PixieCooks

This one’s a result of me trying to empty my freezer and trying to find new and fun ways to use up chicken thighs (cheaper than chicken breast, and tastier). I’ve been on a bit of a thyme kick recently – it’s a lovely fragrant herb, but less prone to that slight soapiness that rosemary has – and stuffing seemed to be a good way to get it into the mix.

I buy my chicken thighs with the bone in and skin on, but I removed them for this recipe – it’s easy enough to do with a decent pair of scissors – but if that squicks you get the butcher to do it for you or buy from the supermarket without .

Serves 4-6
Ingredients

• 100g Breadcrumbs
• 1 Onion, Diced
• Small knob of Butter and a splash of vegetable oil
• The Leaves from 6 stalks of Thyme (save the stalks)
• 6 Chicken Thighs, Skinned and Boned
• Sufficient Bacon to wrap

Method
Heat the butter and oil in a heavy bottomed pan (the oil helps stop the butter from burning) and saute the onions gently, so they soften but don’t colour.

Add the cooked onions to the thyme leaves and breadcrumbs, stir through and allow to cool.

The removal of the bone should leave a fairly obvious place to put the stuffing – you’re effectively just making a sausage shape and rolling the chicken around it – and once the chicken is stuffed, wrap the bacon around it to hold the stuffing in and secure using the stripped thyme stalks.

Roast at 200C (108c fan/400F/Gas Mark 6) for 35 minutes. Remove thyme stalks and serve.

Serve with potato dauphinoise (recipe to follow), mash or rice.

I had a jar of pear halves in juice in the fridge, a guest over and a serious craving for something sweet (I don’t generally keep biscuits or cakes in the house). After a little disconsolate poking around in the fridge and cupboards I remembered the lovely Apple Enchilada Dessert that Liz guest blogged over at $5 Dinners and this lush pudding was born. Nom.

Serves 4
Ingredients

• 250g/1 Cup (Granulated) Sugar
• 100ml/ 1/4 Cup Water
• 1tsp Ground Ginger
• 1tsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1pinch Ground AllSpice
• 100ml/ 1/4 Double/Heavy Cream
• 16 Pear Halves in Juice, drained
• 4 Soft Flour Tortillas

Method
Place the sugar and water in a strong based saucepan and bring up to the boil. Keep stirring (carefully! Hot sugar is a little like lava) and heating until the mixture turns a light caramel colour.

Add the spices (the mixture will foam up) and cream – stirring throroughly to ensure the sugar doesn’t seize on contact with the cold cream. If it does heat it gently to re-melt it.

Remove caramel from heat and add the pears.

Divide the pear caramel mixture between the tortillas and roll up. Serve with vanilla ice cream or pouring cream. Also delicious cold.

Like a lot of people, come the apocalypse I’ll be surviving on tinned tuna – which is to say I tend to buy more any time I’m doing a “big shop” whether or not I actually NEED any and I have currently got enough to see me through several months.

Tuna pasta, tuna pasta bake, tuna mayo sandwiches and baked potatoes with tuna are all very well, but they’re a little bit studenty (in as much as they’re easily made in a communal kitchen where someone keeps using the good knife), but these fishcakes take a teeny bit more work and taste infinitely more sophisticated.

Makes ~ 5 Fishcakes
Ingredients

• 1 Tin Tuna in Oil, Drained. Roughly 130g/4.5oz (you can use brine packed, but wash it a little first or the end result will be salty. Water packed is great)
• 3-4 Medium Potatoes, Boiled and Mashed (this is one of the very few circumstances under which you will find me peeling a potato, the skins just don’t work here)
• 1/2 Red Onion, Finely Diced (or a white onion, or spring onions)
• a Dusting of Plain/AP Flour
• 1 Egg, Beaten
• 2 Generous Handfuls Breadcrumbs
• Vegetable Oil, For Frying

Method
Combine the tuna, potato (just mash them with a tiny bit of the cooking water) and onion in a bowl. Make sure the tuna is well flaked and the whole is mixed thoroughly.

Put the flour on one plate, the egg on another and the breadcrumbs on a 3rd (I keep my breadcrumbs in the freezer and use them from frozen). Take a handful of the mixture (about a 1/5th) and shape into a fishcake. Coat in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs (it’s easiest to place on the plate then pat around the flour or breadcrumbs).

Fry each cake until golden brown on each side (do not even move the cake until it’s been frying for a minute on each side, you want it to form a crust).

You can eat at this stage, but I like to let them cool and reheat in the oven (200C/180C fan/400F/Gas Mark6) for 10 minutes as this takes all the rawness from the onion.

Serve with a green salad.

I really like tinned tuna – it’s tasty, versatile and with some judicious shopping it’s also cheap – but I’ve never got on particularly well with tuna steaks; I’ve always ended up finding them a bit dull and no more special than tinned. This recipe however was my tuna game changer, it’s seriously delicious.

I’ve tagged it 2* difficulty but that’s really because it needs to be marinated which isn’t hard but does require a bit of planning.

Serves 2
Ingredients

• Marinade
• 3Tbsp Soy Sauce
• 4Tbsp Soft Light Brown Sugar
• 1 Garlic Clove, Minced
• 2 Tuna Steaks
• Noodles
• 2Tbsp Peanut Butter
• 1/2 Tsp Chilli Flakes
• 1Tbsp Soy Sauce
• Around 2 Tbsp Boiling Water
• Sufficient Noodles For 2 (I used brown rice noodles that cook in hot water for 5 minutes)
• 3 Spring Onions/Scallions, Chopped

Method
Add all the marinade ingredients (except the tuna) to a pan and heat very gently, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Allow to cool and pour over the tuna, ensuring all sides are covered. Marinade for 30-60minutes.

Once the tuna is marinaded, fry in a hot pan using a small amount of vegetable oil for 1-2 minutes on each side. Don’t move the steak once it’s in the pan until you’re turning it, the trick is to make a crispy, yummy, crusty bit with the glaze.

Add all the noodle ingredients (except the noodles and spring onions) to a bowl and microwave for a minute (if you keep your peanut butter in the fridge, take it out a couple of hours beforehand so it’s not like trying to chip bits off a rock). Stir to combine, and add more boiling water if required to bring the consistency down to that of mayonnaise.

Cook the noodles as described on the packet, drain and combine with the peanutty sauce. Garnish with the spring onions.

Our local farmer’s market has started selling water buffalo (apparently they are like large, particularly stupid, cows), which tastes not dissimilar to beef but is lower in fat and seems to enthuse various food-evangelists. It’s a little tougher than beef, so lends itself well to being marinaded overnight before cooking. The marinade is lovely and would work well with some of the tougher cuts of beef (I’m particularly thinking frying steak).

For one steak
Ingredients

• 2 Tsp. lemon juice
• Scant tsp garlic salt
• 2 Tsp vegetable (or groundnut) oil
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 2 Tsp light brown muscavado sugar
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 2 Tsp soy sauce
• 1 Water Buffalo Ribeye steak (bone out)
• Extra soy sauce, to taste

Combine all ingredients (bar the steak and extra soy sauce) in a plastic bag and mix well. Place steak in the bag and massage into the meat.

Put the steak, in the marinade, in the bag, into the fridge for at least 6 hours, preferably 24.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan (skillet) and fry steak for 3 minutes on one side, turn, pour on half the reserved marinade and fry for a further 3 minutes (timings are not exact, time as per a steak – given the thickness and your preferred result).

Remove steak from pan and place on warm plate in very low oven to rest (as with a joint this helps the fibres relax and results in a softer meat).

Add some cold water to the marinade remaining in the hot pan (about a cup full) and bring to the boil. Add the extra soy sauce and stir to thicken slightly

Serve the steak with the sauce puddled to the side, brown rice and either a leafy salad or green beans.

I suspect this would barbeque well, if you kept dousing it with the marinade.

I’ve had a bag of breadcrumbs burning a hole in my freezer for almost a month now, and when D came round late on Saturday afternoon it seemed like time for a cooking lesson combined with a craving for something coated in breadcrumbs was too good a coincidence to waste*.

(*I’m aware that, as coincidences go, this is a rubbish coincidence, but it’s also entirely how my brain works and it’s probably just better to be happy for me.)

I’ve had Veal Parmigiana several times at our good local Italian and I like it very much and I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make a version with chicken.

Serves 4, or one and one D
Ingredients

• 3 Chicken Breasts, butterflied and battered out to 1cm/ 1/2″ thick (or 6 breast fillets, battered evenly thick, or 6 chicken thighs, deskinned and deboned, battered out to 1cm 1/2″ thick)
• Breadcrumbs equivalent to 3 slices of bread (more is not a bad thing)
• 1 Egg, beaten and seasoned
• 1 Cup plain (AP) flour
• 2 medium onions, diced small
• 400g/14oz tin/can of tomatoes, blitzed to smooth (or equivalent of passata)
• 2 Tbsp dried basil*
• 1 tbsp dried coriander (cilantro) leaves
• 4 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 pack (6 slices) dry-cure bacon (or Prosciutto , something with a bit of salt/smoke and not too much fat or water)
• 1 pack mozzarella (around 125g/5oz) sliced and well drained if wet
• Enough pasta for 4

(* it’s february, in Scotland. Fresh herbs come here to die, but if you’ve got them use about double the quantity, well chopped, and add them closer to the end of cooking)

Method
Pre-heat over to 200C (180C fan assisted/400f/Gas Mark 6)

Prepare a baking tray for the chicken (the breadcrumbs can be sticky, so either non-stick, silicone lined or lined with very lightly oiled foil).

Put the flour, seasoned egg and breadcrumbs out on 3 flat (dinner) plates.

Taking one piece of chicken at a time, lightly coat each piece in flour (tap off the excess), coat in egg (drip off the excess) and coat in breadcrumbs (press on gently then tap off the excess) and lay in the baking tray

Cook in oven for 20 minutes, turning after 10 minutes.

During the cooking time prepare the tomato sauce and start the pasta so it finishes 5 minutes after the chicken’s oven time is over.

Soften the onions gently, so they become translucent and smell yummy, but don’t start to brown.

Add the dried herbs, tomatoes and tomato puree, stir in and cook gently over a low heat until it becomes thick and delicious (this suace can be reheated, or kept in the warm pan for up to 20minutes).

Take the chicken out of the oven and turn over so the “best side” (where the majority of the breadcrumbs have stayed on and browned) is on the bottom, then place the sliced mozzarella evenly over the chicken and cover with the bacon. Put under a medium-high grill (broiler, if you’re in the US) until the bacon is cooked and browning (5-10minutes).

Drain the pasta and combine with the tomato sauce, warming through if required.

Serve the pasta gently draped over the top of the chicken.