How to: homemade pesto (with wholewheat fusilli served with parma ham and sun dried tomato wrapped chicken breast)

So, another edition of my attempts of a 'how to' post , this isn't me trying to sound like an expert, just my tried and tested methods that I'd like to share. I've been wanting to make my own pesto for so long and it is a simple method and I'm sure people reading who have made it themselves would agree. Although saying that, for most people (myself include) grabbing a tin of pesto is much easier just making your own is more satisfying!

Ingredients

Makes enough for a pasta dish for 3 people.

100ml olive oil

1 packet pine nuts, roughly 50g

1 pack of fresh basil

80g Parmesan cheese, grated (basically a good handful)

Lemon juice, 1 tablespoon

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

The simplest way is to literally chuck everything into a food processor and whizz to desired consistency.

I did it in stages however, processing the drier ingredients first. So put the oil into the processor with the pine nuts and whizz.

Then add the basil leaves, parmesan, lemon juice and crushed garlic clove with a drizzle of olive oil over the top. Whizz up these ingredients and hey presto, you're done!






I served this with parma ham and sun dried tomato wrapped chicken breast. I'm slightly obsessed with sun dried tomatoes at the moment and how gorgeous they taste, all oily, bursting with flavour and it just reminds me of Italy!

If you want to try this as well, you will need the following ingredients:

Serves 3

A packet of mini chicken breast fillets
A jar of sun dried tomatoes (enough for the chicken and some to nibble on!)
A packet of parma ham

Olive oil

Lay a slice of parma ham on a chopping board. Place the mini chicken breast in the middle with one or two sun dried tomatoes on the top, then wrap up with the parma ham!



Arrange on a baking tray and pop in the oven at 200C for 35-40 minutes.

Pasta Puttanesca (à la Sophie Dahl)

This is a great, easy pasta dish. Just to pre warn, if you don't like fish, then this is not for you! The dish contains anchovies, which I think give a lovely salty taste and it just kind of makes me think I'm in Italy, having dinner in a lovely seaside town, eating delicious fishy tomato chilli pasta. This (as the title may give away!) is from Sophie Dahl's Miss Dahl's Voluptous Delights, a book I have mentioned numerous times (mainly for the amazing banana bread!). The recipes in the book are so fresh and for the majority of the time, healthy as well. Of course, this is a pasta dish, so it's not terribly nutritious but it's a great tasting sauce and really spruces up some plain penne!


Serves 2 people (but just double up these portions for family sized!)

Ingredients

200g of penne (I used rigatoni but any kind of pasta should work!)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1 fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
400g tin of chopped tomatoes, drained
4 anchovy fillets
1/2 teaspoon of soft brown sugar
150g black olives, pitted
2 large tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley (I used dried to sprinkle over the top which still gave a lovely fragrant taste. Fresh would however be better here in my opinion!)

Ok, this recipe is in 2 easy steps!

Step 1, is the saucy sauce! In a pan, heat the olive oil and fry the garlic and chilli until mildly browned.


Add the tin of chopped tomatoes.



Sophie recommends using a pestle and mortar here to grind the anchovies, which would be the most sensible choice. I just used the back of a fork and squished them in their tin, then added them to the tomato sauce mix.


Let the sauce simmer for a further 20 minutes. Add the sugar.

Step 2, cook the pasta as directed in some salted water. Once the pasta is cooked and drained, add it to the tomato sauce with a spoonful of the salty pasta water. Add the black olives and coat the pasta well with the sauce.




Serve with a generous grating of parmesan and parsley. Buon appetito!

Courgette Carbonara (Jamie Oliver)

I seem to be making a lot of recipes with courgettes lately! No idea why... just a lot of yummy sounding recipes involve them! And this is another one, taken from Jamie Oliver's website. Carbonara is already so delicious, then add some roasted courgettes to it and it's even better (and with 1 of your 5 a day hopefully!) I feel that this recipe is also very summery, so what better way to say goodbye to our almost non-existent summer than with this dish and nice cold glass of white wine!

For 4 people

Ingredients

Sea salt and black pepper

6 medium green and yellow courgettes (I only used green, but the more diverse the colour, the better!)

500g penne

4 large eggs

100ml double cream

2 generous handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Olive oil

Some kind of yummy porky meat - around 12 slices/1 packet (of lardons) - unfortunately I didn't get hold of any for this, but the meaty flavour deepens the flavours of the dish so it is well worth getting. You could use chopped up pancetta slices, the pre chopped up lardons you can get in the supermarket, grilled bacon chopped up or even some grilled parma ham!

A small bunch of fresh thyme

This is slightly different to Jamie's recipe, as I always like to start with the preparation. Put a large saucepan on the boil, and fill with slightly salted boiling water.

Then start preparing the carbonara mixture, you will need to get the eggs, double cream and grated parmesan in a bowl together and mix well. Season and then set to one side.

Halve and quarter the courgettes lengthways, and slice roughly so they are of a similar shape to the penne.

Then chop up the pancetta - or whatever meat you have chosen to use! The water should by now be boiling, so add the penne to the saucepan.

Get a large frying pan on and add a good amount of olive oil (Jamie says a 'splash'!) and fry the pancetta until crispy. Add the courgette slices and a good sprinkling of black pepper - then my recipe differs slightly from Jamie's here as I wanted my courgettes to have their own flavouring. So I used garlic oil, dried thyme, dried Italian herbs, fresh thyme and gave it a good mix coating the courgettes in the herby garlicky dressing. Fry until golden.

Now here I really did follow Jamie's instructions as he advises to work quickly otherwise the carbonara could end up ruined, as you don't want the eggs to start scrambling!

When the pasta is cooked, drain and keep a bit of the salted water on the side.

Add back to the pan and remove from the heat. Then add a ladleful of the salted water, and then the carbonara sauce and stir together quickly! (Again no scrambly eggs happening here!)

Dish out into four bowls and arrange the courgettes/pancetta on top of the pasta like a garnish. Season and then you're done! Yummy, summery courgette pasta!

Come Eat At My House! (Part 1)

A random thing me and my friends have started doing is Come Eat At My House - a slight variation on the television name for the programme where you basically, if you didn't know (!), go round people's houses and eat a three course meal. Now we didn't quite stick to the voting side of things, we all just ended up gushing about the food to be quite honest!

So the first person to host this was my friend Maz (or Marie). It was her idea in the beginning and she set up the Facebook page, where you can post your menus and basically whoever likes the look of the meal can go along. To be honest, she has mentioned these meals before in passing and I've always commented how lovely they sound, so I was excited for the meal.

Luckily the weather was lovely, and we all arrived to have a photo taken coming into the house (very Come Dine With Me -esque just sans the actual filming!) we all had drinks, and chatted in the living room while Maz got started on the food (wearing a really cool apron I might add!)

When it was ready, we all sat down for the starter; garlic mushrooms in a cheesy sauce on mini ciabatta slices with a rocket garnish.

The starter being prepared.

This was very yummy. I am a massive fan of anything garlicky, and garlic mushrooms.

Afterwards we all had a look round the house (even though we’ve all been round there many times before) and tried to comment on things Come Dine With Me style!

Next up was the main course, sweet chilli mediterranean vegetable pasta (with optional chicken). I loved the fresh bite of the red onion, juicy tomato and peppers mixed with the sweet chilli sauce, it gave a real tangy taste!

Finally, dessert. Toffee and Banana Cheesecake. Now I have to mention here that Maz herself was not too happy with the way it turned out as the bottom part of the cheesecake ended up breaking up slightly but I really didn’t have a whole lot to complain about, and nor did anybody else! Cheesecake is one of my all-time favourite desserts and even though I’ve said everything was “yummy” so far, I’m going to annoy everyone and just repeat myself again! This was very yummy! I thought the toffee sauce as well was really scrummy!

At the end of the night, we just chilled out, listened to the latest Chase and Status album and chatted, and messed around with cameras. All of us agreeing that Maz should really get top marks!

Who’s up next?!

a bit of spice and all things nice

So this is a very yummy pasta from the lovely Rosie Lovell's Spooning with Rosie. It's a very different sort of pasta but it has some of the best ingredients; chorizo, crème fraîche, cherry tomatoes and butternut squash.

The vegetable ingredients are roasted before with a sprinkling of chilli flakes then everything is mixed together with the pasta, crème fraîche, some balsamic vinegar and chorizo. Unfortunately, me and my housemate found it a tad too spicy so I will be laying off those chilli flakes next time but the chorizo was gorgeous along with the colours and flavours of the other ingredients.