Tag Archives: Recipes

Jamie’s AMAZING Chicken Tikka Masala

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I LOVE a good chicken tikka masala, it’s my favourite curry by far, but there are so many crap restaurants out there, and here in Oxford in particular I find most of them pretty awful – the kind of thing that comes in a neon red/pink sauce and tastes horribly sweet and you can’t even imagine what ingredients might have been used….

However I found a few years ago a really good Jamie Oliver recipe which makes curry for about 20 people, and today I decided to try a slightly different version which serves 4 (a different but similar Jamie Oliver recipe) and it was A-MAZING.

Like, properly the best curry I’ve ever made – DELICIOUS.

His original recipe is here, I have just written it out here for your convenience with a few notes – try it, you won’t be sorry! Continue reading →

Salted Caramel Chocolate Truffles

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Got this recipe from a free magazine at the Co-op a few weeks ago, and it’s also on their website.

They were surprisingly delicious and truffley, and a good thing to make if you’re stuck at home and need a treat (assuming you can find the ingredients).

Ingredients:

  • 40g toffees
  • 50ml double cream
  • 200g 85% dark chocolate broken into pieces
  • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
  • 2 tbsp cocoa powder/desiccated coconut/ground pistachios or alternative things to roll them in!

(I found this really really super dark, so ended up adding a lot more cream than the recipe suggests. I think next time I would try half dark half milk chocolate maybe for balance – they were MEGA rich in the end, though this may have been because I doubled the amount of cream!).

Steps

  1. Put the toffees into a saucepan on a low heat and stir occasionally until melted (I was very impatient with this part but they do go eventually)
  2. Stir in the double cream and then add the chocolate, keeping on a low heat, stirring gently until melted and smooth
  3. Take off the heat and stir in the salt, then transfer the mixture to a bowl and leave in the fridge to cool for at least 4 hours (I tried after 3 hours but it wasn’t enough – this def needs the full chilling time).
  4. Once cool, lay out your toppings on plates and make small balls and roll them in the topping of your choice. (The original recipe suggests oiling your hands but this didn’t work at all for me – my hands were so warm they melted in my hands almost immediately and it all got VERY messy. I found it easier to use a spoon to squish and roll the ball shape first, so it didn’t melt too much while I was making the balls).

Cheat’s Risotto (Mushroom, Asparagus and Bacon Risotto)

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I’ve been continuing to test out new recipes. This was another great find in my free Slimfast book. (Some have been awful but there are a few really good ones in there!).

This one is a cheat’s risotto – it’s quick and easy, not “real” risotto but much easier to cook. I like it for the speed and convenience as cooking my real risotto takes forever and requires constant stirring, as well as have so much butter and cheese and wine in that it’s incredibly unhealthy. Once again this claims to serve 2 but easily serves 3 – such a surprise for a diet book but the portions are extremely generous (and I love a big portion). Continue reading →

Spicy Minced Pork Lettuce Cups

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Ok so admittedly this is a recipe from a free Slimfast recipe book I recently picked up, but it was really good so I’m sharing it!

Now, the recipe claims to serve 2, but when I made it, there was enough for 3 enormous portions, or 4 regular portions (and I love a big portion). I don’t know if they were expecting me to use smaller carrots and peppers, but it’s a huge amount! Also the calorie count checks out, so if, like me, you can’t possibly eat half of it, then it’s a fairly low-calorie meal.

I also found that the seasoning was a tiny bit bland so I always end up adding a little more chilli or soy sauce than suggested, but that’s something you can adjust as you go.

And finally, I have always pooh-poohed lettuce cups as they seem so unfulfilling, but these left me feeling stuffed and full for hours, so are great for a proper big dinner where you feel full but with hardly any carbs (must be all that protein!). Continue reading →

Lentil Salad

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I sometimes make a healthy-ish batch of salady things for my lunches. I like salads but need them to be quite solid and hearty otherwise I’m hungry again an hour later, which is why I like a lentil salad.

This recipe is delicious, reasonably low-calorie as long as you don’t put too much oil in, but it’s also accidentally vegan so if you ever need to come up with something for a vegan guest it’s handy to have in your back pocket (just don’t add any feta!). Sadly I have once again failed to take any pictures to show you how delicious it was though.

Ingredients

  • Courgettes (two large or three small ones)
  • 1 tin of green (or puy)  lentils, drained and rinsed
  • 4 or 5 Sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 red onion
  • Small handful of fresh basil, chopped
  • Lemon juice
  • Balsamic
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and Pepper
  • Fresh Feta cheese (optional)

Method

  1. Chop the courgettes (you can do rounds, half-rounds, or even long slices – any way works) and red onion. Toss with olive oil and roast at around 190 for half an hour or until they are soft and starting to go a little black and crispy.
  2. Allow them to cool, then add to a bowl with the lentils and sun-dried tomatoes and basil
  3. Add a little lemon juice (approx 1-2 teaspoons) and balsamic (approx 1 tablespoon), and if you like you can add a little oil (I often use the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes for extra flavour) and toss it all together

For a non-vegan version this is really good with crumbled feta mixed in too, and you can experiment with mint, coriander or parsley instead of basil for slightly different flavours. You could also roast some red pepper along with the courgettes.

Smoked Haddock Chowder

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While at the library recently, as my baby girl was pulling random books off the shelves, she picked out a children’s cookbook (Professor Cook’s Dynamite Dinners) which we decided to try out.

Our first recipe was a Smoked Haddock Chowder and it was DELICIOUS! Admittedly children’s recipes are often very bland so I have added a few spices, but overall it’s a very nice recipe so I thought I would share.This one is designed to be served in a bread roll soup bowl, which is also fun, though impractical, as the bread roll is so small you can’t fit much actual soup in it. However it’s also yummy in a bowl with a crusty roll on the side! Sadly I forgot to take a picture of it though…

Ingredients

  • 6 Crusty Cob bread rolls (we only bought two and froze the excess soup)
  • 1-2 tbsp Olive Oil
  • 500g potatoes, peeled and chopped into small pieces
  • 1 large onion, peeled and chopped into small pieces
  • 1.2 litres of milk (I only used a litre but it wasn’t enough – definitely needs the full amount)
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed (I added more garlic as I needed a bit more flavour!)
  • 300g tinned sweetcorn, drained
  • 1 red pepper, deseeded and chopped into small pieces
  • 450g smoked haddock fillets (skinned)
  • Handful of parsley, chopped
  • Salt and pepper

I also added 1 vegetable stock cube (though a fish stock cube would probably work too) and a few of pinches of paprika to taste.

Steps

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 180c
  2. Cut the top off the rolls and pick out the soft bread, leaving the “bowl”, brush the inside with olive oil and put into the oven for 15mins to seal the bowl.
  3. Put the chopped potatoes and onion into a large saucepan with the milk and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 mins.
  4. Stir in the garlic, peppers, sweetcorn, and fish fillets (whole). Simmer for another 5-10 mins until the fish flakes easily into pieces.
  5. (At this point I also added a stock cube, some paprika, and plenty of salt and pepper to taste). Add the chopped parsley at the end.
  6. Spoon into the bread bowls (or regular bowls!) and serve.

I’m not too sure how well this freezes, but have put a couple of tubs in the freezer so we will find out!

It’s also nice that it’s a soup that doesn’t take ages to cook – really quite quick as long as your potato chunks aren’t too big.

(Postscript – I took a picture the next time I made it – here it is! Yummmmm)

Pork Stroganoff

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Felt like trying something new, and a friend had recently been talking about a mushroom stroganoff, so I had a little browse for recipes and decided to try this one out.

It was DELICIOUS.

Very simple, quick and easy, and utterly scrumptious. I prefer it with rice instead of mashed potato, and my favourite is a mixture of brown rice and wild rice, which goes really well with this.

Funnily enough I hardly ever cook with pork, (aside from bacon or sausages) as I have memories from school of eating incredibly tough and chewy overcooked pork stir-fries and stews, so never really loved it that much. However the nice thing about this recipe is that it’s quick, but cooking the pork first allows it to rest and tenderise before eating it – it was really tender and juicy! Continue reading →

Cheese, Wine, and some delicious new recipes

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This year a few things have happened to me in relation to food, resulting in some new experiments in the kitchen.

The first thing is that my palate appears to have suddenly matured, and I discovered that after 35 years of hating blue cheese, suddenly my tastebuds think it’s pretty much the best thing ever. Weird, but also delicious.

Secondly, my appreciation for red wine has suddenly soared, leaving me keen to try and taste lots of new and different red wines, in order to learn what I like (previously my only knowledge on the subject was that I liked Rioja, and all other red wines were a bit “meh”, But this is no longer the case! I also now have a fabulous book on wines which is helping me to learn and navigate the differences.

img_3306 Continue reading →

Thai lime and coconut chicken

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This is a dish that my sister made for me recently, which was pretty much one of the best things I’ve ever had in my mouth. Apparently it’s an old Delia Smith recipe, and I have used my sister’s variation on this, rather than the original, which has more coconut milk and the addition of peanuts, which only makes it more delicious.

It’s very quick and easy to make, however you’ll need to prep the chicken the night before for the best effect. Continue reading →

Toblerone Cheesecake

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Ok, so this one is NOT for those of you on a diet.

It is utterly delicious and it is so full of naughty things it’s not worth counting the calories.

The recipe comes from BBC GoodFood, although I first discovered it at a friend’s BBQ, and it was just unbelievably good. I have experimented with this recipe, and made it both in individual ramekins as well as one large one.  Continue reading →