We Won an Award!

As you might have guessed from the sudden trailing off of posts, my writing gig at The Mancunion has mostly come to an end. In fact, in less than a week my time at the University of Manchester will be over and then it's on to pastures new.

My last essay! And the most interesting

Currently I'm procrastinating grammar revision and thought I'd let you know about an exciting development. As you might know, Miriam and I are co-editors of the food and drink section at The Mancunion and a couple of weeks ago we won Best Section during the 2017 Celebrate Week Awards ceremony. This is quite impressive (and slightly surreal) when you consider the fact that we've only been editing the pages since January.

The award itself

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. 

Hi And Bye: A Very Quick Recipe

Argh!!! Exam season is upon me and I have only got a week before a major deadline AND my French speaking exam. Scarily, in a month's time I shall have finished my exams AND be half way through my degree *cue manic nail biting terror*. This means that my recipes will be uploaded somewhat erratically as it will be a nightmare few weeks but I do have a few posts up my sleeve for you pre-written to avoid me stressing out too much. On a brighter note, I got 67 in my last essay, which is worth 40% of one module's final mark - for those of you who aren't familiar with university marking - one teacher said she'd only ever given 80 once before and that was because she couldn't have sat down and written a better essay herself. 67 is equivalent to a high 2:1, which is great. I also had a presentation to do on Wednesday, so hopefully that went well, I think it did but I won't get the mark for a few weeks.

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

i Dunderi

Earlier this year BBC had the show Two Greedy Italians on iPlayer. Bored one day, I decided to watch an episode, and it was great fun. Antonio Carluccio seemed like a cuddly teddy bear whilst Gennaro Contaldo cooked and chivvied Antonio along. One of the recipes was for ricotta dumplings in a spicy tomato sauce. I wanted to make it but it was too late that evening (about 10pm) and so I collared a couple of friends the next day and asked if they wanted to revise after class (ok, so I was procrastinating my exam revision when I watched the show). Grace said yes and came over for one of the first meals that was truly vegetarian and not a meat based recipe that I'd adapted. The i dunderi looked so tasty and simple on screen, and they are, in fact, delicious and not very complicated to make. I made them again last night and from start to finish the process probably took about an hour, maybe a little more. The recipe is generous and feeds two ravenous people or three fairly hungry ones. As my friend and I weren't very hungry last night, there were leftovers for lunch and they tasted just as good as they did yesterday. The only trouble with this recipe is that it generates a lot of leftover egg whites, I get around this by freezing them in a labeled container (don't forget to mark how many whites there are) or making lemon and poppy seed cake or meringues.

My recipe is slightly different to the original, mainly through some additions to the sauce. With regards to the chillies, you can always add more, but start with just one and go from there. A suggestion that I read in a foodie magazine the other day was to cut the chilli in half lengthways and then touch the tip to your tongue and that would give you an idea of the spiciness of it. I tried that yesterday and it worked quite well, it meant that I only used one chilli to start with and then tried the sauce before deciding that another one would help up the kick a bit more, rather than adding three in straight off.

The cut and very floured dumplings!

i dunderi recipe

Serves 2-3 people

Only use the parmesan if you are not vegetarian (my friend fortunately doesn't eat meat for taste reasons and not ethical ones, which is good as I've only recently discovered parmesan isn't vegetarian friendly, oops). If you are veggie then you need to find a substitute (according to the vegetarian society the approved ones are Bookham's Not Just A Pasta Cheese and Pamazano).

I bought the pasta flour from the deli section of the Carluccio restaurant in Spinningfields as the small supermarkets around here don't stock it (big ones should though).

If using a stand mixer, make the sauce whilst it's kneading, if kneading by hand make this after you've finished kneading.

Ingredients

Dumplings

200g pasta flour, also known as 00 flour, plus extra

225g ricotta cheese (I buy 250g pots and put the whole lot in - it works fine)

30g grated parmesan

3 egg yolks

Seasoning

Sauce

Large drizzle of olive oil

3 garlic cloves, crushed or finely diced

1+ chillies, very finely cut 

1 large onion, roughly chopped

800g (2x400g tins) chopped tomatoes

Lots of salt (add a little sugar if it gets too salty)

Pepper

Method

If you are using a stand mixer then place all the dumpling ingredients in the mixer's bowl and use the dough hook, if you don't have a stand mixer then use a large bowl and a spoon or hand held whisk with dough hook attachments.

Combine the ingredients and knead for 5-10 minutes, adding more flour if the dough is extremely sticky.

To make the sauce, heat up the olive oil in a large pan and soften the diced onion, garlic and chopped chilli before adding the tinned tomatoes and salt and pepper. Leave to simmer.

Onions, chilli and garlic softening in oil

To make the dumplings you need to roll a quarter of the dough at a time into a ball and cover the outside with flour to stop it from being sticky.

Roll the floured ball into a long sausage shape, about an inch in diameter, and cut widthways into centimetre wide oblongs. Add flour to the cut sides and place so they do not touch one another on a floured surface.

Repeat the steps with the other three quarters of the dough.

Check the seasoning and spice of the sauce and put a large pan of water on to boil.

When the water is boiling place the dumplings in it and run a spoon or something over the bottom of the pan to loosen any stuck dumplings.

When the dumplings float to the top they are cooked.

Scoop them out of the top of the water using a slotted spoon and place into the tomato sauce.

Once all the dumplings are in the sauce, toss them together and they are ready to serve.

Enjoy.