I think I should preface this post by explaining my stance towards that most clichéd of Chinese culinary clichés, lemon chicken. It's that type of dish available at every "Chinese" restaurant, right from the Flower Drum, down to your little suburban takeaway, in varying quality (usually poor). Generally it consists of pieces of battered, deep-fried chicken, doused in...
I recently mentioned that I was going to be cooking for a big real grown-up dinner party. That was on Sunday night. We had 9 people in total: my family (4 of us), my friend Frances, and 4 of my parents' friends (the grown-up contingent). 2 of them are a husband and wife team who run a fabulous...
Square bowl of Spaghetti CarbonaraEarlier this week I cooked dinner for my good friend Daniel, who has recently moved out of home to his own place. Daniel just loves creamy food, so I made spaghetti carbonara and chocolate Cambridge creams. The spaghetti was not actually from Happy Days, but the dessert was.Chocolate Cambridge creams are similar to crème...
I recieved Happy Days with the Naked Chef for my 21st birthday last year, but have only recently got around to opening and reading through it. (This is why.) I'm also cooking for a scary real grown-up dinner party on Sunday (more on this later), which has made me go searching frantically through all my cookbooks trying to find suitable recipes.
So anyway, Happy Days is a really great book. As I was flipping through it I made a list of all the recipes I'd like to try (regardless of dinner parties).
- Jethro tart (pine nut tart)
- Summer cruit, elderflower and prosecco jelly
- Lovely lemon curdy pud
- Chocolate Cambridge cream
- Hamilton squash (a butternut pumpkin stuffed with flavoured rice)
- Roasted asparagus with rosemary, anchovies & pancetta
- Chicken in milk
- My Old Man's superb chicken
- Lovely tray-baked plaice with spinach, olives & tomatoes
- Sicilian roasted brill-steak with lemon, anchovies, capers and rosemary
- Parsnip & pancetta tagliatelle with parmesan & butter
- Courgette salad with chilli, garlic and mint
Sounds delicious, yes? Please check out this book!
For Monday dinner I made the interesting-sounding chicken in milk, served with mashed potatoes and green beans in tomato sauce (adapted from Jamie's recipe for runner beans in tomato sauce).
To make the chicken, you first brown it in a pan with oil and butter...
...pour off the excess butter, and add milk, sage leaves, lemon rind and a cinnamon stick...
...and put it in the oven for 1.5 hours (no lid).
Whilst it was in the oven, I made the beans and mashed potato. For the beans, you make a tomato sauce by frying some garlic, adding a tin of tomatoes and letting it simmer for 15 minutes. Then you add some boiled beans. Ta-dah!
Beans in tomato sauce
In the recipe, Jamie says to remove the meat from the bones and serve it on a plate. This sounded like way too much effort, especially as I was only eating with my parents. So I just put the whole chicken on the table, and we ate it like that.
Have at you!
Dinner!
Wonderful! Being cooked in milk makes the chicken skin deliciously bronzed and crispy, whilst the meat absorbs the flavours of the sage, lemon and cinnamon. The buttery, curdy sauce is also very tasty spooned over mash. It was quite a low-effort supper in total (as soon as the chicken goes into the oven it needs no further interference), so I definitely intend to keep this in the repertoire.
More Jamie to come...
So anyway, Happy Days is a really great book. As I was flipping through it I made a list of all the recipes I'd like to try (regardless of dinner parties).
- Jethro tart (pine nut tart)
- Summer cruit, elderflower and prosecco jelly
- Lovely lemon curdy pud
- Chocolate Cambridge cream
- Hamilton squash (a butternut pumpkin stuffed with flavoured rice)
- Roasted asparagus with rosemary, anchovies & pancetta
- Chicken in milk
- My Old Man's superb chicken
- Lovely tray-baked plaice with spinach, olives & tomatoes
- Sicilian roasted brill-steak with lemon, anchovies, capers and rosemary
- Parsnip & pancetta tagliatelle with parmesan & butter
- Courgette salad with chilli, garlic and mint
Sounds delicious, yes? Please check out this book!
For Monday dinner I made the interesting-sounding chicken in milk, served with mashed potatoes and green beans in tomato sauce (adapted from Jamie's recipe for runner beans in tomato sauce).
To make the chicken, you first brown it in a pan with oil and butter...
...pour off the excess butter, and add milk, sage leaves, lemon rind and a cinnamon stick...
...and put it in the oven for 1.5 hours (no lid).
Whilst it was in the oven, I made the beans and mashed potato. For the beans, you make a tomato sauce by frying some garlic, adding a tin of tomatoes and letting it simmer for 15 minutes. Then you add some boiled beans. Ta-dah!
Beans in tomato sauce
In the recipe, Jamie says to remove the meat from the bones and serve it on a plate. This sounded like way too much effort, especially as I was only eating with my parents. So I just put the whole chicken on the table, and we ate it like that.
Have at you!
Dinner!
Wonderful! Being cooked in milk makes the chicken skin deliciously bronzed and crispy, whilst the meat absorbs the flavours of the sage, lemon and cinnamon. The buttery, curdy sauce is also very tasty spooned over mash. It was quite a low-effort supper in total (as soon as the chicken goes into the oven it needs no further interference), so I definitely intend to keep this in the repertoire.
More Jamie to come...
This is exactly the type of cake my parents love - Greek-style and moist, full of almond and citrus syrup. When they saw the photo in Every Day, they immediately requested that I make it.It contains butter and sugar, Greek yogurt, eggs, orange zest, almond meal, semolina, flour, milk and baking powder, with the egg white being whipped...
Here are the photos from the Polish Festival at Federation Square on Sunday.Polish Donut!I got a paczki (pronounced "ponchki") donut. It's filled with powidla (plum jam) and has a lemon sugar glaze on it. Fabulous!Inside a polish donutIf you missed the festival, fear not, because these fabulous donuts are available at Monarch cake shop on Acland street all...
The Johnston Street Fiesta is an annual celebration of all things Latin-American and Hispanic, with dance and music performances, arts and craft stalls, and my favourite, fabulous food!We went on both Saturday and Sunday. Stupidly, I had lunch before hitting the festival on Saturday, and only had room to eat a meat and onion empanada, some Peruvian flan...