Chicken Fajitas

We are big fans of Mexican food in our household. The food is so fresh and vibrant, and inherently fun to eat. None more so than fajitas. This is a great recipe for fajitas and a great way of using up leftover meat.

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The secret ingredient here is chipotle paste, which are smoked, dried jalapeno peppers. We found this in Waitrose, made by the Discovery brand. We usually avoid using the pre-made sauces and kits, but this is a great little ingredient, especially given that we cannot easily make this ourselves. A teaspoon of this stuff goes a long way, and we keep finding more and more uses for it.

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Ingredients:

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Left over chicken, shredded

1 onion

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

Sprinkling of allspice

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 tin of plum tomatoes

3 teaspoons of chipotle paste

¼ iceberg lettuce

Cheese

Sour cream

4 Tortillas

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Method:

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Cut the onion into slices. Heat up some oil in a large frying pan, and add the onion, sugar, cinnamon, allspice and some salt and pepper. Cook for a medium-high heat for 15 minutes. Then add the chopped garlic and cook for another 5 minutes.

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Add the tin of plum of tomatoes, breaking up the tomatoes into smaller pieces with the back of your spoon. Now add the chipotle paste. Stir in a teaspoon at a time and have a taste to get the spiciness right for your tastes. We like it spicy so we put in 3 teaspoons. Cook on a gentle simmer for 15 minutes.

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During this time, prepare your accompaniments. Finely spread the lettuce and grate the cheese. Place these in separate bowls and put on the table, along with the sour cream. Heat the tortillas in a frying pan with a splash of water to stop it from sticking.

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Once the sauce has been simmering for 15 minutes check the consistency. It should be fairly thick by now. If not, cook for a big longer. Stir the shredded chicken into the sauce and give it a good stir.

Vietnamese Cold Noodle Salad

This is yummy on a scorching hot day but you do need to enjoy chopping or have some kind of device that juliennes the vegetables for you easily. Otherwise, you might go stir crazy cutting matchstick size slices!

This comes from our faithful book Blue Ginger by Les Huyh although we added the chicken to his vegetarian salad which we love. The dressing is amazing, so we always make extra and fire up the heat with an extra chilli or two.

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We were pleasantly pleased to see Bill Granger doing an incredibly similar recipe on Saturday Morning Kitchen. Pure coincidence but we decided to try the wine recommendation as we spotted in Sainsbury’s later that week. It was very drinkable and reminded us of Sauvignon Blanc.We thought it would have gone better with prawns or oysters rather than chicken but what do we know?!

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Ingredients:

Nuoc Cham -
2 long red chillies
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons sugar (we use palm sugar)
Juice of 1 lime
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon vinegar

Salad -

2 Portions of rice noodles

2 carrots

1 cucumber

¼ iceburg lettuce (optional)

1 handful of mint leaves

Left over chicken, shredded

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Method:

First make the Nuoc Cham. Pound the chillies and garlic into a paste with a pestle and mortar (or use a small food processor. Add the sugar, lime juice, fish sauce and vinegar with 2 tablespoons of water. Stir well until the sugar dissolves.

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Now cook the noodles. Boil the kettle, place the noodles in a large bowl, and then cover the noodles with boiling water for about 10 minutes or until they are soft. Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables. Julienne the carrots and cucumber and finely shred the lettuce.

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Mix together the vegetables, mint, chicken, noodles and Nuoc Cham. Serve.

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Wine: Sainsburys TDD Albarino Rias Baixas 2009

Tumbledowns - Chicken

When you’ve only got two people in the household, it can sometimes be a challenge to have a variety of home cooked meals during the week without having a load of half-used ingredients left over and going off in the fridge.

Borrowing the terminology from the book and series “Economy Gastronomy” by Paul Merrett and Allegra McEvedy, my boyfriend and I are trying to choose a “bedrock” ingredient for the week which once cooked, can then be turned into a variety of delicious dishes.

This week, our local supermarket had chickens on offer, so that’s what we went for. We have quite often roasted a chicken during the weekend and used the leftover during the week, but this time we decided to poach it.

This proved to be such an effortless way of cooking a chicken we will definitely be doing it again.

You cover the chicken with water and add carrots, 1/2 onion, peppercorns, bay leaves and various herbs. You slowly bring it to the boil (covered) and then let it lightly simmer for 20 minutes. You then turn off the heat and allow it to cool in the pan, which ended up taking about 2 hours.

The chicken comes out a healthy white and was immediately stripped of its skin. Carve it all up and we were left with two tupperware dishes of chicken for the week.

See, the next entries for what we did with the chicken.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

I thought this story from the BBC website was quite interesting. It’s about a vault in the Arctic Archipelago where seeds from the main food crops are stored. Several kinds of rare chilli seeds had been delivered, including some cultivated by Native Americans.

What an amazing idea! Its cool to think that somewhere there is this magical vault containing the building blocks of all the food that we eat today. It’s designed in case some kind of natural or man-made disaster wipes out our crops and all seems very 2012 (the disaster movie about the possible end of the world) but also quite comforting.

To learn more about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, go here.

The Lasagndwich

A 'Brangelina' idea of horrific proprtions was drawn to our attention by the Guardian's Word of Mouth blog. It was however, too good to keep to myself!

The Lasagne sandwich has come to Tesco!

Breakfast Apple Sundae

Easy-peasy!

I love apples but tend to go through phases of eating 2 a day for a week and then ignoring them petulantly for 2 weeks. This is what I do with slightly bruised/waxy skinned/wrinkled apples or when I just don't fancy them raw.

This is so easy that I don't really use measurements, just throw it all together but those of you who prefer exact amounts then here you go:

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Ingredients:

4 apples, peeled, cored and any really bad bits (actual rot, yuk!) cut out

1 tbsp sugar (or sweetener if you are waist conscious)

1 tsp cinnamon

150ml water or apple juice

1 tsp butter (optional)

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Method:

Chop your apples into small pieces. [Chop - I'm doing a Gordon voice here]
Add the butter to a warm, large saucepan. [Melt.]

Add the apples and swirl the butter over them. [Swirl]

Add the sugar and cinnamon. [Stir.]

Add about 100 ml of the water [Slosh]

Turn the heat up high until the sugary water starts to bubble. Lower the heat and cover the pan.

Keep on the hob for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add the extra water if it gets too dry.

The fruit should be very soft now and all cinnamony brown. If you chopped very small or like it with a bit of texture, leave as it is. If you prefer it smoother, use a potato masher to mash the apples. Allow the mix to cool.

Now get a large wine glasss and layer your apple mix with greek yoghurt, crunchy cereal and drizzles of honey. End with a yoghurt layer and sprinkle with chopped nuts (pistachio look most impressive).

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Fancy breakfast!

Fruit flavours

The gorgeous weather has brought lovely salads and fresh fruit platters to the forefront and its hard not to get a little bit over enthusiastic at the shops and come back clutching bags of apples, cherries and even a large watermelon ["I carried a watermelon", cue Dirty Dancing Music].

Unfortunately, we've been quite busy at the C&L Towers and the fruit has started to languish in the corner of our warm kitchen. Every piece is a bit too soft and squashy for our fussy tastes but it seems awful (financially and morally) to just through it in the bin.

So what to do with:

- 2 limp, brown, brown banana

- 3 slightly wrinkled nectarines

- 4 bruised and waxy apples

- 1/4 punnet of over-ripe cherries?

Here is what I have come up with:

- Breakfast Apple Sundae

- Low fat Banana Cinnamon Bread

- Poached Nectarines in Cherry Syrup

See the next entries for pics and recipes!