Thai Red Curry - the cheat's way

Now, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you this is the best Thai red curry in the world ever. Of course it isn't! But I will tell you that it makes a delicious and very quick week night meal, and as well as being delicious it is also nutritious! I find this really addictive and usually have two big bowls in one sitting (and I won't feel guilty about that!) Of course you can make your own curry paste but this recipe is about making a Thai curry quickly and with minimal ingredients and effort. It's also a lower fat curry because it uses low fat coconut milk, which I found works very well in place of it's full fat counterpart. The trick is to find a really good Thai red curry paste, and the only way to do that is to try different ones until you find one that suits you.

Ingredients (serves 4):
1 tablespoon oil (I used toasted sesame oil)
300g skinless and boneless chicken breast, cubed
1 jar of Thai red curry paste (my favourite is from Marks and Spencer)
400g can of reduced fat coconut milk
1 small pack of mange tout
1 small pack of baby corn
1 red bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
1 bunch of spring onions, sliced thinly on the diagonal
2 red chillies, sliced thinly on the diagonal
Handful of coriander, chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Method:
1) Use a large frying pan to heat the oil. On a high heat quickly stir fry the chicken for two minutes.
2) Add the curry paste and about half a cup of water and bring to the boil.
3) Reduce the heat to medium and allow the sauce to simmer for two minutes.
4) Add the coconut milk and continue to simmer. Allow the sauce to simmer for 15 minutes.
5) After 7 minutes of this time, add the baby corn and stir into the sauce.
6) After 3 more minutes add the mange tout and red bell pepper.
7) When the sauce has been simmering for 15 minutes in total, stir in the spring onions, chillies, a sprinkle of coriander and finally the lime juice.
8) Remove from the heat and serve with steamed jasmine rice and more coriander.

Single stack club sandwich

This is my way of making, and eating, club sandwiches. Rather than using a layer of bread in the middle of the sandwich, I make it with a chicken breast which has been coated in dry Panko breadcrumbs and then shallow fried until golden brown.
This sandwich is really delicious especially with a nice, cold beer.
Ingredients (makes one club sandwich):
2 slices of thick bread (I use white)
2 rashers of good quality smoked bacon
1 free range chicken breast, skinless and boneless
Salt and pepper
Garlic powder (optional)
1 cup of plain flour
1 egg, beaten
1 cup of Panko breacrumbs, or other brand of dry, course breadcrumbs
3 cups of vegetable oil
2 slices of tomato
Small handful of shredded iceburg lettuce
A slice of cheese (I used gouda)
Mayonnaise
Ketchup (optional)

Method:

1) Put the chicken breast in a zip lock plastic bag and use a rolling pin to bash the chicken breast until it is approximately 1cm thick.
2) Pour a cup of flour into the bag with the chicken, and the salt, pepper and garlic powder (if using) and shake the bag so that the flour coats the chicken.
3) Remove the chicken from the bag, and shake off any excess flour.
4) Put your beaten egg into a shallow dish and dip the chicken breast into the egg, coating well.
5) Put the breadcrumbs into shallow dish or plastic bag and put in the chicken. It is important that the breadcrumbs stick really well to the chicken, so take some time to really make sure the breadcrumbs adhere.
6) I make this in advance for ease so at this point I put it in the fridge.
7) When you're ready to make your sandwich, heat the vegetable oil in a large frying pan or pot and turn the heat on to high. You can test whether the oil is hot by adding in some breadcrumbs. If they sizzle, the oil is ready. Use tongs to carefully place the chicken in the hot oil.
8) Fry on one side for about 5 minutes. Use the tongs to gently turn the chicken in the oil, ensuring the breadcrumbs brown evenly. Turn the chicken and cook in the same way on the other side. When fully cooked, remove from the oil and place on paper towels to drain.
9) Meanwhile, take a frying pan and fry the bacon rashers on a high heat. I like my bacon nice and crispy. When cooked, place on paper towels.
10) Lightly toasted the slices of bread. After this, you're ready to assemble your sandwich. I do it in this order:

- Take a slice of bread and spread it with mayonnaise
- Add the lettuce and tomato
- Add the chicken breast
- Then the cheese
- Then the bacon
- Then a dollop of ketchup
- Then the other slice of bread on top

Shortbread

I love shortbread, perhaps a little too much, and part of its charm is how easy it is to make at home.

Ingredients:
150g butter, at room temperature and cut into small cubes
100g caster sugar (plus a little extra for serving)
360g plain flour

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade and line a baking tray with grease proof paper
2) Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth and completely combined
3) Add the flour bit by bit, combining as you go. The mixture will become more and more solid until it becomes firm and doughy.
4) Once you have added all the flour, work your dough into a ball and place it on the lined baking tray. Push the dough down either with your hands or a rolling pin, until it is about 1cm thick and reaches to the edges of the baking tray.
5) Use a knife to score the dough into rectangles so that you will have "fingers" of shortbread. Prick each rectangle with a fork a couple of times and place the oven. Bake for around 15 minutes or until the shortbread is a light golden brown.
6) Remove the shortbread from the oven. Use your knife to retrace the cuts you made in the shortbread earlier so that when it is cool you won't have to break apart the shortbread to form the "fingers". Sprinkle with sugar and allow to cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack to fully cool.

Raspberry Bakewell Pudding

This recipe is from The Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain which I have to say is a very interesting, if quite unusual, book. Si King and Dave Myers travelled the length and breadth of Britain to find the best food in each county. What they found was a mixture of recipes from professional kitchens, and stuff you could more easily and affordably make at home. For example, the section on the county of Lincolnshire offers a plum bread, and on the following page, a haslet beignet, with rhubarb puree and sage foam. My favourite instruction in the book comes courtesy of a Slow-cooked Derbyshire Lamb with oatcake crust and wild garlic and rosemary jus: "To make the caramelised onion mousse: Dissolve the methocel in the chicken stock and fold it into the onion puree. Season with salt and pepper and pipe into individual moulds. Cook in a water bath at 70 degrees centigrade for 10 minutes". I wonder that they offered instructions at all. I feel rather like a child gawping into a sweet shop window.

Anyway, my favourite recipe from the book hails from Derbyshire, and is a raspberry bakewell pudding. Cast your mind away from the spongey, cloying offerings of a certain mini-cake manufacturer and toward an unctuous wobbly pudding! This, quite obviously, uses raspberries but you could use cherries if you wanted to. It has a puff pastry base as opposed to shortcrust, and it is devastatingly simple:

Ingredients:
1 packet of puff pastry
Some good dollops of seedless raspberry jam
A small box of fresh raspberries
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
5 eggs
150g ground almonds
A few drops of vanilla essence

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 190 degrees centigrade. Roll out the pastry until it is large enough to drape over a flan tin with a diameter of 25 cm. Push the pastry down into the flan tin so you can fill it. You should have some pastry overhang but leave it there for the time being.
2) Take a few spoonfuls of raspberry jam and spread it onto the pastry base. Just use your judgement as to how much you'd like, but I use about 5 tablespoons worth.
3) Crush your raspberries slightly and spread them over the jam in one even layer.
4) In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. I just whisked them by hand but use electronics at this point if you wish.
5) Begin to alternate adding the eggs and the ground almonds, so add one egg and a spoonful of almonds, then mix. Repeat until all the eggs and almonds are combined into the mixture.
6) Add your almond essence, then pour the mixture into the flan tin. Trim the edges of the pastry either now or when the pudding comes out of the oven.
7) Bake in the oven for 35-45 minutes, but check it every now and then. It should be lightly brown on the top.

I sliced the pudding and had it with fresh single cream and raspberries. As you can see I had trouble cutting the pudding neatly. It was extremely moist and frankly I wanted to eat it as quickly as possible! The smell of the pudding as it cooked was wonderful.

The Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain is available from amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hairy-Bikers-Food-Tour-Britain/dp/0297859749

Burritos

Burritos make a wonderful party food and cater to a plethora of tastes. I must say now that this is burritos in the truly Anglicised sense, so you will not find here a recipe for authenticity. And having said that, neither is it much of a recipe. It is in fact purely a list of ideas of what you might put in a burrito, and how you might like to cook and serve it.

I like burritos for parties because everyone can make their own from a range of ingredients, and so you can cater to a fussy eater without too much ingenuity. What's more, the cooking part of the enterprise is really just warming through, meaning you don't have to turn your attention away from your guests for any more time than it takes to bung a baking tray into an oven.

For my party burritos I serve, each in an individual bowl with a serving spoon:

-Two meat dishes:
I really like to use pork sausage mince which I fry off in a pan with some freshly ground black pepper and chilli powder. Once the meat has crisped up and the fat has rendered down, drain the excess fat off the meat and serve.
I also like to serve chicken breast which has been chopped into cubes and cooked in a pan with olive oil, minced garlic, chilli powder, salt and pepper and smoked paprika. Once cooked I drain the excess fat and serve.

Fried chorizo, beef, pulled pork, and even smoked tofu would all be great options too. Just cater to you and your friends' tastes.

I also serve:
- Refried beans
- Guacamole
- Tomato salsa
- Shredded iceberg lettuce
- Grated strong cheese like cheddar
- Pickled jalapenos
- Sour cream

I give my guests each a plate with a warm flour tortilla which is sitting on a slightly larger square of tin foil. They can then go round the table choosing whichever items they want for their burrito. Once they've filled their burrito they can wrap it and hand it over to you to go in the oven! Meanwhile they can keep their plate to fill with any more ingredients they want, and lots of corn tortilla chips as well. I put the burritos on a baking tray in the oven for about ten minutes, on about 190 degrees centigrade. All there is to do is warm the burrito and it's filling through, considering everything is already cooked.

It would be pretty easy to confuse who's burrito belongs to who, so you may want to find some way of differentiating them. Otherwise you'll have a free game of Pass the Parcel!

Hopefully you'll have leftovers for breakfast the next morning. Enjoy!

Lasagne

I love lasagne but I don't eat it very often. I love it a bit too much, and if I made it any more than perhaps once a month I think I'd become rather pillowy. But anyway, it's a treat and as such it employs all of the major food groups of joy: cheese, pasta, beef and a little piggy additive I like to throw in for good measure. The ingredients list will be tricky because I rarely measure when I made lasagne, which I know doesn't exactly lend itself to an easy recipe. But in my house we tend to play the guessing game a lot of the time, which I can imagine would be quite irritating to those who like a fixed list of stuff. I'll try my best!

Ingredients (to fit a standard 9x13x2 baking dish):
100g slices italian smoked pancetta (aforementioned piggy additive)
500g lean mince beef
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped
2 celery stalks, peeled and finely chopped (it may seem odd to peel celery but the outer layer is quite chewy and I don't really want that in my lasagne
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon tomato puree
75cl bottle of full bodied red wine
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
One packet of dried lasagne sheets
1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese

For the bechamel cheese sauce (this part of the recipe was swiped from YouTube amazingness Titli Nihaan. The woman's a genius http://titlisbusykitchen.com/archives/lasagne):
1 litre of milk
500g of strong cheddar cheese, grated
80g butter
80g plain flour

I like a lot of cheese sauce in my lasagne but if you want to halve the recipe that would give a sparing, but still tasty, amount of sauce for this recipe.

Method:
1. Cut the pancetta into small pieces and place in a large pan. Turn on the heat up to medium-high and allow the pancetta to fry off until the pieces become crispy and the fat has imparted into the pan. This will be used to cook the rest of the ingredients.
2. Throw the onion in and allow to sweat until translucent. I don't like brown onions but you can brown them if you prefer.
3. Throw in the carrot and celery and sweat until they start to become tender as in the picture below. Once tender, throw in the garlic and stir round for a minute, but don't let the garlic brown.
4. Remove the ingredients from the pan and set aside. Throw the mince beef into the pan and cook until browned. Return the onion/celery/carrots/garlic mixture to the pan and season with salt and pepper.
5. Make a well in the centre of the pan and chuck in a dollop of tomato paste. Let the paste cook in the direct heat of the pan for a minute, then stir into the rest of the mixture.
6. Pour in the bottle of red wine and the tinned tomatoes and bring to the boil. Allow to boil for a few seconds before turning it down to a gentle simmer. Simmer for about 30 minutes uncovered until the mixture has thickened slightly and the sauce has reduced somewhat. Stir occasionally. You can then set this mixture aside until you are ready to assemble your lasagne.
7. Meanwhile, make your cheese sauce. Add the butter to a saucepan and melt on a medium heat. Add the flour and stir vigourously for a few minutes, combining the butter and flour to form a paste.
8. Turn down the heat and stir continuously for another minute or so to allow the flour to cook. Then add the milk bit by bit, stirring or whisking to combine.
9. When all the milk is combined, keep whisking until the sauce begins to thicken. It may appear as though it will never thicken but trust me, all of a sudden you'll start to see it getting thicker.
10. Once the sauce has thickened, take it off the heat and add the grated cheese and stir to combine. The residual heat in the pan will melt the cheese. 
11. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Assemble your lasagne. Add a ladel of meat sauce to the bottom of the dish and spread it out. This will prevent the lasagne burning on the bottom. Add a layer of lasagne sheets, then another layer of meat sauce, then cheese sauce, then lasagne sheets, and so on until your dish is full.
12. Add cheddar and mozzarella to the top and cook covered with foil for 25 minutes and uncovered for 20 minutes until the pasta is tender and the cheese topping has browned.

Pancetta, onions, garlic, carrot and celery, fried until softened

 Cheese sauce

 The finished article. Leave to rest for about fifteen minutes before cutting into it as it will help you to get even, layered slices