The Chicken.. Seconds out, Round two! Monday January 28th 2013

Leftovers today :) Still plenty of chicken stock from yesterday, so today's soup has carrots, celery, parsley the scraps of chicken from the bones in the stock, and some fabulous soup pasta that I can't remember the name of, like orzo, but it is slightly more triangular in shape. Very silky and delicious.  Some more bread, my wonderful milk bread this time, made in a cake tin as kissing poppy seed rolls to tear and share.

Followed with the last of the BBQ chicken wings, quick heat up in the oven, with mashed potatoes and fresh kale.

And that is the end of the chicken :(  

Still, I have more in the freezer!

Chicken soup and BBQ chicken wings.. two in one dinner! Sunday January 27th 2013

I visited Walthamstow Farmer's Market today, and picked up some lovely free-range chicken carcasses, and some chicken wings. So very cheap - 50p each for the carcasses and £2.70 for eight large, fat chicken wings.

The carcass is perfect for soup, which I always make in a pressure cooker, and I decided to cook the wings in the same pot as the soup, so that they would be meltingly tender and also contribute to the flavour of the stock. They were finished off under the grill with a glaze of barbecue sauce to add a nice bit of sweet sticky char, allowed to cool to room temperature and we ate them with our fingers after the soup.

The chicken soup had charming little stellete pasta stars, cabbage, peas and the carrots from the stock.  With homemade bread on the side, another quick (thanks to the pressure cooker, the entire meal took 45 mins only) cheap and tasty simple meal.

  

Pork Escalopes, roast potatoes and french beans - Saturday January 26th 2013

Another use-it up day, today I wanted to use up some more potatoes, old ones this time, and some french beans getting a little limp. I found a couple of breaded pork escalopes in the freezer,With a couple of lemon wedges to squeeze over the escalope, and some garlic mayonnaise for the roast potatoes,we had a tasty simple meal put together with very little time or effort. 

Dinner doesn't have to be complicated. Sometimes it is just food...

(Editor's note:  by "old" potatoes, I mean as against new potatoes, so King Edwards in fact... as against so old they should have been chucked out... ) 

Flat Potato Omelets with salad - Friday January 25th 2013

Fridays and Saturdays are always eat-the-fridge days, when I cook what is hanging around, or use up vegetables or salad hanging around from the week before.  Today I had some new potatoes starting to look as they would sprout soon, and some leftover salad greens.

Spanish style flat omelets are ideal for using up things when you want something substantial to go with a bit of salad. This had the potatoes, sliced and boiled, a couple of onions softly fried, some pancetta and chorizo, which are fridge staples here, and a good teaspoon of smoked paprika.  Topped with grated cheese (unidentified hard cheese left from Christmas) and grilled to give a nice crunch to the top.  Eaten with the other two baguettes I made the other day.

A Little Warm Salad Chicken Livers, Bacon, Pine Nuts and Fresh baguettes - Thursday 24th January 2013

I had a bread making day today, OH has decided that he likes my bread so long as I bake good crusty white bread with no bits in it. So now I bake all our bread rather than buying him sliced rubbish. I am a pleased person :)

Today I made baguettes, I've not made them for ages. But I forgot that I had to nip out to the supermarket so left them proofing and they went a little over. And my knife was a bit blunt for the cuts. But they taste rather good, and I wanted some nice crunch to go with the softness of the chicken liver salad.

 And here is the bread ... rather nice isn't it !

O! C - V F M N X - Wednesday January 23rd 2013

If you are very old like me, you will remember the Two Ronnies and their brilliant sketch about M N X...




So, this was OUR M N X...

Cold beef and Hot Apple & Apricot Sponge Pudding - Tuesday January 22nd 2013

Cold roast beef from the freezer for dinner tonight, with creamy mashed potato and lightly boiled cabbage. Simple but oh so good.

It needed something tasty to finish it off (and for a reason to crack open the dessert wine... Maculan Dindarello my out and out favourite) I decided that it is wintry enough to merit a steamed pudding.  Apple and Apricot Sponge it is, with lovely apricot jam from Humbers Homemade Preserves.

Delicious!

Pork fillet with artichoke hearts and capers - Monday January 21st 2013

I am trying very hard to keep to the 5:2 diet precepts, but I am pretty useless at dieting. I really buck at the discipline. But I do think that eating less is good for us, so I am at the very least having 2 days in the week when I only have fruit for breakfast, and skip lunch, with a small meal for dinner.

Today was one of those "lesser" days. I used a smaller dessert sized plate, filled most of it with plain boiled new potatoes and cauliflower, and then a small pork loin steak with most of the fat trimmed, dry fried, with a couple of teaspoons of capers, a little gravy from a Knorr pot (I am quite liking these.. not so Bisto-ey in flavour as most gravy mixes) and two bottled artichoke hearts. The capers and artichokes make the gravy sharper and most tasty.

It's so cold!! Let's have soup..

Happy New Year! I know it is late, but this is my first post back here since Christmas and I do hope you all have a lovely 2013.

I am not going to back track over the last month or so, I have had some lovely dinners, but most of the loveliest will be made again, so you can see them then. For now, I thought you might like some soup ideas.

firstly, Mushroom and Chestnut lightly blended with some chopped gammon added in at the end.

The same soup, but unblended with large pieces of mushroom and chestnuts.

Another unblended soup, a simple leek and English dried broad beans, made with the stock from cooking a gammon hock, and with some of the meat added in shreds at the end end.