Coq au Vin

This is the first time I've made this recipe and it was a huge success.  I know Coq au Vin traditionally uses red wine but I only had white wine in and I remember Nigella Lawson doing something similar in her recipe Coq au Riesling- so if it's good enough for Nigella! This is a combination of Nigella's recipe and also a recipe from my Mary Berry cookbook.  Usually when I cook something my husband and I both enjoy it but only one of our two children normally give it a thumbs up.  It can be exasperating!  However, they both tucked into this dish so I was pleased I'd made a huge batch of this so we have two portions in the freezer ready for another day.

• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• Smoked bacon lardons
• 2 leeks, halved length ways and sliced
• 15 Shallots, topped, tailed and peeled
• 150g button mushrooms, halved
• 1 large garlic clove, crushed
• 2 dessert spoons of plain flour
• 1 pint of chicken stock
• 250ml white wine- I used pinot grigio
• Skinless, boneless chicken thighs
• 3 bay leaves

Heat the oil in a large casserole dish and add the bacon lardons. Fry until golden brown.

Add the leeks and shallots.

Fry gently for 5 minutes until the leeks are soft.  Then add the crushed garlic.

Cook for a few more minutes, then mix in the flour so everything is coated.

Next, stir in the stock and white wine and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat.

Trim any excess fat off the chicken thighs and put them in their little rolls into the casserole sauce.

Cover and put in the oven at 180C for 1 hour 15 minutes. (I have a fan oven and uncovered the dish 15 minutes before the end of cooking.)

Then serve and enjoy!

Mini Puff Pastry Quiches

I've been trying to think of new things to put in my 6 year olds lunch box to add a bit of variety during the week. I've made mini quiches before but never with cream cheese so I thought I'd give this recipe a go. The puff pastry works really well, I buy the ready rolled and it's a real time saver.

I started by making the herby cream cheese. I've got a couple of pots of mixed herbs growing in the garden so I sent my son off to cut some- he came back with chives, sage, thyme and oregano.

After washing and drying, we chopped them finely in my mini-chopper and then stirred in about 3/4 tub of cream cheese.

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Next we sliced 1 red pepper and 1 onion and I gently fried in olive oil until soft and seasoned with salt, then added 2 big handfuls of spinach and allowed it to wilt. There was no excess water so I didn't need to drain it.

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Slightly different from the recipe- I put 3 eggs in a measuring jug and added a splash of milk and black pepper, I didn't mix this with the vegetables as I wanted to get an even amount of each veg in each quiche so I kept the egg mixture aside to pour on later.

I got the puff pastry out of the fridge, unrolled it and kept the blue plastic backing to lay it on the worktop and cut out the quiche bases. I managed to get 14 bases out of a 350g pack.

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I popped the pastry bases into a greased mincepie tray- word of warning here- the quiches stuck to my non-stick black tin but not my ordinary silver tin so don't use non-stick!

Then I added a small teaspoon of the herby cheese mix, topped with the vegetables and poured on the egg mix. Finally I added one more small teaspoon of the herby cheese mix on top and put them in my fan oven at 200C for 15mins. Apparently add 5 mins more for a conventional oven.

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And the verdict? Thumbs up from my son but said he'd want the kitchen cook to heat them up if he has them in his lunchbox! We'll try them cold tomorrow for lunch and see what he thinks then :)

Jools' Pregnant Pasta

Decided to make a batch of Jools' Pregnant Pasta sauce to put in the freezer. I've made this sauce before and it's delicious. It's really quick too! It's from Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals book. You can also find the recipe on Channel 4's website here .
The preparation is dead easy- roughly chop one carrot, one stick of celery and 4 spring onions. The recipe says to just take the stalk off 1-2 red chillis but I deseed too.

Then blitz in a food processor and add 6 good quality sausages (you don't have to skin them first) with 1 teaspoon of dried oregano and 1 heaped teaspoon of fennel seeds. Blitz again- and you end up with some lovely looking mush!

Put this in a frying pan with some olive oil and fry until the sausage is cooked. Keep stirring every now and again and it separates and ends up looking like mince. Add 4 garlic cloves that you just put in a garlic crusher with the skin on and the skins are left behind and a good slug of balsamic vinegar.

Fry gently to cook the garlic and add a tin of chopped tomatoes. At this point I can't add a photo as I realised I had no chopped tomatoes in! Typical! But you get the gist- it's a lovely tasty recipe and my kids and husband love it. The sauce is stirred into cooked pasta and served with grated parmesan and a salad. I found this can make two meals for our family of 4 (two little ones though!) so I usually freeze half the sauce for another day.

Edit: And here is the finished dish after I'd managed to pop to the shops to purchase the tinned tomatoes!