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)

Creamy Ham and Mushroom Pasta

This is one of my favourite pasta dishes from my teenage years, I'm not going to pretend for one minute that it's healthy - as it isn't, but it is definately one of my favourites and a great comfort food dish.

Ingredients are really simple; 

• Pack of good quality ham
• Pot of single cream
• 1-2 onion(s)
• 1-2 garlic clove(s)
• box of chestnut mushrooms
• fresh oregano, basil or some other herb of choice
• 500g of pasta (use whatever your favourite is)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Put pan of water on to boil
2. Dice/ crush your onion and garlic
3. Fry off in a wok or frying pan
4. Add fresh herbs
5. Add mushrooms
6. Cook until they look like this:

7. Add cream
8. Add pulled ham
9. Season to taste
10. Cover and leave on a low heat stiring occasionally
11. Put your pasta into your water, which should have by now come to the boil
12. Cook for 10 minutes for dry and 3-4 minutes for fresh pasta
13. Drain pasta
14. Empty into the sauce and turn over with wooden spoon to get a good coating of the sauce
15. Serve and enjoy!

Melodie's Delicious Bolognaise

Another delicious recipe from my fabulous friend Melodie...again learnt when I went to stay with her in Paris during my student days....

 

As you can see for this version I also added green olives and left over orange pepper to the recipe, which worked very well indeed - sundried tomatoes would be another good addition

I personally think that wholemeal pasta works best with all red meat dishes. 

Enjoy! - it's definately one of my long term favourites which I cook time and time again. x

New Twist on Macaroni Cheese for dinner (BBC Good Food)

Tonight I am cooking a new twist on Macaroni Cheese from this lovely cookbook. I honestly recommend getting as many books as you can from this series and the Good Home series too - they're are such great books, really well put together with tons of excellent and inspirational ideas.


Here is the original recipe (click to see it full size):

I have added a couple of ingredients over the course of cooking this dish over the years, I warn you it doesn't make it any healthier, but in my opinion adds to its yummy factor!

Here are my ingredients:

So I added a little grated cheese and a pack on honey roast ham...

The quantities are deceptive - this recipes does go quite a long way and also reheats from frozen very well.

Here is my finished dish:

Hope you add this recipe to your store-cupboard recipes too - let me know what you think....enjoy!

Beef Stroganoff... for dinner tonight

From the BBC food website. Here's the original link.

Ingredients

75g/3oz butter
1 onion, finely sliced
150g/5oz white mushrooms, finely sliced
2 tbsp tomato purée
1½ tsp Dijon mustard
½ tsp smoked hot paprika
110ml/4fl oz beef stock
500g/1lb 2oz beef fillet, cut into strips
salt and freshly ground black pepper
150ml/5fl oz brandy
200ml/7fl oz soured cream
2 tbsp flatleaf parsley

Method


1. Heat a frying pan until hot, then add half the butter. When foaming, add the onion and fry for 2-3 minutes, or until just softened.
2. Add the mushrooms and cook for 1-2 minutes.
3. Add the tomato purée, mustard and paprika and cook for a further minute.
4. Add the beef stock and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 3-4 minutes.
5. Season the beef with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
6. Heat a separate frying pan and add the remaining butter. When foaming, add the beef and fry for 2-3 minutes on both sides, until browned all over.
7. Add the brandy (I ran out of brandy so I topped it up with navy run as I figured it looked very similar and it worked perfectly) and carefully allow to flambé in the pan. - carefully light it if it doesn't do it on its own - it's great fun! (CAUTION: make sure there are no flammable materials above the pan when flaming.)
8. Add the soured cream to the onion and mushroom mixture and mix well.
9. When the flames have subsided, add the beef to the soured cream and mushroom mixture and cook for one minute. Season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper and add the parsley.
10. Serve up with rice or potatoes....
11. ENJOY!