Category: lemon

Categories
food garlic lemon potatoes wine

pinot grigio potatoes

Shock, horror! Another roast potato recipe on this blog. What an anomaly.

Of course it isn’t, I’ve got roast potato recipes here, here and here for starters. But this was another twist, derived from cooking Heston’s perfect chicken (again). The chicken there is treated with a boozy butter baste. I’d gone a bit crazy and made too much, so decided to slather it on the potatoes. And with a little lemon and garlic to really boost those flavours I think it’s a great alternative!

Any white wine would work, but I had some Pinot Grigio a-wastin’ so that’s what I used. You want something sweet-ish here I think, a dry wine could turn out bitter with such fierce roasting.

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Pinot Grigio potatoes

A fancy twist on roast potatoes.
Course Side Dish
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Servings 4
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 700 g Maris Piper potatoes peeled and diced to walnut-sized pieces
  • 100 ml white wine
  • 125 unsalted butter
  • A few sprigs of thyme
  • 1 lemon
  • 3 cloves garlic

Instructions

  • Preheat your oven to 200°C. Simmer the potatoes in salted water until really tender. Drain and allow to steam off excess water a little while you prepare the baste.
  • Put a heavy baking tray in the oven to preheat. Add the wine, butter and thyme to a saucepan and bring to the boil, then immediately remove from the heat. Toss the potatoes in the buttery wine and tip on to the baking tray and roast.
  • After 20 mins, peel the lemon zest in strips and add to the baking tray along with the garlic. Toss the potatoes well to coat. If it's looking a bit dry add a dash of oil.
  • Roast for a further 20 mins, or until the potatoes are very crisp. Season with salt and pepper before serving.
Categories
bacon courgettes food lemon turkey

turkey and courgette meatballs

In another one of my recipes for students, I’ve taken inspiration from the wonderful Ottolenghi. In his latest book (Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi (Ebury Press, £27)) he and long-time collaborator Sami Tamimi return to their home town of Jerusalem to reminisce on the food gems of their youth. It’s full of wonderful recipes and ideas, and generally speaking most of the recipes are thrifty and homely in nature.

This recipe is inspired by “turkey and courgette burgers with spring onion and cumin.”  The meatballs are so substantial they don’t need any carbohydrates; if you need to make it go further serve with pasta or rice. This meal is relatively expensive but you’ll make tons of meatballs that freeze well, and extra tomato sauce which keeps in the fridge for a couple of days

Approximate cost  for main ingredients, excludes storecupboard ingredients (prices from Tesco.com 7th Oct 2012): £4.13

Turkey and courgette meatballs (makes about 20):

For the meatballs:

500g minced turkey

2 rashers bacon, diced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 cream cracker, bashed to dust

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 large courgette, grated

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 egg

For the sauce:

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tin tomatoes

  1. For the meatballs, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well with a pinch of salt. With damp hands form into chunks the size of golf balls.
  2. Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat with a little oil, and a normal saucepan over a high heat with a little oil. Add the meatballs to the large pan and brown them on all sides for about 7 – 10 minutes. You should do this in batches if this is going to crowd the pan.
  3. Meanwhile in the other pan crush in the garlic and then immediately add the tomatoes. This will spatter and bubble so watch out. Add a pinch each of salt, sugar and pepper. You should continue to simmer this sauce until when you draw a wooden spoon through it leaves a channel, so it is thick and rich. At this point tip the meatballs into the sauce and cook for a couple more minutes to cook through.
Categories
carrots chicken lemon noodles stock

lemon chicken on crispy noodles

Not having money sucks. Worse still, not having money and really enjoying food sucks. The time you most notice this is when you’re a student. Most Wanted, the magazine for VoucherCodes.co.uk has asked me to come up with some recipes that are frugal but hopefully don’t feel like it!

The first of these is lemon chicken on crispy noodles. It’s inspired by a Ken Hom recipe that’s a favourite in our house. It’s tasty, messy and great fun to eat. It also scales up really well if you need to feed a few more friends.

The ingredients in this are pretty basic but raised up by making the flavours big and punchy. Shopping around you could save money on the chicken, and can be adjusted to suit any other sturdy vegetables you wanted to add, such as peas or green beans. However don’t cut too many corners with the stock, it forms the base of the flavour and carries the rest of the dish. I like Knorr products so look out for good brands of stock cubes and stock pots: stock is handy in almost all savoury recipes. One thing to watch for in this recipe is it needs two frying pans on the go, so you may need to borrow another! You should be in and out of the kitchen in 15 minutes once you get the hang of this one.

Approximate cost  for main ingredients, excludes storecupboard ingredients (prices from Tesco.com 4th Oct 2012): £1.72

Lemon chicken on crispy noodles (serves 1):

1 packet of instant noodles

1 chicken breast, diced

250ml stock made with ½ stock cube

1 lemon

2 carrots

1 teaspoon cornflour

  1. Get a pan of water on a rapid boil and add the noodles. Cook for 3 – 4 minutes until tender and then tip into a sieve to drain. Rinse with cold water to completely cool them down.
  2. Get two frying pans on over medium-high heat. In one of them you will cook the noodles; this should have a layer of oil to coat the base of the pan. The other just needs a tiny bit into which to cook everything else.
  3. While the pans heat up dice the chicken and prepare the carrot. Peel the carrot, and after you’ve discarded the skin keep peeling until you reach the bitter core, which you can chuck away. Being very careful to avoid spatter add the noodles to their pan and spread out with a wooden spoon so they cover the base. Add the chicken to the other pan and stir fry for a couple of minutes until coloured all over, then add the stock and carrots.
  4. Into the chicken pan grate in the zest of the lemon and the juice of half. Stir well to combine and let it bubble away for a couple of minutes. The noodles should be crisp on one side now so with confidence flip them over. While the other side cooks taste the broth. You may want to add more lemon, or possibly a pinch of sugar or salt to balance everything out. When you’re happy with the flavour add a splash of water to the cornflour in a small dish and mix well, then tip this into the sauce.
  5. When the noodles are done tip them on to kitchen paper to drain, and then into your serving bowl. Tip the chicken and the sauce over the top and start slurping!
Categories
cake food lemon orange polenta

revani

I spotted this little gem on the pages of an Ottolenghi article in Waitrose magazine and made it immediately: it’s a squidgy and sweet Turkish cake. Surfing around it seems to be a very popular and traditional dish and when you taste it it’s not hard to see why. It’s kind of like a drizzle cake in that you bake a sponge, then slice it up and pour over a syrup while it cools. And definitely follow Yotam’s advice: it improves immeasurably overnight as the cake soaks up more and more of the lush, sweet juice. Perfect with a cup of tea.

You are supposed to use marmalade in the batter but I used some leftover orange jelly.

You know the other clever bit? Cutting the cake into diamonds. No messing about with even slices, just merry little diamonds which are easy to eat and cute for the virtue of being different.

Revani (makes about a 20 piece cake if cut into diamonds):

5 eggs, separated

100g caster sugar

50g plain flour

100g semolina

Zest of 1 orange

50g butter, melted

50g marmalade / jelly

For the syrup:

250g caster sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 orange, halved (the one you zested above)

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease a 21cm springform tin and line with greaseproof paper. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until pale and then incorporate the flour, semolina, pinch of salt, zest, butter and marmalade. Continue beating until smooth.
  2. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and then gradually fold into the batter. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
  3. While the cake is in the oven make the syrup. Put all the ingredients in a saucepan with 300ml water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.
  4. While the cake is still warm and in the tin, slice it into diamond shapes about 3cm wide. Pour the syrup over the cake – it will look like too much but it will take it all! – and leave to cool and let the cake soak up the juice. You can eat it straight away but it’s so much better if left overnight.
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