Chicken Pie

Recipes that I get from family and friends will always mean a little more to me. This recipe is one I have with me from my childhood, where my mum would cook it once in a while. She herself had gotten it from a friend. Now it's a family favourite. My dad and my other half both love it, and when served to my in-laws this weekend, it was a great success. It does take some time to do, but it's as easy as anything to do. And it is definitely worth it! And this is quite big and could probably feed 6-8 people. But it is just as good the day after heated up, so I never cut down on it!

Ingredients:
Pastry lid:
200 ml white all purpose flour
100 ml wholemeal flour
100 g melted butter
50 ml cold water
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg for brushing

Filling:
250 ml unboiled rice
2 red bell peppers, chopped into chunks (easy to pick out for the ones who don't like them)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 whole grilled chickens
1 onion, roughly chopped
200 g closed cap mushroom, roughly sliced
1 tbsp butter for cooking
2 tbsp flour
300 ml chicken stock
200 ml single cream

1. Mix the ingredients for the pastry lid together to form a firm dough. Leave the dough to rest coolly while preparing the rest.
2. Boil the rice as instructed. When the rice is finished, add the soy sauce and the bell peppers. Add this mix to the bottom of a big oven proof dish. Make sure it is big enough to fit everything.
3. Rinse the chicken off the bones. This is a messy job and takes a while, so it can easily be prepared before. Make sure there are no bones left in the meat! Lay the chicken in a thick layer over the rice.
4. Sautée mushroom and onion in the butter. When they have gotten a light golden colour, add the cream, chicken stock and flour to make a sauce. Let it simmer for a bit to make it thicker. Taste with salt and pepper, and pour over the chicken.
5. Roll out the pastry till it's just big enough to cover the dish. Lay it across your pie, and tuck any excess pastry down the inside of the dish to let it soak up some extra saucy goodness.
6. Cook at 220 °C for 15-20 minutes, until the crust is a lovely golden brown.

Serve just as it is or with a green salad.

It might not look too pretty, but it tastes delicious!

Irish Oaten Rolls

Baking has been a lifelong passion of mine. Anyone I know can vouch for that. I love trying out new things, and it's always encouraging when a new recipe turns out good. I've wanted to make bread for a bit, but I don't eat a lot of bread on my own, and living in university halls, I don't have a lot of freezer space. Therefore, I decided to make rolls. But I also wanted to try something new. I found this recipe on one of the food blogs I read, and it caught my eye.

This recipe makes 12 rolls
Ingredients:
400 g wholemeal flour
100 g oats, plus a little bit to sprinkle over the rolls before they go in the oven
1 tsp salt
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
300 ml Guinness
150 ml natural yogurt
4 tbsp vegetable/sunflower oil
4 tbsp honey

1. Preheat the oven to 220 °C.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Measure and mix the wets. A good tip is to alternate between the oil and the honey, starting with the oil, which makes the honey run off the spoon more easily.
4. Add the wets to the dry and mix well. The dough is supposed to be a little bit sticky, but if it seems too sticky, add some extra flour.
5. Form the dough into 12 rolls. Keep the tap running with cold water, so that you can rinse off your hands every now and then, which also makes it easier to form the rolls.
6. Just before you put the rolls in the oven, sprinkle a bit of oats over them, and press them a bit down into the rolls. The rolls are supposed to be a bit flattened, about 3-4 cm thick.
7. Put the rolls in the oven for about 12-15 minutes, until they are dark brown.

Serve with some butter and a topping of your choice, like a slice of mild cheese or marmalade.

Taco Pie

After a long weekend of not a lot to do, I decided to make a proper meal for when my other half came visiting, and I wanted to try something new and exciting. I looked through several websites, some of my recipe books, and most of the food blogs I read regularly. A lot was tempting, but this recipe caught my eye. I had been craving Mexican food for a while, and this one was a bit different from what you usually think of when you think of taco. It was a great success, and the "hubby" ordered it again after only a few days. And I loved it!

Ingredients:
1 roll of ready made pastry (You can make your own, but I decided to do it the easy way)
500 g mince meat
1 sachet of Taco meat spice mix (2 if you want it extra spicy)
1 chopped onion
100 ml water
1 tin chopped tomato
300 ml crème fraîche
A pinch of pepper
Some garlic (powder, fresh or purée)
Grated cheese

The meat can be changed after what you prefer. I want to try making it with chicken some time, but for now I've only made it with lean minced beef.

1. Preheat the oven to 200 °C
2. Cook the mince and onion in a pan.
3. When it's cooked through, add the taco spices and water, give it a quick stir, and add the tomato.
4. Mix the crème fraîche, pepper and garlic after taste
5. Pour the meat mix in the prepared pastry
6. Pour the crème fraîche over the meat, and add cheese on top. Be careful with the crème fraîche, as it might be a bit much. I left out about 50 ml, which I used kept and used as a topping.
7. Put in the oven for 20-30 minutes.

Serve hot with a green salad and soured cream topping

Introduction

Lately I've been looking a lot on different blogs with recipes as a theme, and I've decided that I want to try it as well. I love cooking and baking, and I'll try to get better at making it look nice and take a picture of it, and then share the picture with the recipe and a few thoughts.

I'll start off with something simple: American pancakes. Last night I decided to make myself a nice pudding/evening snack, and the urge to bake something hit me. But as it was already getting late, it had to be something quick and simple. I found this recipe on BBC Food, but as any amateur chef, I had to add a tiny touch of my own.

Ingredients:
130g all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
130ml milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp sunflower oil

1. Start by mixing flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a bowl.
2. Measure milk in a jug, and add egg, vanilla extract, butter and oil, and whisk together.
3. Add the wet to the dry, and whisk into a smooth batter.
4. Heat the frying pan, and cook the pancakes in oil or butter. The recipe gives about 12 pancakes. I used a 100ml measuring cup to add the batter to the pan (in the lack of any other tools in my very limited university accommodation kitchen), so I'd say that one pancake uses about 70-80 ml batter.
5. Serve immediately. Traditionally the pancakes are served with maple syrup, but I didn't have that. What I did have, on the other hand, was some single serving pots of jam that I stole from a breakfast buffet in a hotel a while back, and that went just as well with them. I tried honey as well, but I preferred the jams.

This works well as a treat for breakfast, or pudding, as was my case. For pudding, I'd serve 3-4 pancakes per person, as they're not too big. And it is hard to stop once you've started.