Post 143: Cheesey Chilli Courgette Chicken Chard Pasta

Ooh, I do love an alliteration to start a post.

Pasta bake, always easy, always popular. For the first time I included chard; basically because this was the only thing from my veg box which it was possible to include; everything else just wouldn't go.

Recipe as ever:
- fry off some (2 medium) onions
- add in loads of garlic (4 cloves)
- three chillies, for a bit of spice up me life
- courgettes fried until soft
- finally, briefly I added the chard

Separately I sliced some chicken and cooked that. I then mixed all this with 1/2 litre passata and 500gs pasta, covering with 5 sliced balls of mozzarella. Then baked until browned at the top.

It was nice, although quite plain. I was glad to have used the chard up and somehow this made this dish feel like it was more healthy. I can't say it added a great deal to either the flavour or texture of the dish.

Part 1 of 5 of this weekend's posting marathon complete!

Post 142: Spit-Spot Veg Box Boy

After sunday's high of stew, it's all been a bit quiet. This is mainly through:
- ineptitude
- lazyness
- christmas party. (draft Red Stripe, Yay! bad head, Boo!)

Ineptitude and lazyness come from having made a nice pasta dish and then taken a photo with my proper camera rather than my phone. The photo is still sitting on the camera and hasn't made it to the computer yet. This purpose of this post is to force my hand into doing some useful cooking and posting over the weekend. So here's what I'm to do:

• Finally post this week's pasta dish
• Get round to making something from the Total Yoghurt I was sent to trial and report on that
• Make a first batch of christmas mince pies, because it's time to get in the festive spirit and I've got some super fresh eggs
• Cook something nice to eat, after the rubbish I've eaten this week
• Finally review the cookbooks I got sent, and maybe make a recipe out of them

If I manage all that, I'll be a very happy man

Post 141: Jamie Oliver-esque Beef Stew

For the first sunday in what feels like a month of sundays, I finally didn't have a roast dinner for sunday dinner. There's been rain, rain and more rain here, so it was difficult to move away from my beloved roast. But I thought that even more warming than a roast could be a stew.

Unusually for me, I tried to find a recipe before I started cooking. I found a lots of spanish options which included chocolate; that's just dirty. So I found myself finding Jamie Oliver's recipe the most appealing.   This ended up Oliver-esque, due to a memory lapse (I'd convinced myself tarragon was needed, when it was rosemary in the recipe). Here's my recipe:

• 2 onions chopped and cooked in butter and oil with a handful of sage (me dried. Jamie fresh) for 3 -4 minutes
• 1.5 kilos stewing beef, tossed in flour (and not cooked prior to putting in the liquid, which seemed strange)
• 2 pints beef stock, a really big squeeze of tomato puree
• 1 bottle red wine (me the cheapest I had, I'm sure Jamie would've chosen with based on other priorities)
• (this is where I really diverged from Jamie) Roughly 1 kilo potatoes, 4 smallish parsnips, 6 small carrots, two little white turnips. Basically I carried on adding root-veggies out of my vegbox until the mix looked nice.
• I then added a couple of cloves of garlic. Because I'd assumed they must go in at this stage: I was wrong on this bit, but it didn't seem to spoil anything

I then cooked all this in my bit pot @160c for 4 hours, and then turned down to 110c until we were ready to eat. In the meantime, I prepared the garnish of lemon zest, fine chopped garlic clove and thyme (coming on as a late sub for Jamie's intended Rosemary). This added a very fragrant touch to the finished dish. The meat was beautifully soft. Following Jamie's lead I served with crusty white bread and some Shiraz. I can recommend stew with both!

I'd never cooked a Jamie recipe before; very easy, very nice - can't wait for tomorrow's seconds!