Mix and Match Stir Fry Ideas

How are you? This grey weather is getting on my nerves but the occasional bursts of sun and warmth remind me spring isn't too far away, and in fact it is now March! Today I handed in 2,000 words of my dissertation for feedback, which means I'm a quarter of the way through and it's all going well.

Chicken Katsu Curry

EDIT: This post has been rewritten for clarity and superior taste. I have also changed the photos as my photography skills have vastly improved since February 2015 (when this was originally posted)

Originally I made a healthy version of chicken katsu curry, baking the chicken with only a tiny spray of oil, but then I realised that sometimes only butter will do! Now, I pan fry the breadcrumbed chicken to get the golden colour and then bake in in the oven to make sure that it’s cooked through. It’s a great meal and really straightforward to make. For those who don’t like spice - this is as mild a curry as you can get, but no less flavourful for it.

Impress Your Guests

I used to make this dish for my family when I was younger and recently revived it for my 22nd birthday (have I mentioned I'm 22 enough recently?!). It's a straightforward meal that is perfect for dinner parties as the prep can all be done in advance. Just make them up until the point you have to cook them in the oven and put them in the fridge instead. Shove them in the oven 30 minutes before you want to eat and enjoy a drink and nibbles with your guests.

I love the idea of effortless dinner parties and yet never succeed. One eye fully made up and frantically stirring a sauce with one hand while laying the table with the other. My friends find it hysterical, and my parents ask why I don't do dishes where everything is prepared well in advance. I suppose I like the challenge, but also I seem to have no concept of timing, and consequently run late for everything.

Things Are Finally Settling Down

I know it's been a long time since I wrote a post and I know that I keep apologising but things will get back to normal now and you'll get your regular dose of recipes again. I've just chosen all of my classes and I think I'm happy with them (having walked out of today's one half way through because the same subject made my cry in first year and switched it for a better class). Some are brilliant. like my writing techniques class - this week we had to write lonely hearts ads and last week it was acrostics - and some are straightforward and not too challenging - like my translation classes. My flat is also, mostly, behaving itself after a flood during a bad storm. Although I'm still trying to get the roof fixed, I'm beginning to understand that the French are unbelievably laid-back about water coming in through the roof and that if I ring every so often then hopefully it'll all get sorted before winter! The social aspect of uni is great - I've made plenty of friends - and I've even thrown my first baby dinner party (4 friends and lots of thai green curry). Here's to many more to come!

My friend from Manchester, Jed, was staying with me for a couple of weeks while he found himself a flat and one night I made the Hairy Biker's lemon chicken for us. Well, it was delicious and while it's very different to my favourite lemon chicken from Dim T in Winchester, it's got a punchy flavour without being cloyingly sweet and unhealthy. I've changed a couple of things around as I didn't think there was enough sauce but that the juice of 2 whole lemons would make it too sour (I was right - 1½ is about right but feel to add more if you want to).

My First Roast Chicken

I tagged along on a trip to Bath with my mum on Saturday and marched around all the places I wanted to visit in under two hours while she had lunch. It was great but I wish I'd had longer! I bought the most beautiful 21cm chef's knife made by I O Shen - the swirls along the handle aren't just decorative but help with the weight and balance of the knife. Then, I visited the amazing Foodie Bugle and chatted to the lovely owners, Silvana and John-Paul de Soissons about their beautiful and eclectic selection of kitchenware for sale. I purchased a pretty tile to take photos against, which is something I've been after for a long time, along with a Falcon enamel pie dish (for 2 potion lasagne in Poitiers) and their first printed magazine - it started out being online. My third and last stop was Richard Bertinet's bakery for some focaccia and a quiche for my supper. Once there I also couldn't resist one of his recipe books that focused just on bread recipes - an excellent find as I have enough cookbooks already that are half bread and half cake!

A Long Awaited Recipe!

* Argh! This was supposed to go up at the start of this week! I'm so sorry it's late. I've just finished my last exam and I'm packing for a trip to London and then home for mum's birthday. I hope you enjoy this recipe and forgive me for the delay.

I only have one exam left! Whooooo! Unfortunately it's also the longest/hardest but we'll skip that for now.* Today I am going to share with you a recipe for Thai Green Curry so that you can finally put that curry paste recipe from last month to good use. I don't know why it's taken me so long to post this - I think I just always thought I already had, as it's one of my favourite meals. It's really easy to make and if you don't want to make your own paste then I'd probably recommend Mae Ploy as the paste to use - you can buy it from Tesco and Asian supermarkets as well as probably others. It's a large pot and will last for ages but once you've made your own curry pastes then I can promise that you won't go back. 

Chicken And Mediterranean Veg

I'm on holiday! Well, I've been on holiday for a week and now I'm working as an office junior to make money to fund my cookware addiction (I've got my eye on a spice grinder and a good few cookbooks, including Jerusalem (Ottolenghi), ONE (Florence Knight) and Polpo) . . . also a slight shoe addiction . . . clothes in general really. Fortunately for my love of sleep, it's still only a four day week with the bank holiday.

I've just bought the Hairy Bikers' other two dieting cookbooks and have been cooking from them all week with plans for more recipes over the next fortnight. This recipe is inspired by their easy chicken bake (book 2) but I couldn't be bothered to stuff the chicken as it seemed an odd and rather pointless mix (grated courgette, cheddar and sundries tomatoes) and this style of recipe seems to be fairly standard across all recipe books and blogs - I saw another similar recipe on delicious.

Don't Say Never Trust A Skinny Cook: Thai Red Curry

I've been wanting to make red curry for a while but have never gotten round to it as I wasn't sure what to put in the dish other than not wanting duck. Recently I got the Hairy Bikers diet book as it was part of a deal on Amazon and I couldn't spot another book I wanted in a hurry (it was 3 for £10). Well, I'm so glad I got it - the recipes are amazing and food that I'd want to eat regardless of the fact that it's healthy and good for me. They counted calories to lose weight so that's the only nutritional info given but you can see just by glancing through the ingredients that there's nothing bad in it. They say that this recipe is 286 calories without rice (50g of uncooked basmati rice is 176 calories so the total calories in the dish is 462), which is nothing short of miraculous for a thai curry. What's even more miraculous is the fact that it tastes incredible and very similar to regular thai curries, I might have to give my green curry the same treatment next time. For once, I don't think I've made any changes to the recipe, it's pretty much perfect just the way it is. Actually, i've changed the cornflour to water ratio as it's like concrete - whatever you do don't leave it alone before it goes in the curry or your spoon will be stuck!

Don't Say Never Trust A Skinny Cook: Spanish Chicken

How are you all? University classes start up again for me today, and I'm really excited about my modules this semester. One module is called Identity and Power and is about French colonialism, another is named Culture and Conflict, covering first world war poetry, a book by Georges Perec about WW2 and then the war in Algeria makes up the third conflict that we study - it will be really interesting to learn about the world wars from a French perspective as up until now I have only studied in as part of the English GCSE and A level curriculum. My final module (ignoring the compulsory grammar one) is about careers and business management, which will hopefully be interesting and useful in the "real world"! As such meals are being planned in advance again, so there should be no shortage of interesting recipes for the blog, like this one that I'm sharing with you today. My current plan for meals next week involve a "light" katsu curry (see next Monday's Don't Say Never Trust A Skinny Cook), a lentil dish and the old favourite (with a homemade paste), thai green curry.

Chicken Yakitori

I'm revising for exams at the moment (french cinema in particular) and feel the need for mouth-watering but easy and healthy meals (Christmas had too much good but fattening food). I originally wanted something veggie to eat last night but then I spotted this recipe on delicious. and thought it looked, well, delicious. My version was for 2 people and actually includes noodle amounts - I just did a 200g pack of udon noodles and it was a bit too much so the recipe has less. Plus, buying a pre-made pack of stir fry vegetables is all well and good if the shop actually has them in stock. Waitrose, however, didn't and I wasn't going elsewhere as it was raining! Instead I made my own and personally, I think it tasted better - 'fresher'. I also used more vegetables than they recommended (which might be why I needed less noodles) because they were vegetables I liked (shock horror to anyone who knows me!). If you do your own mixed veggies then it only takes the time needed for the chicken to marinate, if not less.

If you say that 80g of vegetables are one of your five a day (it is according to the NHS) then my mix counts as just over 2 portions per person, and half a pre-bought mix is just under one and a half potions. Actually, that's quite an easy way to work out if you're eating enough veg - weigh it! I'm never sure if the amount of peas and corn that I cook is enough, so now I'll just make sure there's at least 80g per person when I cook veg.

Chicken Yakitori Recipe

Serves 2

If you don't want to make your own vegetable mix then use at least 225g of a pre-bought pack (more if you want)

Check how long the noodles take before you need them - mine took 9 minutes in boiling water so I started them off before the stir fry

Ingredients

2 medium chicken breasts, sliced into thin strips (see Chicken and Cashew nuts recipe for how)

3tbsp soy sauce

2tbsp honey (the original recipe says clear, and obviously squeeze honey is the easiest to measure but I don't have any so I just used the jar of cloudy honey from my aunt's bees and it worked well )

1tbsp dry sherry

1tbsp sesame oil (it smells so good!)

2tsp cornflour

150g dried udon noodles (I used clear spring ones bought from Waitrose)

Mix of vegetables - either 225g of a preprepared pack or your own mix, I used the below mixture and have suggested substitutions where needed, it totalled about 350g of veg:

• 1 red pepper (or any colour)
• 4 chantenay carrots (one small regular carrot also works)
• 5 baby sweetcorn (regular sweetcorn could be used)
• handful of sugar snap peas (garden peas, mangetout, okra)
• handful of beansprouts (can be left out)
• 4 spring onions
• the leaves of one pak choi bulb (handful of spinach)

Method

Mix the soy sauce, sherry and honey in a big bowl until the honey has dissolved to form a marinade.

Cut the chicken into long strips and add to the marinade, leave for 15 minutes (or do this before you go to work and leave, covered, in the fridge until you're ready for supper).

Whilst the chicken is marinading, prepare the veg if you're doing your own  - I cut the pepper and pak choi into matchsticks, spring onions, baby corn and sugar snaps into rounds, and I used a peeler to make ribbons of carrots (chantenay carrots are very cute and the perfect length for ribbons but consequently are a bee to peel into strips).

Start cooking the noodles so that they're ready when the vegetables and chicken are cooked.

Heat the oil in a large nonstick wok and add the chicken - keeping the excess marinade separate.

Mix the cornflour into the remaining marinade to make a sort of sauce (the cornflour will make it stick to the chicken etc).

Once the chicken has cooked, add the veg and stir fry for 1 minute.

Pour the cornfloured marinade into the wok and stir for 2-3 minutes until everything is coated in the sauce but the veg is still crunchy.

Drain the noodles and ladle into large bowls, adding the chicken and veg on top.

Enjoy!

Almost ready

Chicken And Cashew Nuts

So, you've all been waiting a long time for this dish and for that I apologise, I was trying to get a burn rate of less than 50%! My overriding piece of advice is to be careful when you make this - I've burnt myself with the oil twice in the five times I've made this. It was probably worth it though and that warning aside, let me tell you about the first time I ate this dish. It was in Thailand at the Rayavadee hotel, we'd just come back from a day of snorkelling around the islands (ok, I bobbed about them in a life jacket but that ruins the image!) and were relaxed and sun kissed. When we arrived at the restaurant I wanted something simple, without coconut milk, and chicken with cashew nuts caught my eye - it's one of my sister's favourite dishes, so I knew it tasted good. The sauce, which the chicken is cooked in, combined with the crunch of cashew nuts and the knowledge that there's three of your five a day (but doesn't taste like it) included, all combine to make this dish a constant favourite. 

The basis for this recipe came from The Wanderlust Kitchen, as did the tip for how to cut the chicken into thin slices. However, I have changed the recipe as it didn't include any vegetables and my family strongly believed that the best ones (from restaurants we've been to in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam) contained lots of vegetables.

Fajitas

I've been struck down by fresher's flu (despite no longer being freshers) so my cooking and blog writing has suffered a bit. I'm now well again and raring to cook some more. So far so good on that front: this week I've made scotch eggs, pasta, 4 batches of brownies, fajitas and tortilla española. In making all of that I have used up two dozen eggs! The meal I'm telling you about today is the only one that doesn't contain any eggs.

I'm not going to say that there's a recipe to make fajitas because there isn't, not really. Just choose the options on the list that you want, cook the chicken/quorn in the fajita seasoning mix and the relevant veg then place everything in bowls on the table. Voilà, one fun meal for everyone to enjoy. The photos were taken by Sarah, who stood on a chair, announcing she felt tall, in order to take some of the pictures.

Fajita "recipe"

Take your pick as which bits you want.

Put the tortillas in the microwave according to the instructions on the pack (normally about 30 seconds for 4).

I tend to serve two tortillas per person, heating the second ones as everyone finishes their last mouthfuls of the first.

Ingredients

Chicken (one small breast per person) or quorn (especially for Grace!) to the same amount as the chicken.

Fajita spice mix (mine's from Barts and I got it at Waitrose)

Shredded lettuce

Hot and/or cold sweetcorn (my sister will only eat it cold, ick!)

Salsa (Tracklemore do nice ones - I found it really difficult to find salsa in the small supermarkets near me and wound up buying mine in a cheese shop in Didsbury)

Chipotle sauce (Changos in Manchester does the best and they now sell it in store)

Grated cheddar cheese

Tortilla wraps

Mushrooms sliced and fried in butter

Melted red peppers and onions (2 of each plus butter)

the peppers and onions beginning to melt down

Method

Cook 2 red peppers and 2 onions, cut into long strips, in about 50-100g of butter over a low heat for 30 minutes, keep the lid on and stir occasionally, adding more butter if needed.

Cook the chicken/quorn in butter and add the seasoning to taste.

Heat/cut the rest of the ingredients as you wish and place in bowls.

Heat the tortillas in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Remind everyone that there's got to be enough for another round and tuck in!

What do you put in your fajitas?