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"!

Northcote and the Tomato Consomme

Over a year ago we had a very pleasant trip to Northcote. We'd booked the Gourmet package which included an overnight stay as well as the 5-course Gourmet meal with champagne and canapes.
This was around the time that Nigel Howarth had been successful on the Great British Menu, and 4 of the 5 courses were from the programme. We had the famous Lancashire Hotpot, Muncaster Crab, Parfait of Duck with Duck Scratchings as well as the Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire cheese ice cream which we seem to remember made Oliver Peyton swear, and not in a good way! All we thought were superb and matched very well with the recommended wines.

The next day we were lucky enough to come across the head gardener who told us all about the various herbs that were picked each day from the kitchen, the edible flowers and where exactly the summer fruits came from that we'd eaten with the ice cream.

With the Head Gardener at Northcote

The course that stuck out for us though, had not appeared on the Great British Menu and this was Tomato Consomme. This was served from a cafetiere, after being infused with herbs, over sweet and sour cherry tomatoes and tomato caviar. It had the most intense tomato flavour we had ever tasted. The sweet and sour tomatoes burst with freshness in the mouth, and the tomato caviar was truly a thing of wonder. I did ask how it was made and the well-rehearsed answer was something to do with agar-agar and squid ink as well as tomatoes, and probably dropped from a height into oil to make the tiny black spheres. We later found out that this was a dish by Head Chef Lisa Allen, who has since gone on to become successful on the Great British Menu herself.

Rather more recently we happened across the recipe for this tomato consomme in Good Food Magazine, and thought it was definitely one to try. I should mention that the scientific tomato caviar was not listed as part of the dish. Here is the original recipe. We pretty much followed it all the way through but decided against trying the cheese on toast for this occasion. And the occasion was, dinner for the parents. We actually adjusted the quantities for 4.

You will need: (for 6 people)

For the Consomme:
3kg ripe plum tomatoes , quartered
175ml white wine
750ml tomato juice
3 garlic cloves, sliced
2 large shallots, finely diced
2 tsp salt
1½ tsp caster sugar
fresh picked herb leaves and small sprigs, such as chervil, baby basil, baby sorrel, snipped chives and small salad leaves, to serve

For the "sweet and sour" tomatoes:
18 baby plum tomatoes, peeled
squeeze lemon juice
¼ tsp icing sugar
2 tsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling

Put the tomatoes in a very large pan (very very large, the largest you have. We used a big stock pot) with all the consomme ingredients.

Simmer on a low heat for 2 hours. Yes really.
It will then look like this.

Then strain the tomatoes through muslin. For ages. (We actually went out for a meal. I think to the Orange Tree as those were the next photos on my camera!) Eventually the liquid will drained through giving a lovely clear liquid. Apparently if you push the tomatoes through it will end up cloudy. The draining process was itself, an engineering feat. We managed to do this with cunning use of a colander, pegs and gravity. All well worth it though.

As Lisa suggests, we actually did use the left over tomato pulp as a base for a tomato sauce. We used it for a couple of meals, and through the slow cooking, it gave a very rich sauce on all occasions.

The Sweet and Sour tomatoes are made by skinning the cherry tomatoes - putting a small cross in the skin then plunging into boiling water for a few seconds worked for us, then marinading simply in the lemon juice, icing sugar, a little salt and a drizzle of oil.

To serve, put a few cherry tomatoes in a bowl, with the fresh herbs. We used mainly basil (as it is the best herb in the world) and some fresh oregano from the garden.

Then pour over the re-heated consomme. We had considered the cafetiere thing, but really? All very nice at Northcote, but maybe a bit too silly in our kitchen.

This consomme was very nice and rather special. It somehow didn't seem to have the same tomato hit as we remember, but that would obviously be effected by the quality and ripeness of the tomatoes. And we actually do not have one of the best kitchen gardens in the country, which is the only one with 100% score as organic from the soil association as at Northcote. We just had Lidl for our tomatoes on this occasion!

We would fully recommend you give this a go as it is a bit of a show-off soup, and it went down really well. The tomato hit was still there, and the way that it was served added to the occasion.

Marple Food and Drink Festival and Crayfish

On Saturday, Tim was helping out the Marple Band at what we thought was a random gig, but it turned out to be at the Marple Food and Drink Festival. Bonus! I went along to support the band and also to see what was going on.

 

It was the Food and Drink day of the festival and the precinct was full of various stalls, many from local business, but notably including Marple Allotments Association. A stall which I gathered useful information about my lack of home grown tomatoes as well as some rather exciting and still muddy red Swiss Chard. Something that we've never cooked before.

I spent quite a bit of money while the band were playing, on various veg, gluten free brownies (because I can!) and a bottle of interesting Prosecco. But my main ingredient that I was excited about was Crayfish tails.

I'd spotted a recipe on The Recipe Chef, via facebook which I quite fancied, but never actually got round to hunting out some crayfish tails. So here they were, in little pots on the fishmonger's stand, begging to be bought. I couldn't remember the quantities from the recipe so bought a pot of prawns too. If there were too many, I'd just eat them as they were.

I kind of followed the recipe but not entirely, and looking at it now, I realise I ate the sauce which was meant for 2 people, but only with the pasta for one!

I started by chopping up the two and only tomatoes we had into chunks. These were supposed to be cherry tomatoes, but I did chop them to approximately cherry tomatoes if that counts? And started preparing the red pepper as suggested. This involved putting it in the microwave with a splash of water for a couple of minutes. At the end of the time I thought the microwave was going to explode, or the pepper would be on fire, but all was well. This too was chopped up, added to the tomatoes and put in the oven (200C) with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a chopped clove of garlic for about 20 mins.

Meanwhile I put on some gluten free spaghetti to cook.

Once out of the oven, the sauce is mashed down in a pan, then the crayfish (and prawns) were added and the whole sauce heated through.

The sauce is mixed with the cooked pasta and I added a few torn basil leaves (the recipe said to cook the tomatoes with dried basil, but we didn't have any) and a drizzle of olive oil.

The dish was lovely. One of my favourites actually. And I will be making it again and again. If I can find crayfish tails that is. The guys at The Recipe Chef commented about the meatiness of the crayfish tails compared to prawns, but I've previously not had the opportunity to actually compare them in the same dish I didn't really expect much meatiness to be obvious, but there was quite a big difference. The crayfish also added so much more of a lovely fishy flavour to the dish.

Perhaps I've not been looking that closely, but it doesn't seem that our supermarkets have any crayfish, and with the absence of any fishmonger that I can see in the area, my hunt may be a long one.

Briam

The next challenge following our trip to Kenyon Hall Farm was to find a nice recipe to make use of the giant courgette we'd bought for 10p!!  To be honest thought this wasn't a difficult decision as one of our favourite dishes in the whole world (and very simple to cook) is Briam.

Briam - the original in Elounda. Served with homemade crispy bread

Briam is a Greek dish that we first tried while on holiday in Crete this year.  It is simply Vegetable Stew but all the recipes I have seen and indeed the version we had it was obviously baked - so I describe it as Baked Vegetables!

We had been on a little trip into the mountains near Elounda and visited an Olive Press (where the olive oil for this dish came from).  The guide took us to a taverna - where the host was a non-English speaking elderly Greek lady.  We were asked by the guide if we wanted food - as always we said yes.  Expecting a menu to be presented we were a little surprised to be told that today she had cooked Briam!  We shouldn't have been concerned with the lack of choice though as it turned out to be the best dish of the holiday.  Also it was rather charming that the host decided what the guests were going to eat.

Since returning we have tried a few versions - including a Rick Stein recipe that had lots of vegetables in it but it didn't quite bring back the memories of the Briam we had eaten, perhaps as it had too many ingredients.  We then set about replicating the dish we had tried in Crete.  We knew it had been baked for a long time and it was swimming in delicious Olive Oil.  Interestingly it only used 2 main ingredients: Courgette and Potato.  But I think the simplicity is the making of this dish and allows you to taste the fine olive oil.  This has been tested on Parents to critical acclaim :)

Briam - Baked Vegetables (our version)

You will need:

500g waxy baby new potatoes sliced
1 large courgette sliced
500g fresh tomatoes
1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon dried oregano
Salt and pepper
A ready supply of the best savoury olive oil you can find

Make the tomato sauce.  This version needs everything to be finely chopped so I used the mini chopper.  First blitz the onion and garlic and soften on a low heat in olive oil.  Blitz the tomatoes in batches and add to the onion.  Season well and add oregano.  Simmer for 20 minutes.

Using a heavy oven proof dish such as a Le Creuset and begin assembling the dish.  First build a layer of potato, then a layer of courgette.  Season well (probably more salt than you are comfortable with) and a covering of olive oil.  Then add a third of the sauce.

Continue layering up, remembering to add plenty of salt each time.  These proportions should make 2 or 3 layers with the remainder of sauce poured over the top.

It should look something like this.








Add more oil, season, cover and bake in the oven for one hour. 
Remove the lid - give it a bit of a stir and add a little water so you can just see the juices below the top layer and return UNCOVERED for a further hour.

What you should be left with is a mouthwatering dish of baked vegetables that we find can be eaten as a main with crusty bread or side dish to anything really.  Season (again) - sorry to harp on but it really needs good seasoning and serve.





This is easily one of our favourite dishes and I even have some in a tub for my tea at work tonight :)

Parmigiana Di Melanzana (almost) was an organic experience

Well August Bank Holiday brought my only day off of the week and we were going to go walking but by the time we got up and finished off the curry we'd had boxed from the night before, it was afternoon!!  Then we got to thinking about what farm shops or markets might be open in the area.  We looked up a few on the Internet but most seemed to be shut on a Monday - all except for Kenyon Hall Farm near Warrington.

Fran informed me that they were in fact an award winning supplier of local/organic food so we thought we must go spend some cash - so that is what we did.

It wasn't particularly local but we managed to avoid the majority of the Bank Holiday traffic and 40 mins later we found the place.  It is a great place where you can pick your own fruit or (like us) just go and buy produce that someone else has harvested.

After a successful little shopping trip and we ended up with this array of delights:

Organic delights

We bought red wine vinegar, cheese, tomatoes, new potatoes, a massive courgette (for 10p), patty pan squashes, a couple of lettuces, a chilli plant and a sweet basil plant (as ours didn't appear to want to provide any more leaves!).  With this we thought we could make a lovely meal. - And we did, although we had to use some things that we already had in so it wasn't a totally organic meal - but tasty none the less.

Parmigiana Di Melanzana (Baked Sliced Aubergines with Tomato, Taleggio and Parmesan Cheese)

Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes was once again the book of choice.  As we had organic tomatoes and tomatoes form a big part of this dish we thought it would be perfect (we also had an aubergine that needed eating!).

The only change we made was the Taleggio Cheese which we couldn't find so we replaced it with some Emmental in the hope it would react in a similar way.  Our recipe (also adjusted for 2 people) was:

1 large aubergine
Extra virgin olive oil
150g Emmental cheese
Large handful of basil leaves (shredded)
300 ml tomato sauce as shown here
Parmesan cheese (grated)
Salt

Method

Slice the aubergine length ways and salt the slices and leave to drain for 30 mins.  Pat the aubergine dry and fry over a medium heat for 2 mins either side and put to one side.  When ready you can begin assembly.

To assemble, lay half the aubergine slices over an oven-proof dish.  Scatter over half the basil and spread half the sauce.

Then add the slices of cheese and sprinkle some Parmesan cheese.

Repeat the layer with the remainder of the ingredients and bake in a pre-heated oven for 25 mins - until bubbling.








To serve, I stir fried some of the Patty Pan Squash with salt, pepper and Greek oregano and finished with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese and a just some organic lettuce on the side.

Parmigiana Di Melanzana, Stir-fried Patty Pan Squash and Organic Lettuce

Chicken with Chorizo, Courgettes and Butter Beans

Tea tonight was a dish adapted from a Rick Stein recipe from his Mediterranean Escapes.  I say adapted as it should be made with Sobrasada rather than Chorizo but cannot find anywhere that stocks it.  (Anyone know??)  Not even Rick Stein's Deli in Padstow stocked it!!  Also I have changed some of the proportions from the book to satisfy Fran's sauce requirements!!

Chicken with Chorizo, Courgettes and Butter Beans

For my version you will need:

2 Chicken Breasts
Small tin of Butter Beans - drained
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Teaspoon of Crushed Chilli Flakes
90g Chorizo (Gluten-Free)
2 Medium Courgettes
Handful of Chopped Parsley Leaves
Salt and Ground Black Pepper
300 ml Tomato Sauce (see below)

To make 600ml of tomato sauce (half can be frozen or fridged after for another day)

2 Tins Plum Tomatoes
20g Garlic Finely Sliced (about 6 cloves)
6 Tablespoons of the best olive oil you can find
Salt and Pepper

I made the tomato sauce this morning and left to cool for the day, here was how:

Finely chop the garlic
Heat the olive oil and add the garlic till it sizzles

Add the tomatoes

Season well with 1 teaspoon of salt and a good pinch of black pepper
Simmer for about 20 mins while breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.  The sauce should reduce a little and thinken.

Then a bit nearer teatime I started the chicken:

Season the chicken and fry in olive oil for 5 mins on each side
Move chicken to one side and fry the chorizo and chilli flakes till the oil is released

Stir chicken around all the lovely juices

Add the courgettes and a little more oil, cover the pan, lower the heat and cook for 15 mins

Add the tomato sauce and butter beans and cook for a further 5-10 mins

Sprinkle with parsley and serve

There turned out to be a bit too much sauce after all (the portions would work with 4 breasts) but not to worry as it will probably make a pasta sauce for another day!  So out popped the freezer tub - always the economist!!





All in all a success I feel.  It was spicy and moreish but we can't help wonder what it should have tasted like had we used sobrasada as per the recipe.  According to Mr Stein the sausage would melt a little and so produce a different textured sauce.  We will keep an eye out and report back if we find a stockist.

Red Soup and Grey Soup

Grey Soup and Red Soup

After the recent extravagance of the eating out, even though at last meal was a bargain, much of what we'll be doing in the next week or so will be of the Eating In variety. Kinder to the wallet, liver, and waistline.

Something tasty, healthy and relatively cheap which I've been doing recently is soup for lunches. Although if you ask my work colleagues, this is not recently, this has been for ever! I've generally been making roasted tomato soup, sometimes with added peppers, sometimes pepper soup with tomatoes, and sometimes half and half. Even though you can taste slight difference, this is generally known as Red Soup.
The choices are made basically on supermarket/greengrocer offers and availabilities of peppers and tomatoes, more often than not, the pepper offer wins over, and Red Soup is more peppery.
This week it has been more tomatoey.

Almost Red Soup

This week I started off by roasting 1kg of normal salad tomatoes (or big bag from Lidl), with 1 onion, a couple of bashed garlic cloves, the 2 left over red and yellow pepper halves (from a fish dish) and one whole green pepper. Sometimes I put some thyme in there too, but couldn't be bothered - maybe it was raining and I didn't fancy going out to cut it. Oh, and some balsamic vinegar. All in a big roasting tray with quite a bit of olive oil. I leave it at 200C until the tomatoes have burst and things are turning a little black, and the house has started to smell of lovely roasting things. Then with enough veg stock to make it soup-like I blitz with a hand blender. This time I needed a bit of sugar, but no tomato puree - sometimes the tomatoes aren't very tomatoey - not a necessity for the "other" type of red soup, as peppers don't need to be tomatoey.

I am not one of those people who can't eat the same thing every day, but even with the subtle differences of the different varieties of Red Soup, it was getting a little monotonous, so I fancied re-trying another soup I used to make.

The inspiration for Grey Soup came from the Farmers' Market in Manchester - when it was called Farmers' Market. Since it became the "Real Food Market" the soup man seems to have disappeared. Maybe he'll return at Christmas? He did lots of homemade, fresh tasting soups. All made with proper ingredients, including a Mushroom, Garlic and Parsley soup. Each time a selection of soups were available buy in cups to eat there and then, or in tubs to take home for your fridge. I did notice that the ingredients on the tub for this Mushroom soup were little more than the title ingredients, but with the addition of flour to thicken. Alas, that means even if he does return, I won't be able to eat it. So I tried once more to recreate it.

I chopped up 350g (box from Lidl) of closed cup mushrooms, very small, plus 1 onion (which I don't think was on the soup man's ingredient list) and about 3 cloves of garlic. In previous attempts I think I put too much garlic in, as it mainly tasted of garlic, for the entire day. I then cooked the whole lot, with a bit of oil, very slowly for ages. I don't really time my cooking, I just do it til its done. Not very helpful I know. I then added a handful of chopped fresh parsley.

Nearly Grey Soup

This was then blitzed down with a hand blender. It made just a big mush, so I added about 3/4 pint of veg stock to make it soupy and it seemed to work. One concern I have with mushrooms, is that they can be too mushroomy. Not sure exactly when, or if this occurs during the cooking process, but I know what I mean. But thankfully Grey Soup, on this attempt was neither too mushroomy or garlicky. A success I feel. The only annoying thing is, this amount of mushrooms and cooking time only made 2 portions, whereas Red Soup can stretch to a full week's worth of lunches.

Maybe next week; Green Soup. And perhaps Brown Soup.