One pot meal: Chicken with courgettes and green olives

This is one of those handy little recipes which kills a few birds with one stone. It's all done in one pot, which I'm a big fan of (less washing up) and it's a good use for courgettes of which there is already a glut (and they've only just got started.) It's also fairly low fat and children like it.

I bought a wide cast iron pan with a lid from Aldi and it is such a lovely thing to cook meals in. (The posh, the rich and those with generous friends who bought them one for a wedding present will have similar pans made by Le Creuset.)

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
glug of olive oil
Four or five courgettes
1 pack of chicken thighs (or chicken breasts) - about 250g to 300g cubed chicken
1 cup (about 200g) rice
Pinch of saffron
1/3 cup sherry
1 and 2/3 cup water or chicken stock
handful of pitted green olives
fresh thyme

METHOD:

1. Chop the onion and garlic and soften in the olive oil.
2. Chop the courgettes and add to the pan.
3. Use scissors to snip the chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces straight into the pan.
4. Add the rice, saffron and sherry and bubble until the liquid is reduced.
5. Pour in the water or stock (I use half a Knorr chicken stockpot) and add the chopped thyme and the green olives.
6. Put the lid on and leave over a low heat for 15 to 20 minutes until the chicken and the rice are cooked through.
7. When it's cooked leave to rest for about 10 minutes. Then check the seasoning and grind over some black pepper before serving.

This makes a nice big pan full and serves four to six people.

Baking on the Edge...

I love a competition me, so imagine my joy at news of the delicious Miss English Mum's latest Big Bakeoff: Baking on the Edge baking competition with the fabulous prize of a Green and Blacks choccy hamper.

Of course I had to get my oven gloves on and have a bit of a bake. The rules are that there are no rules. Excellent. I like things to be clear from the start.

So here goes.

Entry number one:

This is a piece of the Millionaire's Shortbread I made for the Brownies' end of term party. Look at the way it is rudely sticking its little toffee tongue out at you, daring you to eat it. Cheeky thing.

Entry number two:

Coalition cake. I have previously blogged about this cake having first made it just after this year's General Election. It's basically a chocolate and vanilla marble cake, but until further notice I'm calling it Coalition Cake. 

The amount of coalition depends on the current political climate and this one, for some reason, was slightly heavy on the Conservative (represented by the rich, dark chocolate cake). The fragrant, vanilla Lib Dems are obviously not having such a good week this week. It is smothered in vanilla icing, an addition requested by my children. It  has already been on charity duties where it was declared "lush" and raised £14.50.

Bake off!

That title almost sounds rude doesn't it? But it's not, it refers to English Mum's Big Bakeoff which has the rather fabby prize of a stonking hamper from Green and Blacks.

The rules are that there are no rules, you just have to bake something and email it (a picture, not the actual thing!) to English Mum by the end of July. So I will.

Hmmm. The question is, what to cook?

Wild strawberry and orange muffins

We had these for breakfast this morning, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you. The garden is full of wild strawberries at the moment - mostly the tiny alpine variety, but also some that are bigger fruited, ripe when pale pink with red pips and with a lovely fragrant taste.

Ingredients:

225g (8oz) plain flour

2 tsp baking power

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

grated rind of 1 orange

100g (4oz) melted butter (or same weight of sunflower oil)

100g (4oz) caster sugar

1 large egg

the juice of the orange topped up to 125ml (4 fl oz) with milk

approx 1 big handful of wild strawberries or chopped ordinary strawberries (or other berries).

Method: 

• Combine all the dry ingredients. Whisk them with a fork to get some air into the mixture.
• Combine all the wet ingredients, then add with the strawberries to the dry ingredients.
• Stir briefly to make a lumpy batter, then spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas 5 (180 deg C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

Eat while still warm!

Vegetarian sausage rolls

Today's baking has been vegetarian sausage rolls for the Brownies trip to Carew Castle tomorrow. It was all rather last minute, having only found out about the need for such things when I got back from my shopping trip yesterday but a rummage in the freezer yielded some useful ingredients.

I worry about the pig in pork sausage rolls. Which bit of the pig is one concern as all pig parts are considered edible. If the reasonably attractive bits are the ones packed into polystyrene or displayed on the butcher's counter you can be pretty sure that the unattractive bits are the ones that end up in sausage rolls. I'm pretty certain that the sausage roll is at the end of the food chain when it comes to choice of bits for the 'pork' content. If you read the ingredients of a pack of sausage rolls the actual 'pork' bit is horribly low and the definition of what actually constitutes 'pork' is worrying too.

Then there's the question of the welfare of the pig and cheap frozen supermarket pork sausage rolls aren't likely to feature even the worst bits of British pigs reared in happy conditions outside rooting about in the undergrowth. These are more likely to be their foreign counterparts reared indoors in unspeakable conditions of the sort that were banned in Britain years ago.

But there is an alternative to pork in a sausage roll role helpfully provided by Delia in her seminal Christmas book years ago. Christmas isn't Christmas without Delia's book and when I got it down from the shelf this morning it helpfully fell open on the vegetarian sausage rolls recipe.

The alternative is what is called a Glamorgan sausage - breadcrumbs, onion, Cheddar cheese and chopped fresh garden herbs mixed to a paste with milk or cream and seasoning. It behaves exactly the same as sausage meat but without the dubious content.

My hurried freezer rummage found several bags of cheesy breadcrumbs - useful freezer bounty made by whizzing left over cheese sandwiches in the food processor. This gives a handy bag of breadcrumbs for gratins and breading fish, but always label it so you don't make a cheesy apple Charlotte by mistake (although that one might actually work!) I also found a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry and there was a block of cheese in the fridge and herbs in the garden. Bingo. All it needed was a bit of mixing, roll the pastry out a little thinner, cut in half, add the long rolls of Glamorgan sausage, egg glaze, cut into slices and bake at Gas 7 until golden brown.

Hopefully acceptable for the Brownies tomorrow but also perfect for picnics. Delia's vegetarian sausage rolls are - like dogs - not just for Christmas!

A political statement in cake form

I've been making this cake - coalition cake - since the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats became best friends after the General Election. I suppose the joke is wearing thin now and I'll have to go back to calling it plain old chocolate and vanilla marble cake but for now I like calling it coalition cake so that's what it is.

Although who is the chocolate and who is the vanilla? Perhaps Cameron is the chocolate, because he's rich (but not that dark) and Clegg is the vanilla? I don't think I have quite thought this one through but, whatever, the two mixes go together well in a tasty and satisfying way.

The recipe is your basic Madeira sponge mixture. I use Rachel Allen's recipe for her wonderful 'Bake' book, which is 225g (8oz) butter creamed with the same quantity of caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in four eggs and two teaspoons of vanilla extract and then fold in 225g (8oz) plain flour and two teaspoons of baking powder. Finally add 50ml (1.75 fl oz) milk and then put half of the mixture in spoonfuls around the prepared 20cm (8 in) cake tin. To the remaining mix add 50g (2oz) sifted cocoa powder and then dollop that into the tin with the vanilla mix.

Use a skewer or the tip of a knife to swirl the mixture around until marbled. Don't go mad - you're looking for a coalition with two distinct identities not one bland homogeneous whole. Politicians take note.

Bake at 180 degrees C (350 degrees F or gas mark 4) for 45 minutes, leave to cool in the tin for ten minutes, then turn out and leave on a wire rack until completely cold.

I like to ice mine and I use a basic vanilla butter icing. Use half and half unsalted and salted butter and use up to twice the amount of sugar than butter. I start with 100g of each (50g of each butter and 100g of sugar) then add an extra 50g of sugar if I think it needs it. Scrape the seeds out of a vanilla pod and add those too. Whip it all up with electric beaters until really fluffy and add a teaspoon of just boiled water at the end.

Smother the cold cake in the icing and serve in slices. Sadly no picture of this one. I have made it twice in recent weeks and twice it has been eaten before I have remembered to take its picture. I'll have to make it again...

Oaty bread rolls

Sometimes things turn out perfectly and with me it's usually an accident. The same can be said for bread which is a moody beast at the best of times. It seems to be affected by the weather and humidity and the temperature of the room and the position of the moon in pisces. Actually I made that last one up, but I might be right!

Anyway I made a batch of bread on Sunday having been shamed into it by Pipany who, besides making pretty hand sewn and embroidered things also bakes bread almost every day. I used to, but then I went back to work and a few daily habits (bread making, dusting, tidying up, mowing the lawn) have been lost on the way.

The basic recipe I use for bread is in Bread: River Cottage Handbook Number three by Dan Stevens, which is such a brilliant book. He explains exactly how to make excellent bread and my breadmaking has improved since I got it.

His basic recipe is for a kilo of flour with 10g of yeast, 20g of salt, a handful or two of extras (like oats and seeds), 600ml of warm water, maybe a glug of oil or a knob of butter and then the magic of kneading.

For Sunday's rolls I use white flour and 10g of dried yeast which I start in the warm water with a teaspoon of golden caster sugar. I leave that in a warm place to froth up while I add the other bits to the flour: salt (but I only use 15g, not Dan's 20g), one tablespoon (or so) of runny lavender honey, a good big glug of sunflower oil and two handfuls of porridge oats. I then pour in the water and yeast and leave it in the Kenwood mixer to knead for ten minutes.

I then put the dough to rise until it reaches the top of the bowl, then let the mixer gently knead it again - and you must be gentle with the dough. Dan Stevens has got me out of my kneading and pounding at dough frame of mind and into a much gentler one. I then leave it to rise for a second time, again to the top of the bowl. I think it's the double rising that really develops the gluten and makes good bread. It can't be rushed.

Next it's time for shaping (again gently) and I cut this dough up into 16 pieces and shape into rolls. Then you need bowls - I use wide soup bowls. The first is for milk and the others for whichever coatings you want on your rolls. I use porridge oats and poppyseeds. What you do is submerge the rolls in the milk and then into the coatings, patting it in all over. Then put the rolls onto a baking tray and leave them to rise for a third time until - as Dan Stevens puts it - they're absolutely bursting to be baked.

They then go into a pre-heated oven at it's hottest temperature (I manage Gas mark 9, but hotter is better) for ten minutes. Then you turn the oven down to Gas 4 to 5 for another 10 to 15 minutes and they're done.