Tag: cooking

B301 – MONDAY NIGHT FOOD

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So yesterday was my first day of work and as a result I did the same thing as everyone else in London. I stopped off at Sainsburys and starred at the oven pizzas thinking that because its Monday I might as well go for it, well that maybe something I would have done in 2017 but its now 2018 and Im determined to cook as much as possible, nothing to crazy each night, not like some weird roast beef with home made horse radish, more like the dish I went for last night which was actually really easy and cheap.

for those of you at Ive talked to about cooking, you probably know that Ive been using the Yummly app, which is basically somewhere I am getting all my recipes from and last night was no exception. The meal I decided to cook was called “Summer In Winter Chicken” I like to call it – Pesto Creamy Chicken. And its actually really straight forward.

the ingredients were:

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

200 grams cherry tomatoes (pack)

3 tablespoons pesto

3 tablespoons crème fraîche (half fat is fine)

fresh basil (if you have it)

and then you literally just follow these simple steps and your done:

  1. Heat the oil in a frying pan, preferably non-stick. Add the chicken and fry without moving it until it takes on a bit of colour. Turn the chicken and cook on the other side. Continue cooking for 12-15 mins until the chicken is cooked through. Season all over with a little salt and pepper.
  2. Halve the tomatoes and throw them into the pan, stirring them around for a couple of minutes until they start to soften. Reduce the heat and stir in the pesto and crème fraîche until it makes a sauce. Scatter with a few basil leaves if you have them, then serve with rice and salad or mash and broccoli.

I left out the Broccoli, because I forgot and decided that I would have it wish some mash potato, which was just because I had some potatos in the fridge. If you cant be bothered to cook one night, give this dish a try.

Its now Tuesday morning and Im just getting ready for work and about to attack this day, I forgot how hard it is to photograph during the day when your working so maybe Ill just have todo loads more of my favourite food recipes, otherwise we could start to run into some stressful evening chucking fairy lights round Amys check and taking some photos of her.

Heres my photos from yesterday. Enjoy

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– the walk to works isnt that bad really –
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– this is mid cook, pesto and creme freche now involved –
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– doesnt look that good, but it did the job –

B290 – CREDIT WHERE CREDITS DUE

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Theres a lot of people out there that say they can cook and then go a head and put some super noodles in the microwave and then just add some posh spicy sauce of bowl then go ahead and call it a meal, we must all know a few people like this. Well a chum of mine is on the complete other end of the spectrum, the guy can cook. he goes by the name of Anders Hayward, and last night he pulled out a meal that I cant fault.

Last week he asked me what I wanted to eat and I though lets put his skills to the test, so I asked for Pork Belly, and well after 24 hours of marinating in some spices Ive never heard of he started cooking, he literally got the crackling perfect and smashing the presentation. One thing that shocked me was that it was his first time making Yorkshire puddlings and I think I can speak for half the nation when I say we all have had our fair share of Yorkshire pudding horror stories. So I was a bit worried they might go wrong, but I would definitely give him top marks for those too.

Im now back at my place and I think I need to apologise for this post being a fair few hours late, but I also drank last night meaning that I only lasted 19 days of Dry January,  I was so close but so far I knew that the second half of the month would be harder but last night I just crumbled. I suppose all I can say is “Maybe next year”

At the moment Im also doing a project only involving Gopro’s and the filming capabilities, so if anyone out there is used to filming with Gopros and know how to make them look cinematic please let me know. Ive still go a few months to go till we start filming but it would be good to get ahead of the game.

Heres some photos of the food yesterday, enjoy.

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– thats the kind of crackling we are talking about –
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– a bit of a posh apple sauce smudge –
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– it was a strong 8.9 out of ten I would say –

 

B278 – NEARLY 100 YEARS OLD AND PERFECT

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Sorry this post is a bit late, I had a plan in place to wake up early and go over to greenwich for the sun rise but that soon changed as soon as I heard my alarm, my excuse is that because amy works 5 days week if unfair to drag her out of bed at 6:30am on a sunday. I’m not too sure that excuse has worked. but any way we are now up and ready to go only a few hours later the only problem is that I still need to edit and write about my photos from yesterday. its really weird writing the past and the future but I’m going to do my best and make this as simple as possible. 

After selling the spare bed yesterday we decided that it was time to grab a chest of drawers to tackle the crazy amount of clothes that are now accumulating in the flat, even though Amy still hasn’t completely moved in yet, it kind of makes sense of her to leave some clothes her. if any one has been shopping for a chest of drawers before you will know how extremely stressful the whole process can be, not only do you have to go round shops but you also have to deal with the over priced wooden boxes which places like Habbit, St Elm, made and loaf seem to charge and non of them really had what we were looking for. then I had the genius idea of looking on Gumtree and boom we were on our way to an antiques store in Crystal Palace and firstly there are hundreds of antique stores in crystal palace and all of them have a amazing stuff. The chest of drawers we had seem on gumtree was really right for what we wanted it for but next door was this 1920’s Oak chest of drawers which was perfect, the guy was selling it for £140 but after some of my negotiation skills kick in we managed to get it for £120, he also chucked in two packets for sour sweets for good measure. 

Oh and we also made some home made burgers for dinner yesterday, I tried to make a home made posh fast food, not sure that worked out, maybe ill just leave that to the professionals. We took a normal home made burger and added some of our own stuff to it, like some chillies, onions and garlic, we also used Selma to help hold it all together, the trick is to cool it on a slow heat of long time, so it doesn’t fall apart.

We also cooked some Sweet potato fries as well, and the recipe of that is just below this the burger instructions.

The basic ingredients you’ll need are:

1 small onion peeled and diced
500g good-quality beef mince
1 egg
1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 burger buns
All or any of the following to serve: sliced tomato, beetroot, horseradish sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, handful iceberg lettuce, rocket, watercress

  1. Tip the beef into a bowl with the onion and egg, then mix. (and anything else you want to add to the burgers, trust me add what you want)

  2. Divide the mixture into four. Lightly wet your hands. Carefully roll the mixture into balls, each about the size of a tennis ball.

  3. Set in the palm of your hand and gently squeeze down to flatten into patties about 3cm thick. Make sure all the burgers are the same thickness so that they will cook evenly. Put on a plate, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge to firm up for at least 30 mins.

  4. Heat the barbecue / frying pan to medium hot (there will be white ash over the red hot coals – about 40 mins after lighting). Lightly brush 1 side of each burger with oil.

  5. Place the burgers, oil-side down, on the barbecue. Cook for 5 mins until the meat is lightly charred. Don’t move them around or they may stick. Oil the other side, then turn over using tongs. Don’t press down on the meat, as that will squeeze out the juices.

  6. Cook for 5 mins more for medium. If you like your burgers pink in the middle, cook 1 min less each side. For well done, cook 1 min more.

     

Sweet potato fries

Ingredients
500 grams sweet potatoes (peeled and cut in to long strips)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. You may need to adjust the temperature slightly dependant on your oven.
  2. In a large bowl add the sweet potato and pour over the olive oil and give them a good coating.
  3. Sprinkle over the salt and paprika and also give them a good coating. Lay evenly over a non-stick baking tray.
  4. Cook in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes until crispy.
  5. Serve on their own as a snack or a side to your favourite meal.

This is a pretty long blog and sorry the photos arent the best, yesterday was just about getting through the day without punching one of those  “I love the January sales” people.

Heres my photos, enjoy.

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– it was love at first sign –
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– it was literally what we were looking for, antique shops are the way forward –
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– my attempt at posh fast food –

 

B274 – BACK IN LONDON AND COOKING UP A TREAT!

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Before I get back into the main part of this post I’m going to give a bit of an overview on how today has gone. At 10am this morning Amy and myself woke up in our Amazing hotel room and instantly realised that we were both destroyed, I was ill and for some reason Amy’s legs wouldn’t work. Turns are both sick, me a bit more ill than her, but ill non the less. I think its just a case of us crashing, Christmas is normally a time of resting up but if anything its been the complete opposite, im not moaning about it, I’ve had the best two weeks.

The plan was originally to checkout of our hotel and going and have a look around Bristol and take in all the signs, well our plan quickly became to get on the first train we could and get back to the flat.  Once we made it onto the train the next mission was to start editing the Go Pro video I made the other day, there’s no better way to make a train ride go quicker than to start editing a video, but well rendering took a bit longer than expect. The whole train ride really so I did manage to get a little sleep.

That leads me to the next part of my blog, what we did for dinner. We needed spice and a lot of it, when you’re ill nothing is better than spice, it cleans your nose and almost gives your body a kick start which is just what we need. Amy came up with the good idea of having a curry, making it from scratch and also learning a new recipe. If any of you are in need of a new dish and what to add a bit of spice in your life, then please feel free to give this recipe a go.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons oil

4 cloves garlic (crushed)

1 onion (Large, chopped)

3 red chili peppers (‘s, chopped)

4 teaspoons Madras Spice paste

1 tablespoon turmeric

2 tablespoons mango chutney

1 can coconut cream

1 tablespoon sweet chili sauce

1 tomato passata (large carton around 600ml)

1 bunch coriander (chopped)

4 tablespoons greek yogurt

2 chicken breasts (chopped)

 

Instructions

Step 1: In a large pan, heat the oil then fry the garlic, onions and chilli for about 5 minutes stirring regularly.

Step 2: Add the curry paste and turmeric and stir in.

Step 3: Add the mango chutney, coconut cream, sweet chilli sauce, passata, coriander, fenugreek and Greek yogurt and leave in a low heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Step 4: While your curry simmers on a low heat, cook the chicken and once its white the whole way through dump it all into the pan with the rest of the curry

Step 5: let that all simmer till your 30-minute timer goes off, I decided to add an extra chill 10 minutes before the end of the timer just to add a little extra spice.

I managed to get two good sized meals out of it and some left overs. Thank you too the App Yummly and also http://www.jamandclottedcream.co.uk/ for the recipe, I’ve tweaked it a bit but I cant take full responsibly for this dish.

One last thing, my goal for this blog is to reach 500 subscribers, so if you are reading this and haven’t yet subscribed. Please can you subscribe and ill be sure to follow your post.

Heres my photos from today, I hope you like them! and im sorry if I keep moaning about being ill!

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– trying to get the timeline rendered by the time the train pulled into paddington didnt happen, I literally had my laptop open on the tube –
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– arriving back in Bethnal Green –
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– the Curry apperently smelt amazing ( my nose is blocked so I didnt know)