - How did it taste?


• Skill - How well did I make it?

So based on this here is my score for week 9...

Difficulty Rating - 5
Time - 5
Taste - 7
Skill - 7

J

Week 8 - Pancakes

Hi all,

I’m running a little behind in my blog posts… so time to catch up! I made this dish a few weeks ago now, but it’s still fresh in my mind! In fact, I’ve made it again since my original because it was such a success. Blow your own trumpet you say… don’t mind if I do.

So the big dish in question is simply put… Pancakes! I have made pancakes about a gazillion times in my life, so I was keen to give the Silver Spoon recipe a go. I have to admit, I was a little surprised by the recipe as it called for olive oil, which I don’t think I’ve ever put into a pancake recipe before. However, my job here is to simply follow the recipe, so on with the show.

All of the usual suspects are added into the pancake batter, flour, baking powder, sugar, egg, milk with the unusual suspect of the olive oil now also included. The batter is then left to stand for 2 hours… it’s as simple as that.

After a quick nap on the couch, it’s onto the cooking section of the dish. A little bit of butter is added to the pan, and then the pancake mixture is poured in so that it makes a nice circle. As I was trying to make each of the pancakes the same size, I used a ladle to measure and pour the mixture, which has since become my best friend. The pancakes were left to cook for a couple of minutes, and turned when little bubbles started to appear. This process was repeated until all the mixture was used up.

The Silver Spoon recipe calls for a basic syrup to be poured on top of the pancakes to serve, however I wanted something a little more exciting. I heaped on fresh strawberries and raspberries, put on a dollop of ricotta and drizzled plenty of honey over it all.

The result = damn tasty. The pancakes were actually quite thin, which worked out well for the overall dish. It felt like you had a good portion of fruit and the toppings, not just pancakes. I can certainly recommend this dish as an (almost) healthy dessert or weekend breakfast. I did say almost people… almost.

Until next time… S.

Week 7 – Risotto Yum Yum

Week 7 sees me bring out the big guns… Risotto. I have made many Risotto’s before and I’d say all of them have never quite been as good as you get in some restaurants (I’m thinking Spago, LA 2006 mmmm!) so I was really keen to see how the making a Risotto from the Silver Spoon would go, I chose the Risotto Con I Gamberi or Prawn Risotto. Very Simple ingredients, Prawns, Onions, Cloves, Celery heart and Carrot. The first step was to boil the raw prawns, then devein and reserve the shells. The Shells were then crushed in the mortar and pestle. You then add the Onion, celery and carrot with the cloves to the Prawn cooking water and simmer for 30 minutess. Then into the processor to use this as our liquid for the Risotto. I then added a ladle at a time for nearly 20 mins until all the liquid was absorbed into the Rice and seared the prawns again in pan with butter and serve them on top of the Risotto.

I thought that the prawns turned out to be way too cooked and as a result not very appealing, however the Risotto itself was quite a success. I loved the flavors of the Risotto with Parmesan and Cracked Pepper to my taste it was lovely. If I was being a little critical the Risotto was a bit drier than it should be, I just always cook it that 2-3 minutes too long. All in all a great dish and very nice the next day too!

J

Week 6 - I love Pie!

Anyone who know me knows I love a pie... Apple Pie, Steak Pie, Pumpkin Pie... it's all good. So this week I chose to make a Chicken Pie. Now I’ve made pies before, but this was not like any pie I’ve made before. The bottom layer of the pie was completely made of smoked bacon, then you throw all of the ingredients in, including the chicken (uncooked), hard boiled eggs, parsley, mushrooms and onion and top with puff pastry. Then you cook in the oven for 75 mins.

I was sure this was going to be one of the disaster recipe’s and that there was something lost in translation, but it worked out quite well. This definitely was not my favorite dish, but it was quite tasty and simple considering it’s “set and forget”. This also was one of the most fascinating translations of a recipe name, Chicken Pie in Italian is Chicken Pie… amazing!

J

Week 7 - Gnocchi di Ricotta e Spinaci

Hi everyone,

Well week 7 almost brought about a disaster in my attempt to make Gnocchi di Ricotta e Spinaci, or Ricotta and Spinach Gnocchi. To kick us off this week I have to point out that this is not an overly attractive dish to cook! However, I thought it would be tasty and was keen to give it a go.

So to start off I had to cook 1kg of spinach, which was an interesting task! I actually had to cook it in 4 batches as I couldn’t fit it all into the pot! Once the spinach was all cooked I had to drain all the excess water out of it, which appears to be quite a skill. I tried pushing it into a sieve, and whilst this worked, I still thought the spinach was quite wet. I then chopped it up finely and mixed it in a bowl with ricotta, parmesan, two egg yolks and seasoned it with some S&P. The mixture was then shaped into balls and set aside for cooking. The mixture was really quite wet, and was only just holding together. The recipe suggested that you dust the gnocchi lightly with flour, although this was absorbed quite quickly.

Next step was to cook the gnocchi in batches of 4 or 5 pieces at a time in some boiling water. At this point I could tell that the gnocchi was not going to hold together, but thought I should try it and see what happened. As I suspected, once placed in the water the gnocchi totally disintegrated and turned the water into a dodgy spinach and ricotta soup. Not so tasty…

So plan B was put into action pretty quickly, after some consideration was given to invoking the pizza clause. As the gnocchi was simply not holding together, I rolled each piece in flour and coated it thoroughly. I tested a couple of these pieces in the boiling water, and they held together perfectly. So I cooked up the rest using this process and got the dish back on track… crisis averted!

Once all the pieces were cooked I plated them up, sprinkled them with some fresh parmesan, and used melted butter as the sauce. I was actually quite impressed with the taste in the end. I think this dish would be best served as an entrée, with just 4 or 5 pieces of gnocchi per serve. I would also make the size of each piece a bit smaller, as they ended up quite large once all the flour was added towards the end of the process.

However, all in all, this was a tasty dish, and pretty simple to make. I’d be happy to have this one again.

Until next time…

S.

Week 6 – Bruschetta al Pomodoro & Asparagi alla Parmigiana

Hi everyone,

I’m a little late in posting this update, but better late than never! For week 6 I was put in charge of making an entrée as we had a guest coming over for dinner, and J was cooking mains. I chose to make Bruschetta al Pomodoro, or Tomato Bruschetta. I have made Bruschetta many times, which is why I was keen to use the recipe from The Silver Spoon, to see how our modern interpretation of Bruschetta holds up against a classic Italian recipe. I was very surprised to learn that the ingredients did not call for basil, onion or balsamic vinegar, all of which are in a typical recipe for this dish. So, as I am following the exact recipe as outlined in The Silver Spoon, I went ahead with just some bread, garlic and tomatoes!

I cut some think slices off a big loaf of bread, and toasted these on a grill pan. Once the bread was toasted, I rubbed some garlic over it, which almost melted and spread like butter. I put the bread back on the grill for just a minute more, and then put it aside. Once all the bread had been toasted, it was time to load up the diced tomatoes. After each serve had been plated up, I then added plenty of S&P, and drizzled over some olive oil.

As you would expect, the Bruschettta tasted pretty good, as it was almost impossible to stuff it up! However, I really think it was missing the extra flavor of the basil in particular, so I’m not likely to use this recipe again in a hurry! Sorry to the editors of The Silver Spoon, this one is not a winner!

As making a Bruschetta dish was not an overly taxing task, I also made a side dish to go with J’s main course. I made Asparagi alla Parmigiana, or Parmesan Asparagus. This is simply an asparagus side dish, whereby the asparagus is boiled for 15 minutes, and then sprinkled with some parmesan and melted butter. As I expected, the asparagus was way too soggy after cooking for 15 minutes, even though it still tasted okay. I will certainly make this side dish again, although will only cook the asparagus for a couple of minutes. I’m sure that will make a much nicer dish next time.

Until next time…

S

Week 5 – Frittata Cake

Well I’m late again on my blog post, so here it is. Week 5 was a move into the wonderful world of eggs, and so I was looking for a recipe that was based on eggs, but could be taken into dinner, what I found was the Frittata Cake, it’s 3 layers of frittata, with simply parsley and parmesan in the egg mixture with layers roasted red peppers and grilled aubergine. On each of the layers it was covered with cheese, the recipe called for Fontina cheese, however after going to 3 separate stores the closest I could find was Emmental which by all reports (Google) was a good replacement.

I have to say this was an easy one to make, though a little time consuming with the preparation of the vegetables. The peppers and aubergine make this very tasty and make this more of a hearty meal. The recipe said it could be served warm or cold, so I proceeded on the next day to have it cold and I think I preferred it as lunchtime cold meal than a dinner time warm meal. Good to know!

Until next week.

J