Thai Prawn Curry

Note the naff Thai restaurant style sugar-bowl-come-rice-mould.

Roast Chicken, Fennel and Orange Salad

I’m not good at salads, I’m not entirely sure how they work, but we’ve been eating so much lately I needed something relatively healthy.  The fennel and orange were really good together and the salty crispy chicken made me feel like it was half substantial.  The best bit though were the crispy croutons which were bits of ciabatta that I rolled and browned in the chicken juices.  This salad may encourage me to eat more salads.

Italian Sandwiches

A very tasty sandwich.  I rubbed garlic onto each slice of ciabatta, then olive oil, the laid basil leaves, italian salami, parmesan, capers, salad leaves and mayonnaise.  It annoys me that you can't get a good sandwich like this on every street corner.  The food/lunch options in the area that I work in is so very dire.

Pork Tenderloin with Cider, Mustard and Mushroom Sauce and Celeriac Mash.

Dover Sole With Caper Brown Buttter

Bought this Dover Sole from the fisherman’s hut on the beach in Aldeburgh.  It was so fresh.  I rubbed it with salt and pepper, cover with flour and shook off the excess.  Then pan fried it with some of butter I’d clarified.  I fried it for about 3 minutes on each side then left it to rest while I did the sauce.  For the sauce I put the rest of the clarified butter in a sauce pan with parsley, a squeeze of lemon and some capers and cooked it until it went a darker colour and tasted nutty.  Served it with crushed potatoes and sliced courgette.

Lamb Shank Ragu and Bronze Drawn Spaghetti

So as I mentioned before I finally found the spaghetti I’ve been on the hunt for.  Its made by pushing the pasta through a bronze die rather than the smooth plastic one.  This makes it perfect for a saucey pasta dish as the sauce sticks to every bit of the spahetti making it an altogether more saucy experience.  

Anyhoo.  I wanted to do some kind of tomato sauce but thought spahetti bolognaise would be a bit of a cop out.  So i bougth two lamb shanks from the butchers in Aldebrugh.  I browned them in a hot hot pan, then added them to my ragu sauce which had just started bubbling away and left it like that for 3 1/2 hours.  The ragu sauce was onion, celery, garlic, thyme and rosemary, softened.  Diced mushrooms and pancetta.  Tinned tomatoes, glass of water and a glass of wine (which is used to deglaze the pan the shanks were sealed in).

I let it all bubble away for three hours, then flaked the delicious meat from the bone, added it back to the sauce and let it reduce down.  The result was a sticky, meaty savory sauce which stuck to the pasta perfectly, which stuck to our ribs and sent us to sleep. It was a triumph.

Holiday Snaps

As the business is still relatively new, we have to take really short breaks, as and when we can.  We’ve just come back from a 5 day break in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.  We hunkered down in Barny’s granny’s amazing Shrimp Cottage, which is about 10 paces away from the sea front, 20 paces away from a fishermans hut and surrounded by amazing deli’s and farm shops.  We arrived with a box of different wines from Majestic, a bag of DVD's and cooking supplies.  We ate, slept, scrabbled and drank fine wine for 5 days.

Chicken Shack Boogie

Its no secret that The Chicken and The Egg blog likes an egg or two.  Although I probably didn’t realise just how much that was until looking back at the posts.  Anyhoo.  There doesn’t seem to be enough said about the humble chicken and I’m not the only person who has noticed.

Enter Gavin from Get Involved blog.  Get Involved is the brain child of Pie Man (i refer to his pie making skills) and DJ, Gavin Lucas.  He also co-runs an amazing monthly rock, roll, soul, funk, rhythm and blues night, ‘Gerry’s Joint’ at The Boogaloo in Highgate London.   

He has taken the time to put together a group of songs about the chicken, named ‘Chicken Shack Boogie’ and has decided to exclusively make said compilation available on The Chicken and Egg Blog for free download.  Very exciting.  Oh and if you are wondering who did the amazing artwork, that’d be Roo.  Extremo talent and also co-promoter of Gerry’s Joint.  Here follows the tracklisting and the link.  Enjoy your chicken.

http://getinvolvedclub.com/Chicken%20Shack%20Boogie.zip

Chicken Shack Boogie
1. Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
2. Chicken Necks - Don & Juan
3. Chicken Shack Boogie [No. 1] - Amos Milburn
4. Chicken Out - Wayne Carroll
5. Let's Do It (The Chicken Scratch) - Jimmy McCracklin
6. Chicken Shack - Fat Daddy Holmes
7. Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins
8. Chicken Reel Stomp - Tune Wranglers
9. I Chickened Out - Kenny Loran
10. Chicken - Devendra Banhart
11. C-H-I-C-K-E-N - Tom Paxton
12. Do The Funky Chicken - Rufus Thomas
13. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens - Louis Jordan
14. Momma Stole The Chicken - Billy Bland
15. Chicken, Baby, Chicken - Tony Harris
16. Chicken Payback - The Bees
17. Chicken Back - Bobby Comstock
18. Chicken Shack Boogie [No. 2] - Amos Milburn
19. Chicken Strut - The Meters

Bubble & Squeak

Made this with left over crushed new potatoes and peas.  Made a patty type affair with the potatoes and pea's and fried.  The trick is not to touch it more than twice (one to put it in the frying pan, second time to flip) for fear of it falling apart.  
Actually making use of leftovers is a buzz.  I have a bowls of things that lurch at the back of my fridge for weeks on end that never get eaten and morph into unidentified food - the fridge monsters.

Rich Pickings

Got carried away in the food hall at selfridges with cheese etc on my day off.  Finally found the pasta that I have been looking for all over london, which is a spaghetti that is drawn through a bronze die.  It makes the surface rough and subsequently sauce really sticks to it.  I'm going to do a whole separate post about this.

After a getting back from town, we went to the butchers in Highbury to pick up a ham joint so I could honey glaze it.  This butchers is really good.  Check out the website.  They really know their meat. 

Dinner was a house picnic of bread, the ham, the cheese, watercress and carrot salads, left over salsa verde and wine.  Hello spring.

Mexican Breakfast

One of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had.  Its consisted of a tortilla (fried in lard), a tomato and chilli sauce, fried egg (in lard), refried beans, avocado and grated cheese.  For a good mexican breakfast everything needs to be made with lard and thus, tastes delicious.

Green Kitchen

I adore fish, but I don’t get to eat that much because Barny is scared of bones and thinks he doesn’t like it.  Until he actually eats it and realises that he does like it, but that then falls away from his memory two days later and he’s back to hating.  I think he must have been attacked by a roll mop or something when he was a baby.  

Anyway I made a salsa verde which I decided to chop by hand, which is therapeutic, but messy, it turned the kitchen green. I love salsa verde, its so fricking tasty.  We served the panfried Mackerel fillets (I had to gut myself, first time I’ve done that, yuck) with crushed potatoes and pea’s.  Very very tasty.

Confit Duck and Blood Orange Sauce

Its not that I don’t/can’t confit my own duck, I bet I could, if I tried... and I will one day, for sure, I hate the idea of not doing something from scratch.  Its just that the whole process takes a while, costs a hell of a lot and those people in france do it so well by popping it in those pretty jars and tins that I wouldn’t want to mess with their thing.  So yeah another quick dinner.  I just haven’t had a moment to cook lately because of all the work, its all soups and quick meals, what a drag.  We’ve a little holiday coming up though, which has the potential to be a cooking extravaganza... its by the coast.

This is just the duck confit, with lil’ roast potatoes, cooked in the duck fat with rosemary, with a red wine and blood orange sauce.  T’was gooood.

Quick sticks

Caulipower

As I sit here in the shop writing up this post, its a saturday morning, I am sleep deprived, under nourished and wondering what happened last night.  What I need right now is to be at home, hooked up to a drip, in my PJ’s, watching when Harry Met Sally, playing with a puppy and eating this Cauliflower Soup.

Ahh soup, so easy, sooo good.  Onion, garlic and celery softened, a caulifower, chicken stock, salt, pepper and an old parmesan rind.  All boiled until cauliflower is cooked, then blended until velvety (including rind).

I made some parmesan crisps to go with it and also fried fresh rosemary for crunchy bits.

Gavin's Pie!

I promised nearly two months ago to post a picture of a pie my friend and newly established pie guru made.  So here it is.  I’m pretty sure it was a Ale and Mushroom pie and yes I think the product placement in the background is very deliberate.  Can we have our free landlord beer please?

Root Veg Gratin

Pancetta, Kale, Mushroom & Fennel Seed

This is a recipe that I’d like to say I ‘invented’ (get me) before this blog started, its super quick, everything happens at the end when the pasta is done.  

We were so tired from an antiques fair last night that it had to be something easy and comforting and often a big bowl of pasta is the only answer.  I fry mushroom and pancetta for a few minutes while the pasta is boiling away (I also added Courgette to this one) then when the pancetta is starting to colour I add a bit more olive oil and fry the fennel seeds for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic and fry a little more.  Then a large glass of wine a tiny bit of lemon juice, I throw in the cooked pasta and a bit of the pasta water at the end, season and let the flavors cook into the pasta. Its a quite a brothy dish but really nice if you want something not too saucy.

Roast Pork - Black Pudding and apple gratin.

I set out to make the ultimate roast dinner on Sunday evening to celebrate that I was not working.  Honestly, the pork let it down.  I missed the good butchers and Barny had to go to Sainsbury’s and as a result, it wasn’t as tasty as it could have been.  The crackling however, was spot on.  I was very proud.  All the veg were great too.

We had roasted beetroot, which was roasted in foil for 2 hours and then peeled, and fried with garlic and thyme for a couple of minutes.  

Also had Cavolo Nero, carrots, roast potatoes and a cider gravy.

Most importantly, I roasted the pork on a bed of sliced apple and black pudding, seasoned with salt, pepper, sage and butter.  It worked beautifully taste wise, but was a bit of a mush when it came out.  Next time intend to make this in a little gratin dish.