Creamy Tomato and Chicken Stew

Another recent "freezer food" dish we have made a couple of times since the new addition to our family is the Creamy Tomato and Chicken Stew from the fantastic Soups Stews and Mash book.
Grandma actually introduced us to this dish when she brought round a meal for us in the first week that Olivia was home. She had modified the recipe slightly with the addition of potatoes and peas so that we wouldn't have to cook accompaniments. We have since made this recipe a couple of times, and it does freeze well and is delicious.

A quick word about the book: It was Grandma who introduced us to this book a while ago and we've since blogged the Beef and Peppercorn Stew. This book is fantastic. It has the look of an old-fashioned book, but it was actually published in 2000. It also seems that it is no longer available (on amazon anyway), but we managed to get hold of a second hand copy via ebay. Some of the recipes are quite adventurous, using different ingredients, and combinations that are not automatically thought of. The mash section is particularly inspiring. Instead of either plain mash, or sweet potato mash, there are recipes for pumpkin and white bean puree, swede and orange mash to name a couple. There is also a section of different breads to compliment the soup section.

Anyway, on to the recipe - taken straight from the book.

4 rashers bacon
2 tbsp oil
50g butter
300g small button mushrooms, halved
1.5kg chicken pieces
2 onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
400g can tomatoes
1 cup/250ml chicken stock
1 cup/250ml cream
2 tbsp chopped parsley
2 tbsp lemon thyme leaves

1. Chop the bacon into large pieces. Place a large, heavy-based pan over a medium heat. Brown the bacon, then remove and set aside on paper towels.
2. Heat half the oil and a third of the butter in the pan until foaming, then stir in the mushrooms and cook until softened and golden brown. Remove from the pan with a slotted spoon.
3. Add the remaining oil to the pan with a little more butter. When the oil is hot, brown the chicken pieces in batches over a high heat until the skin is golden all over and a little crisp. Remove from the pan.
4. Heat the remaining butter in the pan. Add the onion and garlic and cook over a medium-high heat for about 3 minutes, or until softened. Pour in the tomatoes, stock and cream. Return the bacon, mushrooms and chicken pieces to the pan and simmer over medium-low heat for 25 minutes. Stir in the herbs, season with salt and freshly ground pepper and simmer for another 5 minutes before serving.

We generally use boneless and skinless chicken thighs rather than chicken pieces, and use either a mixture of herbs (dried or fresh) or normal thyme from the garden. The potatoes and peas (or any other beg you like really) can be added along with returning the mushrooms, chicken and bacon to the pan.
We do this that the way the recipe instructions read is a little faffy. Why does everything need to be cooked separately and removed from the pan. For time purposes it is much easier to cook the chicken separately, then cook the veg and bacon together, it might take a little longer but allows us to nip out of the kitchen. Not actually sure if the way the method suggests adds anything to the flavour, but it could well do?
And we've eaten this just by itself with a spoon to slurp us the delicious sauce, or it could be served with an exciting mash, or crusty bread.
This recipe was even appreciated by Nana, who is well-known within the family for not liking things with too much spice, herb, garlic, onion, pepper, or translated as "flavour"!

Summertime Cake

The title of this post should really read experimental summertime cake.
It was experimental for a few reasons;
a) Gluten-free flour was used in a standard recipe, although using Doves Farm Self Raising has worked well in the past;
b) We have just moved house, to a house with a lovely new kitchen complete with a fan oven. My only use of a fan oven was at school for part of either GCSE or A-Level Home Economics. We were experimenting with different sugars (Sugar subsitute Canderel, Fructose and normal sugar) and their reactions in a standard fairy cake recipe. Everything was prepared and cooked in the same way, but my left over mixture went into bun cases in the teacher's fan oven. The result was black-crusted buns, with runny centres. Not the greatest influence a fan oven could have had on me! The rest of the experiment went well - in the normal oven!
c) It was a large-ish recipe and I normally split the batter into two tins, but I thought I'd cook it altogether and slice it afterwards.

After various pieces of advice about how to cook with a fan oven, I thought I'd might as well give it a go. Some people said to reduce the temperature and cook as normal, and others said to cook for less time. I even referred to the oven manual, which did give some time and temperature indications for different things. But I couldn't decide if my normal victoria sandwich cake should be classes as Chocolate Cake or Risen Cake. Plus the manual indicated timings and temperature by weight, but there was no idication what the weight measurement actually was! So I thought, I'd go the for normal temperature, and keep an eye on it.
Plus my other frames of reference for most things basic yet culinary, the Leith's Techniques Bible or the Dairy Book of Home Cookery (were fan ovens around when that was written?) were packed away in a box somewhere waiting for the shelves to be put up.

Basic recipe:
150g Sugar
150g butter
3 eggs
150g self raising flour (sieved)

Filling:
Mascarpone
Double cream
Strawberries and blackberries

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Add the beaten eggs with a little of the flour, and beat in.
3. Stir in the remaining flour until combined.


Anyway, once made, the cake went in. And I kept an eye on it. It went in at around 180C, which is about Gas 4. I usually cook cakes for around 20 mins at Gas 4 so with the excellent oven timer (also new to us in this house). I then prodded it a bit, it seemed to be cooked, but then started to sag in the middle. So I put it back for a little longer - about 10 minutes more. After that time it seemed cooked, was a little more browned and the edges had become crumbley.

The cake was then cooled thoroughly and I attempted to slice it. It kind of worked, but the two pieces definitley were not even. But in my defense, since it sagged in the middle, the slicing would always be a little dodgy.
I filled it with the mixture of mascarpone, whipped cream, and summer fruits of strawberries and balckberries and the same on top. Admittedly these were all shop bought - we are hoping to go to a pick your own or foraging at some point soon.
The cake itself was rather dense and a little dry, almost like a shortcake texture. I don't think this was entirely down to the gluten-free flour, probably to do with the baking time and temperature. But the rich cream and sharp fruit balanced the dryness and made it feel it more like desert rather than cake. Lovely.

Thankfully now the cooking books have been unpacked and there will be more experimental baking until I get used to this oven.

Mixed Tapas

January is generally a month of frugality (is that a word?), both money-wise and food-wise. I'm not going to say diet, as we never diet, but occasionally we take stock of what we're eating.
This post is not really about sensible eating, more like watching what we spend.

One of our favourite restaurants is The Orange Tree Tapas and Grill, and we have come to love several dishes on the menu. Since we are trying to watch what we spend at the moment (home improvements and credit card bills pressing) I decided to try and re-create some of our favourite tapas dishes rather than going out.

The dishes I tried were the Chicken in Paprika and Cream and the Beef in Peppercorn sauce from the restaurant. I also did a dish based on their Chicken with Mushrooms in Cream but with the addition of some cured ham. And also a dish of chorizo and prawns in a tomato and garlic sauce which I had seen some time ago on Market Kitchen.
The paprika cream sauce was simple to make, just a couple of lightly fried shallots with the chicken, then a splash of white wine and then the cream. And then enough paprkia to get the right flavour.
The mushroom sauce was similar, but I slowly cooked a couple of sliced mushrooms with the shallots. I wanted the flavour of the mushrooms throughout the sauce which seemed to work well. In both cases the chicken was finely sliced so it cooked quickly.

The chorizo and prawn dish was very simple, and the most tasty of the lot. I cooked two finely sliced cloves of garlic very gently in quite a bit of olive oil, so that the garlic softened but didn't brown and the oil was infused with the garlic flavour. I then added chucks of chorizo to the pan so that the lovely oils would mix together. Then came a good helping of passata and then the cooked king prawns just to warm through.

The dish I really wanted to get close to what we eat at The Orange Tree was the Beef in Peppercorn sauce. The sauce at the restaurant is lovely and rich, with a dark colour and is almost chocolately in flavour and texture. I've been searching for a recipe for something similar for a while now and came across a discussion on the BBC food messageboard about how to acheive this chocolatey-ness in peppercorn sauces. Several people thought it was to do with the use of brandy or madeira to de-glaze the pan, and the length of time cooking. One contributor posted a link to this recipe as a recommended version of steak in peppercorn sauce which could lead to the chocolately texture and flavour. So it was on this that I based my attempt to re-create our favourite dish.

Here is my adapted recipe:

1 steak (sirloin or rump, or any quick frying steak) cut into strips
1 shallot, finely chopped
a splash of brandy
crushed black peppercorns
double cream
beef stock

1. First fry the shallot gently in a little olive oil (or butter).
2. Cover the steak strips in loads of crushed black peper then add to the pan and cook very quickly.
3. Remove the meat from the pan and set aside.
4. De-glaze with a splash of brandy making sure all the bits left from the meat are scraped up. Heating so the brandy reduces. I didn't heat it til it ignites as the original recipe suggests, as I am a wuss!
5. Add about 50ml of beef stock to the pan, and enough cream to give the consistency you want and heat through.
6. Return the meat to the pan, stir through and then serve.

Sorry that the amounts are vague, but I generally cook by eye and taste, if anyone would like more precise measurements, please let me know, as I will be trying this again!

This dish didn't turn out chocolatey, but was very tasty. I think next time I will cook down the sauce longer to reduce it, intensify the flavours and to darken the colour. I also think I added too much pepper to make it comparable to the sauce we have had at the restaurant. It was more like a standard peppercorn sauce that you have with steak rather than something that bit more special. Does anyone have any idea if cooking the sauce for longer will work?

Morale of the story: maybe it is best to eat your favourite foods at the place where they became your favourite! We will return to the Orange Tree, but maybe not this month!