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Happy Hallowe’en!
This. Always and forever.
Full Works Fajitas
First thing to sort is the meat marinade. This will work for chicken, beef, or turkey as I used here.
For meat marinades, use zest rather than juice to avoid toughening the meat, plus it gives a better flavour. An hour for this marinade is plenty.
Fajita Meat Marinade
1 red chilli, finely chopped
Zest from 1 lime
A quarter of one red onion, chopped fairly small
1-2 tsp crushed garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon of salt
A quarter cup of olive oil
Chop up your meat as how you want it; bite size chunks, strips, etc. I had 400g turkey breasts pieces and they fit into one regular sized ziploc bag with the marinade mix. Of course, you can pop it into a dish and cover with cling film-whichever is easiest.
Leave aside for an hour, turning/ stirring occasionally.
While the meat is marinating, you can get started on your salsa and guacamole.
Salsa
3-4 tomatoes quartered
3 cloves of garlic
1 small onion roughly chopped
1 green chili (half if you don’t want it that spicy)
A good handful of coriander chopped
1 teaspoon of salt
Squeeze of lime to taste
Place tomatoes, onion and chili on a shallow baking pan. Pour a couple of quick rounds of olive oil over the pan, and give them a mix. Grill for about ten minutes, or until gently softened.
Blend the grilled mix and the salt, chili and coriander until fully, uh, blended! If it’s a tad spicy for your liking, add a squeeze of lime juice to neutralize it a little.
Set aside until ready to serve. Or, you know, start decimating it with tortilla chips to soak up the Margarita that may or may not have appeared.
Chunky guacamole, serves four-
1 avocado
1/2 large red onion
5 cherry tomatoes
Handful of coriander
1/2 teasp crushed garlic
Seasoning
Juice of half a lemon
Finely chop your onion and tomatoes, add to a good sized cereal type bowl. Scoop out your avocado and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon. Add your crushed garlic. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Chop your coriander, add in and mix it up. Using a regular knife and spoon, chop into the avocado as you mix it all up, making it as chunky as you wish. Cover with cling film and pop in the fridge until ready to serve.
Griddling the Meat & Veg
I griddled the turkey first, set it aside in a pan to keep warm in the oven while I finished off the peppers and onions.
In order to make sure there’s not too much liquid in the pan when cooking the meat, take it out of it’s marinade bag with your hands and let some of the mix come off. Pour off the pan juices onto the meat while it stays warm in the oven.
Griddle your veggies until softened.
Dish up and tear some coriander over the top of the meat and veg.
Serve with sour cream/ Glenisk creme fraiche (my preference), grated cheddar cheese and tortilla wraps. You can add rice, but there’s plenty going on here for four as a main course.
Salmon and Spinach Omelette with Chunky Guacamole
Omelette, per person-
2 eggs
Handful of spinach
4 tablespoons cooked salmon
1/4 red onion
4 cherry tomatoes
Seasoning
Olive oil
Chunky guacamole, serves four-
1 avocado
1/2 large red onion
5 cherry tomatoes
Handful of coriander
1/2 teasp crushed garlic
Seasoning
Juice of half a lemon
To make the guacamole-
Finely chop your onion and tomatoes, add to a good sized ceral type bowl. Scoop out your avocado and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon. Add your crushed garlic. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Chop your coriander, add in and mix it up. Using a regular knife and spoon, chop into the avocado as you mix it all up, making it as chunky as you wish.
To make the omelette-
Chop the onion finely. Quarter the cherry tomatoes. Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk.
Add a splash of olive oil to the pan, cook the onions for about five minutes before adding the whisked eggs. Break up your cooked salmon with a spoon and evenly distribute around the pan, following with the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the spinach over the top.
Once the edges start to firm up around the pan, transfer to under a grill. Make sure the spinach isn’t too close to the heat.
Once the omelette is cooked through and turning a little golden, remove from the grill and transfer to a plate using a large spatula.
Spoon the guacamole over the top in the centre and serve.
Monday Pick-Up
Everyone seems to have the Monday grumps today. Here, have some cute. Ahem.
YAAAAAAAAASSSSS
Ten Minute Tortilla Pizza
Originally posted on my old blog Where’s My Parade?! April 2012.
Spotted on the Tesco Real Food site, I couldn’t wait to give Tortilla Pizzas a go.
Who doesn’t love pizza, right?! We don’t like the love handles though, BOOO!
Rocking in at just over 400 calories a serving, this is a great compromise. It really is all the flavour, with a helluva lot less time needed to work it off after.
You might think that you’d need a second tortilla, but the toppings are rich and filling, so you’ll have more than enough going on with the one serving.
It is incredibly simple and cheap to make, and of course, hugely adaptable to your preferred toppings.
Perfect mid-week comfort food, and easy on the waistline!
Quick, cheap and easy.
You are what you eat, wha’!
Black Forest Cheesecake
Edited and re-posted from my old blog Where’s My Parade?!
Originally posted June 2012.
Recipe taken from here.
- 250g plain chocolate biscuits
- 125g butter, melted
- 3 teaspoons gelatine
- ½ cup (125ml) water
- 250g packet cream cheese, softened
- ¾ cup (165g) caster sugar
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 300ml thickened cream
- 425g can pitted black cherries
- topping
- 1 tablespoon cornflour
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- 1 tablespoon Cointreau or Grand Marnier
Blend or process biscuits until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add butter; process until combined. Press biscuit mixture evenly over base and side of a 20cm spring form tin, place on oven tray; refrigerate for about 30 minutes or until firm.
Meanwhile, sprinkle gelatine over the water in a small heatproof jug; stand jug in small saucepan of simmering water. Stir until gelatine dissolves; cool 5 minutes.
Beat cream cheese, sugar and juice in a small bowl with an electric mixer until smooth; transfer to a large bowl.
Whip cream until soft peaks form, fold into cheese mixture in two batches; fold in gelatine mixture. Drain cherries over a bowl, reserve ¾ cup of the syrup for the topping.
…the next part of the recipe says to pat half the cherries dry on absorbent paper. Don’t bother. I lost the will doing this. The juice might bleed into the cheese mix so perhaps pat them all together between a couple of kitchen roll sheets to take the worst off. I, ridiculously, patted each one dry, one by one…
The original recipe states you will need half the cherries for this recipe but lob as many as you want in. I think you could’ve gotten away with using nearly all of them. You can see I put some on the top, which ruins the smooth glossy effect, but sure, ’tis far from sleek line cheesecakes I was reared.
Spoon 1/3 of cheese mixture into crumb crust, top with half of the reserved cherries; repeat layering, ending with cheese mixture. Refrigerate until just firm.
Topping
Combine the cornflour and sugar with reserved cherry syrup in a small saucepan. Stir over heat until the mixture boils and thickens, stir in Cointreau; cool 10 minutes.
Spread Topping over cheesecake. Refrigerate cheesecake overnight
Do not serve just out of the fridge. It loses all flavour when too cool.
Look at the picture on the link-so smooth, glossy and chic looking. Ahem…mine obviously turned out a bit more down-home style looking….
It’s a handy alternative to the monster Black Forest Gateaux cake, and certainly lighter in weight and taste. Seriously, that cake is mahoosive.
Sorta, Kinda, Traditional Paella Valenciana
Traditional Paella Valenciana uses rabbit, chicken and snails. The snails can be optional, whereas the other meats are a must for it to be traditional. As you can see from the top photo, I lobbed in chorizo in case the rest was inedible. Not traditional, but on my first attempt I lost the run of myself by the end.
Rabbit isn’t that hard to source. You can order it online from James Whelan butchers, although it’s a tad pricey. I pre-ordered mine from F.X Buckley’s who defrosted one for me, and charged €8.99. Wanting to stick to the traditional recipe, I intended to make stock from the rabbit carcass. I’d looked up how to joint a rabbit on YouTube. Slightly obsessed with jointing stuff now.
On the day, I was way too hungover to start hacking at a skinned Bugs, so the butcher did the necessary. It was all done in about ten seconds. Very impressive work, and quite likely saved me from wrecking a knife or two at home.
There isn’t a huge amount of meat on a 1 lb rabbit, so most of what you see below went into the pot to make the stock.
The stock is just the rabbit carcass brought to the boil, a chopped onion, two small carrots, a celery rib and some parsley added and then left to simmer for an hour on a medium-low heat.
I researched the most traditional of traditional recipes and picked Spanish brains for tips in order to do it right. Despite all my research, I ended up working off a badly written method found online.
Stuff was burnt, stock yield was poor, and I wandered from the traditional Valencian ingredients in order to try and make it palateable. It was what the Spanish would call El Grando Pain In The Culo. I spent the first 45 mins knowing it was not working and was pretty much….
But, as there were mouths to be fed and I’m a stubborn wagon who can’t see food go to waste (even if it might end up as total muck) I saw it through.
I’ve since made it a few times and it is essentially a very easy dish to prep and cook. Here’s what works for me.
Serves 6, using a 38cm/ 15 in pan
Ingredients
420g white beans (I used butter beans)
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 whole onion, diced
6 chicken drumsticks
1lb rabbit, skinned and jointed
18 snails, cleaned and prepped (optional)
8 artichoke halves
4 handfuls green beans
A pinch of saffron
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Olive oil
I used roughly 1.5 lt of chicken stock from cubes and two fingers depth of the rabbit stock that was left. It’s best to keep an eye on it and top up with a little extra stock or water as it cooks, depending on your pan.
Good pinch of saffron
400g paella rice, although arborio works just fine.
Not traditional but I chuck it in-
Half a red bell pepper, diced small. You could throw the whole lot in or use the remainder for decorative strips on the top.
Two chicken stock cubes, dissolved
Chorizo, cuz it’s purdy and tasty
If you want to make rabbit stock, give yourself about 2-3 hours prior to wanting to start your paella. It would be better to do it the day ahead. Also, if you follow the instructions for stock above, use a massive pot and a ton of water to ensure the liquid doesn’t disappear.
Stock. Where you going. Stock. Staaaahp.
Method
Pan fry the rabbit and chicken with enough olive oil to stop it sticking, turning the meat as needed for about 15 minutes.
Make up your stock and stir in the saffron.
Remove the meat temporarily after the 15 mins, and add in the onion, garlic, tomato.
I added half a small diced red pepper as I half wanted to make Sofrito, not traditional as far as I’m aware but a tip from a fabulous Spanish friend.
So, either make the sofrito and add it in once the meat has had it’s cooking time, or remove the meat and gently sauté the onion, garlic and tomato in some more olive oil. When the onions are softened/ slightly translucent, return the meat to the pan, with the snails if you’re using them, and add the beans (drained, if from a tin).
If the pan is looking a bit dry, top up with a bit of olive oil before adding the rice.
Add your rice and mix all the pan contents quickly. Add the stock/saffron mix. I initially poured in just under a litre of stock mix, and then topped it up during the hour with another half a litre or so as it needed. It’ll depend on your pan, mine is quite shallow (and judgy, what a bitch) so keep an eye on it.
Add the artichoke quarters around the top of the mix.
Top with about four handfuls of green beans. I used frozen, straight from the packet and it worked just dandy.
Of course, I topped it with chorizo, just to give the traditional ship that had long sailed the saffron stained finger.
Give it an hour once you have everything in the pan.
It tastes like paella should, or from my travels it’s up there with the paellas I’ve experienced.
Rabbit meat or stock is not necessary for a tasty paella but it adds that extra oomph and if you manage to have any stock left over for another dish, it’s a bonus.
Tortilla de Patata
6 medium potatoes
1 large white onion
6 large eggs
2-3 cups of olive oil
Salt to taste
Optional:
Half a red pepper, diced small
Chorizo, chopped into small pieces
Spinach, herbs
Peel your spuds and onion.
Chop your onion into small to medium sized chunks. Put into a large bowl.
I read that you shouldn’t use a food processer to slice the potatoes as they’ll be too thin, but it was fine. Anything for an easy life, me. Plus the potato slices fried up quicker, hurrah!
Add the potatoes into the bowl with the onion and mix well.Salt the mix and give it another mix to disribute.
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, and add the potato and onions. I found that the potatoes and onion cooked nicely sitting in the oil, no need to have them floating in it, just enough to move them around easily. Even my bigest pan didn’t take the full amount of the mix in one go, so it may be easier to split the batch in two and fry seperately to ensure an even cooking time.
When the potato slices can be split easily with a spatula, you can take them out of the oil and into a large bowl. Drain the oil off seperately and save a small amount to use for the final fry off.
In a medium bowl, whisk the six eggs together. When the potato mix has cooled slightly, add the eggs to it and mix well. If you’re adding anything extra such as a bell pepper or chorizo, mix it in now.
Return about 2 tablespoons of oil to your pan, on a medium heat. Make sure it’s not any more than this or it’ll cook the bottom side too quickly. For this part, I used a 10 inch frying pan, which fit the mix perfectly.
Lift the edge up with a spatula to see how the bottom is browning. When it’s a golden brown, it’s ready to turn. Everyone seems to get a squeaky bum about this part but it’s no bother once you have a proper size plate and do it over the sink.
Turn the heat off and carry the pan to the sink. Place a large plate over the pan, so you can turn the tortilla out onto it. With one hand firmly over the base of the plate and your other hand holding the pan handle, flip the plate and pan. There may be a bit of runny oil or egg bit that escapes out the side (which is why it’s done over the sink), but the tortilla will be grand.
Put the pan back on the hob, add a little bit of oil to cover the base and put on a medium heat again for about 20 seconds. Gently slide the tortilla back onto the pan with a spatula. Again, there may be a little bit of runny bits, but just scoot that on into the pan. Shape the tortilla edge with your spatula and leave to gently cook for five minutes. If it needs an extra minute or so, leave it. Turn ff the heat and leave sit for a few minutes before transferring onto a suitable sized plate.
It’ll serve 4-6 as part of a main dish, or roughly 20 appetizer squares.
I serve it usually as how I saw it in Havana Tapas on Georges Street once, which is a disc of baguette, topped with a tortilla square, a fold of jamon (or prosciutto or parma since that seems easier to get hold of) and an olive kept in place with a cocktail stick.
Surprisingly, despite eating my body weight in it the last time I made it, there was a good bit left over for snacking and bulking up work lunch salads. If nothing else, it’s great to have around to chew on while standing in the kitchen deciding what you’re going to eat next.
Essential thinking noms FTW!
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