Gizzi's Chicken, courgette and lemon pasta bake recipe (with a few adaptions)

Serves 4
Preparation time 10 minutes
Cooking time 35 minutes

Nutritional breakdown

Per serving
18.1g of fat
596 calories

Ingredients

• 4 large Portabella mushrooms (or regular mushrooms)
• 350g dried linguine (or spaghetti or any other pasta you fancy)
• 300g courgette, grated
• 300ml low fat crème fraiche
• 200ml low fat Greek yoghurt
• 1 large free-range egg yolk (hen or duck)
• 35g Parmesan cheese
• Zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 250g cold roast chicken, shredded (I used left over homemade chicken kiev here and it worked fine - just broke it up into strips with my fingers)
• A small bunch of fresh chives, snipped (or any other appropriate fresh herbs you have to hand) or rocket

Method
 
1. Put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta
2. Fry off your chicken in a small separate frying pan and cook until golden as below (add a little garlic + salt + pepper for extra flavour too if you like) - obviously this is only if you need to cook the chicken from raw not if you're using left over chicken

2.Heat a pan and spritz in a few spritzes of olive oil. Fry the mushrooms then remove from the pan and set aside. Fry the grated courgette for a couple of minutes.

3. Meanwhile mix together the crème fraiche, yoghurt, egg yolk, Parmesan, lemon zest, salt and pepper.

4. Drain the cooked pasta, leaving a few tablespoons of water in the bottom of the pan. Return the pan to a low heat and pour in the sauce.
5. Toss the pasta in the sauce, then add the roast chicken and chives, giving it all a good mix round until it’s evenly incorporated.

In the pan:

(used rocket instead of chives this time and it worked as a really good alternative)
On the plate:

(original link, including video version of recipe)

Stuffed potato skins and homemade soup (adapted from Sophie Dahl)

This is adapted from Sophie Dahl's original recipe of  Roasted tomato and thyme soup with double baked cheese and chive potatoes which I tried:

I loved the potatoes but wasn't keen on the tomato soup. So this time round I decided to do the potatoes with a bowl of my homemade chicken soup (recipe found at this link) and it worked a treat.

Just half or quarter or double this recipe as you need to:

For the potatoes

4 baking potatoes
knob of butter
2 tbsp crème fraîche
small bunch fresh chives, finely chopped
200g/7oz soft goats' cheese  (or your choice of grated cheese)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

(I've chosen to leave the eggs out of this recipe both times of cooking it as I'm not very much into eggs personally, I think it's delicious without but I couldn't tell you what it is like with - it's one of those things which is just down to personal preference I think)

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5/ 170-180C fan

2. Bake the potatoes directly on the wire rack of the oven for 1- 1¾ hours (depending on the amount of potatoes and your oven), or until tender.

 3. Remove the potatoes from the oven and using a cloth to hold the hot potato, cut each one in half and scoop out the insides into a bowl.

4.Mix in the butter, crème fraîche, chives and goats' cheese, and stir in the egg.
5. Season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and spoon the potato mixture back into the skins. Place onto a baking tray in the oven for
a further 15-20 minutes, or until golden-brown and crisp on top.
6. To serve, reheat the soup and divide among four bowls, with two potato halves each on the side.

Enjoy!