Spaghetti with Pea Pesto Recipe

Check out this lovely pea pesto mixed into spaghetti - just like classic pesto, only more summery!! I found this recipe in the latest edition of Waitrose Kitchen (July 2013), a really nice food magazine - it made me hungry just reading it, and I plan to try a few more of the recipes from it in the coming weeks.

I'm not the biggest pea lover, but this turned out to have a nice flavour - not too strongly pea-flavoured! The only thing I would say about this pesto is that it does have quite a strong garlic flavour - great for me as I love garlic, but if you are not so keen you could miss out one of the cloves.

According to the Waitrose Kitchen magazine, one portion is a reasonable 518 calories (if you're counting!) and of course all those peas help towards you getting your 5 a day - something I've recently been aiming to do every day.

Recipe - Pasta with Pea Pesto

Serves 4

Ingredients:

350g dried spaghetti

400g frozen garden peas

3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

50g parmesan, roughly chopped

3 tbsp olive oil

The juice of 1 lemon

25g basil leaves

Method:

1) Cook the spaghetti according the packet instructions. Once cooked, drain the pasta but reserve a cupful of the cooking water.

2) Whilst the pasta cooks cook the peas in a saucepan of boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and leave to cool.

3) In a food processor (I used my Kenwood Mini Chopper – see here) blend together the garlic cloves, parmesan, 2 tbsp of the olive oil, the juice of half a lemon and a ¾ of the basil leaves to form a thick paste. Add the peas and blitz again until just combined. Season the mixture.

4) Put the spaghetti back into a saucepan with 6 tbsp of the reserved cooking water, the pea pesto mixture, the remaining oil and the juice of the other half of the lemon. Serve scattered with a few torn basil leaves and some grated parmesan. 

Lisa x

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Jamie Oliver's Pork and Cider Stew Recipe

Another recipe from Jamie Oliver's 'Ministry of Food' cookbook - a simple pork stew made with cider. I love the simplicity of this recipe - and it takes hardly any time to prepare. Preparing the stew takes less than 20 minutes, and then you can just forget it whilst it slow cooks in the oven for a couple of hours. The end result is beautifully tender meat and veggies - a hearty meal for the family!

Recipe - Jamie Oliver's Pork and Cider Stew
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
2 celery sticks, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 tbsp of plain flour
1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
Salt and Pepper (to season)
3 sprigs fresh sage 
500g diced stewing pork 
500ml bottle of medium-dry cider

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
2. Wash, peel and roughly chop the vegetables.
3. Put a casserole dish on the hob, add a couple of glugs of olive oil and tip in the vegetables and sage. Fry over a medium heat for about 10 minutes.

4. Add the diced pork and the flour, followed by the cider and chopped tomatoes. Give the stew a stir and season with salt and pepper.

5. Bring to the boil and give the mixture a good stir, then transfer the casserole dish to the oven.
6. Cook in the oven for 2½ hours. Keep the lid on until the final hour of cooking.

7. I served my stew with mashed potatoes, as they are a favourite in my household! In his cookbook Jamie suggests serving with dumplings - find his recipe for dumplings here.

Lisa x 

 
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Mid-Week Family Meal Inspiration - Ham, Cheese and Spinach Pasta Bake Recipe

I'm currently living back in my parents house (hopefully not for much longer!) and whilst we have a casual rota for making dinner during the week, I find myself cooking many of our family meals. I don't mind this though - I have the time at the moment, as well as the passion for cooking! One of the things I love about living back at my family home is being able to flick through all my mum's cookbooks and finding new recipes. Yesterday I was looking through her Good Housekeeping cookbook (available on Amazon marketplace here) and found a recipe for a pasta bake that looked tasty, so thought I would give it a go for our mid-week meal.

I adapted the original recipe slightly by using a little less cream and mustard powder, and a little more spinach to make it healthier (I absolutely adore spinach). It was lovely, so I will share my adapted version with you...

Recipe - Ham, Cheese and Spinach Pasta Bake
(Adapted from Good Housekeeping's 'Penne, Cheese and Ham Bake')
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

- 50g butter
- 25g plain flour
- 1 tsp mustard powder (the original recipe calls for 1 tbsp, but i'm not a massive fan of strong mustard flavour)
- 450ml milk
- 125g grated cheddar cheese
- 50ml double cream
- 120g pack of sliced ham, chopped (I used Sainsbury's Honey Roast Wiltshire Cured Ham)
- Pinch a nutmeg 
- Salt and pepper
- 350g dried pasta (I used fusilli pasta twists)
- 200g frozen spinach
- 25g parmesan, grated


Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°c.

2. Melt the butter in a pan, then stir in the flour until combined.

3. Add the mustard powder and milk and stir until smooth. Let the sauce come to the boil, stirring often with a whisk – let the mixture simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the cheddar and stir until all the cheese has melted. Add the cream and ham and season the mixture with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

4. Cook the pasta according to the package instructions and drain thoroughly went cooked.

5. Whilst the pasta cooks place the frozen spinach in a bowl and pour over some hot water until it has thawed. Drain and press out any excess water.

6. Mix together the pasta, sauce and spinach and pour into a big ovenproof dish. Grate parmesan over the top if desired and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. 

Pre-baking...

The tasty end result...

Lisa x

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Chicken and Leek Mashed Potato-Topped Pie

My good friend popped over for dinner the other day and I decided to make a pie. I didn't have any puff pastry in the house and I'm pretty useless at making homemade pastry, so I decided to top my pie with mashed potato instead. 

I found a recipe for a chicken and leek pie on allrecipes.co.uk (link: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/627/chicken-and-leek-pie.aspx) however as I started following it, a couple of the ingredients listed weren't actually included in the instructions. So I ended up doing a bit of improvisation, and despite being worried it may not work out it turned out to be tasty in the end - and my friend said he enjoyed it too (hopefully he just wasn't being polite!)

Recipe - Chicken and Leek Mashed Potato-Topped Pie
Serves 2

Ingredients:

Olive oil
2 skinless chicken breasts
4 leeks, chopped
Large knob of butter
1 tbsp plain flour
250ml chicken stock
250ml milk
Salt and pepper (seasoning)
3 large potatoes, peel and chopped
Dash of milk and knob of butter (for mash)

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 200°C.
• Cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. 
• Put a glug of olive oil into a frying pan and cook chicken chunks until browned. Set these aside.
• Add a little more olive oil into the same pan and add 3 of the leeks. Saute on a medium heat until softened. Set these aside with the chicken.
• In a big pan melt a large knob of butter and add a tablespoon of flour and mix to form a smooth paste. Gradually add the milk to create a thickened sauce.
• Add the chicken, leeks and stock to the pan with the sauce and stir all together.
• Cover and simmer for 10-15  minutes. The sauce should reduce slightly.
  
• Season the mixture with some salt and pepper and pour into a pie dish. Leave to cool whilst you cook the potatoes.
  
• Add the chopped potatoes to a pan with plenty of water to cover them. Bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and simmer for 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft.
• Add a little milk and butter and mash the potatoes. I softened one more leek by cooking it in butter and added this to the mash.
  
• Top the pie mixture with the mashed potato and spread evenly over the top.
  
• Place in the oven and cook for about 15-20 minutes - till the pie is piping hot throughout. 

This is my idea of great comfort food!
  

Lisa x

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Jamie Oliver's Mince and Onions

Of all the Jamie Oliver recipe books I own (and I have many of them!), I think I love his Ministry of Food book the most. My friend (who refers to him as 'Saint Jamie'!) first introduced me to the book in 2010 and some of my all-time favourite dishes I make are from it. One of the recipes is for a 'Classic Mince and Onion Pie', which forms the basis of the meal I made for my family yesterday evening.

I actually had a whole load of new potatoes that needed finishing so instead of doing the pie, I decided to make the mince and onions and serve it with vegetables and the new potatoes that I roasted with garlic and rosemary. It worked out really well, and I suppose it was healthier than using a load of pastry to make it into a pie! So here is the Ministry of Food recipe I followed to make mince and onions...

Recipe: Jamie Oliver's Mince and Onions
Serves 4

Ingredients:

olive oil
3 onions
2 carrots
2 sticks of celery
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
2 bay leaves
500g beef mince
1 teaspoon English mustard
1 teaspoon Marmite
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoon flour, plus extra for dusting
beef stock cubes

Method:

1. Peel and roughly chop the onions, carrots and celery until fine (I whizzed mine in my Kenwoods mini-chopper, available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kenwood-CH180-Mini-Chopper-Watt/dp/B0000C6WPC)
2. Remove rosemary leaves from their stalks and finely chop.
3. Add 2 glugs of olive oil to a large casserole-style pan and place on a high heat on the stove top. Add the chopped veggies, rosemary and the 2 bay leaves and cook until the vegetables are softened (remember to keep stirring whilst they cook to avoid burning/sticking to the pan)
4. Add the beef mince and cook until browned, before adding the mustard, Marmite, Worcestershire sauce and flour.
5. Make up 1 litre of beef stock using boiling water and the appropriate number of stock cubes (dependent on brand used) - I used 2 Knorr stock cubes. Add this to the pan and bring to the boil.
6. Turn down the heat and bring to a simmer for about an hour until the stock has reduced to form a lovely thick gravy that coats the mince. Jamie recommends keeping it covered whilst cooking, but I find that if I cover the mixture the gravy doesn't reduce and the mixture stays very liquidy. Therefore I like to leave it simmering uncovered, allowing for some of the liquid to evaporate to achieve a thicker consistency. Remember to give it a stir every so often.
7. Before serving remove the bay leaves and season with salt and pepper.

Whilst my mince was cooking I made my roasted new potatoes which was so simple. I halved each potato and popped them into a roasting pan with some olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary and 1 garlic clove (minced with a garlic press). This went into the pre-heated oven at 200°C for about 45 minutes until the potatoes were golden. I completed the meal with some broccoli and peas.

Lisa x

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Paprika Pork with Mushrooms

The following is a slightly adapted recipe from my absolute favourite cookbook - BBC GoodFood 500 Triple-Tested Recipes. I have made many successful meals from this cookbook ever since I was given a copy for Christmas a couple of years ago, and would recommend it to anyone. In fact, since receiving my copy I have recommended it to many of my friends and family - some of whom now use it as much as I do.  I couldn't find any copies for sale online - but I've seen them for sale in various WHSmith shops around London for a bargain price of £5.99 and (in my opinion) it's so worth it!

This dish is described as ‘a simple pan-fry enriched with caramelised onions and
crème fraîche’, and it really is an easy meal to make. And so tasty! I cooked this dish last night, adapting the original recipe by using 100g less pork & instead adding some button mushrooms which needed using up. If you choose not to use mushrooms, then 600g of pork can be used.
The recipe produces 4 servings, but I served up 2 and popped the rest in the freezer to have another time. Enjoy! 

Recipe: Paprika Pork 

Ingredients: 

2 tbsp olive oil 
3 onions - sliced
500g pork fillet - cut into bite-sized chunks
120g button mushrooms - halved (my optional extra - very tasty!)
2 tbsp paprika 
300ml chicken or vegetable stock (I used chicken) 
100ml crème fraîche 
Freshly chopped parsley (to garnish)

Method:

• Fry the onions in the oil over a medium heat until they soften and become lightly coloured.
• Add the pieces of pork and stir over a high heat until they are sealed & brown all over.
• Stir in the paprika and the stock and bring to the boil.
• Cover and simmer for 20 minutes before adding the mushrooms.
• Continue to cook for another 10-15 minutes, until the pork is tender.
• Stir in the crème fraîche and simmer for 2 more minutes.
• Sprinkle over a little parsley and then serve.

I served my pork with rice & peas and it was delicious - and altogether it only took just over 45 minutes to do. Even better, the majority of this time the pork can be left to simmer whilst you get on with other things!

Lisa x 

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