This is a simple dish that I concocted off my own head when we didn’t really have much in. It’s simple, and not bad for a quick meal!
Ingredients (serves 3/4)
- 6 sausages of your choice
- Tin of chopped tomatoes
- English mustard
- Salt & Pepper
- 175ml White wine
- Tomato Purée
- Garlic to taste
- Sage, Rosemary
- Olive Oil
Method
Skin the sausages so they are soft and pop them in the frying pan in a little olive oil and the garlic, randomly cutting them up with a wooden spoon as you stir them around and seal them. Add in the white wine and season with salt & pepper and the herbs. Reduce the wine down by about half, add tomatoes, a squirt of tomato purée and 2 tea spoons of English mustard. Cover and continue to cook on medium for about 30 minutes.
Ratatouille is a great dish and full of vegetables which makes it cheap to do. I do Ratatouille slightly differently to many though as I exclude the common ingredients aubergine and bell peppers. My take on Ratatouille still keeps the tomato base in though, and I think it’s still just as yummy. Truth be told I vary the veg I put in each time, but I’ll write the recipe for the latest dish I made.
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 3/4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 3 small courgettes, chopped
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, sliced into batons
- Tin of chopped tomatoes
- 12-16 on-the-vine cherry tomatoes
- 5/6 broccoli florets
- 8 baby corns
- Your choice of herbs, e.g. Basil+Marjoram, Bay Leaf+Thyme or Provençal herbs mix
- Optional – Lea & Perrins
- Optional – 300g long grain rice
Instructions
Prepare all the vegetables. In a large saucepan, heat some olive oil and add garlic and onions. After a couple of minutes, add in the rest of the vegetables except the broccoli. Add the tin of tomatoes on top and add the herbs you have chosen. Optionally add some Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce. Give everything a good stir. After a couple of minutes add all the cherry tomatoes and broccoli and give a quick stir and cover.
If you want rice, in another saucepan immediately after adding the broccoli and cherry tomatoes, boil some water for the rice. After 5 minutes, add the rice and cook everything for a further 15 minutes. If you are not doing rice, just cook the ratatouille for 20 minutes with the lid on. Everything should be ready all at once – which is something I never get quite right, but thankfully this is such a simple dish so it makes it possible!
This is a slight variation of this recipe, and I haven’t actually done this yet, I’m just planning it! We’ll see how it goes later…
Ingredients
- 2 skin-on Chicken breasts
- Mushrooms
- Rice
- Chicken stock
- Garlic
- Onions
- Double cream
Instructions
Follow instructions on cooking chicken, copied from the original post:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Season chicken with Salt/Pepper. Fry quickly with skin down until golden brown. Flip over and cook for a minute. Take chicken, and put in an oven dish, and surround with the chicken stock. I put garlic in the stock as well as I love garlic. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until cooked.
While this is cooking, fry off some onion and garlic. Add mushrooms and fry them a bit. Add a little chicken stock, and the rice. Reduce. Add more chicken stock, reduce again. Repeat until stock is all soaked into the chicken. Once this is done, stir in some double cream.
Serve the chicken on the risotto bed. Should hopefuly be tasty!!
Update: It was tasty! Picture attatched…
I did this one a couple of weeks ago, and it was really yummy. I adapted this recipe, and made my own version.
Ingredients
- 2 skin-on chicken breasts
- Chicken stock (you can make this with Chicken Oxo cubes and hot water!)
- Mushrooms
- White wine
- Double Cream
- Spinach
- Tarragon (I had to get the Scwartz stuff as I couldn’t find any fresh)
- Garlic
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Season chicken with Salt/Pepper. Fry quickly with skin down until golden brown. Flip over and cook for a minute. Take chicken, and put in an oven dish, and surround with the chicken stock. I put garlic in the stock as well as I love garlic. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until cooked.
Melt some butter in a frying pan and add mushrooms until golden. Add white wine and reduce almost completely. Add cream, spinach and tarragon, and reduce by a third. While doing this, boil some rice.
To serve, put a bit of rice on each plate, chicken on top. put the sauce next to the rice/chicken as I had a lot of mushrooms and spinach in mine. Yum.
Pesto is quite a strong flavour, but I think it goes with Salmon just excellently. You can do whatever veg you like with it, but this is the meal I prepared last night.
Ingredients
- 2x Salmon fillet (steaks if you have lots of money!)
- Small jar of Pesto
- 4-5 British potatoes
- A courgette
- Milk
- Butter
- About 4 cloves of Garlic
Instructions
Prepare the Salmon by using a spoon to spread Pesto sauce on top in a thin layer (or if you really love Pesto, a thick layer!). Add a touch of salt & pepper. Slice courgettes, and dice up the garlic into tiny little bits, or use a garlic press… Peel and chop up potatoes into quarters.
Boil potatoes as normal until soft (I usually boil them slightly longer so they fall apart a bit easier). Mash with a tad of milk (or cream if you feel adventurous!), and butter. Salmon should be grilled for some time – I’m not sure how long as I undercooked ours last night, but use common sense here! Finally, fry the courgettes in butter for a minute or so, add the garlic, and turn up medium-high.
It’s a simple dish, but I still managed to undercook the salmon, oops!! Very tasty though.
