Chicken, Chorizo and Potato Tray bake (Nigella Lawson) with lemony salt and pepper green beans

Tray bakes are one my favourite dinner ideas, it is just so easy to chuck everything into an oven tray, season and pop in the oven! Not to mention tasty too! This is another recipe taken from Nigella Lawson's Kitchen, a cookery book I've been loving lately! This recipe involves one of my favourite ingredients, chorizo. I just love how amazingly juicy, salty and crispy it is when you cook it, of course it is not healthy at all but sometimes you have to accept these small details and just enjoy it! I don't eat it that often but it is one of my favourite things to cook with (a chorizo tomato salad is also gorgeous!)

This is more than enough for 4 people, I also served it with green beans to get some more colour and a least a little bit of healthiness onto the plate!

Ingredients

2 large oven trays

2 x 15ml tablespoons olive oil

12 chicken thighs (I used 6)

750g chorizo sausage (whole if baby ones or cut into chunks if a regular-sized ring)

1 kg new potatoes

2 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped

2 teaspoons dried oregano

Grated one zest orange (I used lemon instead)

Good handful of green beans

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Sea salt and cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220 C. Rub the olive oil over the chicken thighs in the oven tray, reserve 6 pieces for each tray.

Divide the chorizo sausage, new potatoes and chopped up red onion between the 2 trays. Sprinkle the dried oregano and lemon zest over the trays. Drizzle oil over the contents and make sure all is coated.

Cook for 1 hour. Nigella recommends that after 30 minutes the trays are swapped round in the oven and the ingredients are basted with the orange zesty juices (or lemon juices!)

Lemony salt and pepper green beans

Around 10 minutes before the tray bakes are ready, get the green beans boiling.

Once ready, drain and pop back into the saucepan. Coat in the zest and juice of 1 lemon, a sprinkle of crunchy sea salt and cracked black pepper.

Serve both up straight away!

Nigella's Potato and Mushroom Gratin (with lemon chicken)

So as I mentioned before, a favourite cookbook in my house at home is "Nigella Express". My mum has made some of the soups from the book, all of which are lovely and very easy to make! Nigella may use fancy ingredients, and sometimes the recipes are not that healthy, but they are lovely warming recipes to make for friends or for a dinner party and they're usually something quick to rustle up.

I have never made a gratin so I wanted to give it a go and I'm very glad I used this recipe because it was quite quick! There was a lot of chopping but after that it was very easy. I wish that I had taken a photo of the gratin all nicely cooked out of the oven in the dish I made it in but I just was excited to eat it so had spooned it onto our plates before I realised! So it looks quite messy in the picture sitting next to the rocket and the chicken, but it was lovely and well worth making if you want to make a quick dish that will look quite impressive! Another great thing about the gratin, is that it uses just full fat milk and not cream, so it isn't as fatty as a gratin could be!

Again this is Nigella's recipe, so I am not claiming it is my own! :

Ingredients:

3 average-sized baking potatoes ( 750g) - thinly sliced

350ml full-fat milk

3 x 15ml tablespoons white wine

2 x 15ml tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons garlic oil (I didn't have any garlic oil, so crushed two cloves of garlic instead)

250g chestnut mushrooms - finely sliced

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220c and butter a shallow baking dish or gratin.

Put the sliced potatoes, milk and white wine in a saucepan and bring to the boil, season with salt and pepper to taste and stir occasionally. Then leave at a simmer while you get on with the mushrooms.

Warm the butter and oil (or crushed garlic cloves) in a frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened for about 3 minutes.

Pour the mushrooms and their garlicky, buttery juices into the pan of potatoes, stir to mix and pour straight into the gratin dish. Bake in the oven for around 45 minutes or until the potatoes and mushrooms are golden and crispy on top.

I also marinated a chicken breast in lemon and finely sliced garlic and cooked in the oven for around 30-40 minutes to go with the gratin and then arranged it on a plate with the gratin and a handful of rocket.

Enjoy!

Love FF x

Rosie's recipe - pork chops with mustard and honey sauce and lemon smashed potatoes

My go at Rosie Lovell's recipe of 'fillet of pork with mustard and honey sauce and lemon smashed new potatoes' - I made a slight variation in that I cooked leg of pork steak instead of fillet of pork, I was cooking for my housemate - with who I alternate cooking with - I felt a fillet would take too long and a steak would be adequate for us. Both myself and my housemate try out new recipes, which is always fun! (Maybe there might be some future recipes from her too, with photos and the recipe, or just own recipe if it is her own creation) There also may be some cakes coming this way too!

I am pretty proud of the way this recipe turned out - it was a LOT easier than I expected and minimal dish and saucepan use - always good for a messy student house! Just a pan for the potatoes and a pan for the sauce, pork chops cooked under the grill and only various spoons needed for the different condiments used in the sauce.

Right this is my variation of Rosie's recipe - but it did come from her so in no way am I claiming it's actually mine!:

Ingredients: (for 2 people)

2 leg of pork steaks/pork chops/loin of pork chops

sauce:

a small bowl of water - accompanied by a dessert spoon (to spoon into the sauce in order to loosen it)

1 dessert spoon grainy mustard

1 dessert spoon creme fraiche

1 dessert spoon runny honey

black pepper

lemon smashed new potatoes:

8 medium/small sized new potatoes

1 lemon

olive oil

black pepper

salt

I started by putting the new potatoes in a saucepan and like Rosie said, immersing them in boiling water with a pinch of salt, then leave to simmer with the lid on. (I stuck the timer on for 20 minutes)

Meanwhile, I got out all the rest of the ingredients and turned the grill on so it can get to the hottest heat. My leg of pork steak was quite thick, so once the grill was hot enough (say after the potatoes had been cooking for 5 minutes) I stuck the steaks under it to start cooking.

I then left the potatoes to cook and the leg of pork steaks as well - but I turned the pork steaks midway through - say when the potatoes have been on for 10 minutes. Basically I cooked the steak each side for 10 mins on the highest heat, but you can cook it to however you see fit, as long as it's cooked properly, which as Rosie says is: not pink - as that is undercooked and not grey which is overcooked! Once the steaks are nearly done and the potatoes are near to the end of their cooking time, start the sauce.

Put all the condiments into another saucepan, so that is, a dessert spoon of grainy mustard, 2 dessert spoons of creme fraiche and 1 dessert spoon of runny honey. I used a whisk to mix the condiments together. I left the sauce for a couple of minutes whilst I sorted out the potatoes.

Check the potatoes are cooked throughly, and as Rosie says -if you stick a knife into the largest one and it slips off easily then it should be fine! Then I drained the potatoes and put the lid on again, and moved the potatoes about quite vigorously, to loosen the skins, and drizzled some olive oil into the saucepan (extra virgin olive oil would work even better as said by Rosie, but I didn't have any and it's a bit pricey for a student!) I then squeezed in one lemon, sprinkled some dried thyme over them and seasoned with salt and pepper and then left them with the lid on until I was ready to plate up.

Back to the sauce. The sauce may have thicken by now so to loosen it, I added some dessert spoons of water from a small bowl I had on the side, I added around 4 spoonfuls and whisked it until it came to a nice saucy consistency and then added black pepper.

Then to the pork steaks - make sure you check the steaks throughout cooking. But after 20 minutes under the grill at the highest heat, each side cooked for around 10 minutes - they should be cooked throughly - or just cut into them to check the colour (as mentioned above).

Plating up: I arranged some spinach on the plate on which I laid the new potatoes and then drizzled some of the lemony oily sauce from the saucepan. On the other half of the plate I placed the pork steaks and then drizzled the honey mustard sauce over them (as above in the photo!)

I hope that recipe, my way, makes sense. And thanks to Rosie for this fab recipe, I'll definitely be bringing others from her book to this blog!

Love FF x