Happy Meals - a Thai inspired Saturday supper

Welcome to a new, probably infrequent, possibly one episode only series of quick posts talking about meals have cooked at home that we particularly enjoyed.

A little background to this one: D is currently a little obsessed with the London based Thai restaurant Kiln. He went there twice in two days when he was last down. They don’t have a recipe book but they do have a few recipes available on the Great British Chefs website and, yesterday evening we cooked two of them. 

Behold, with my usual appalling food photography skills on display (in fairness, I was hungry) - two Sai oua which is a type of Northern Thai sausage served with a mushroom salad with bitter herbs. On the side, Thai sticky rice, lightly fried then dressed with a sauce consisting of a tablespoon each of Sriracha chilli sauce, honey, fish sauce and sesame oil and finished with some shredded omelette (which had been seasoned with more fish sauce and white pepper). The whole dish was garnished with Thai basil and birds eye chillies. 

Better than any Thai takeaway I have EVER had, I enjoyed every mouthful. And if the food in Kiln is even half as good then D is really on to something and I need to get my arse there as soon as possible. 

Recipe corner: Tonkatsu “baoger”

Saturday night tends to be fakeaway night here. In recent weeks we have had homemade pizza, burgers and even D’s attempt at KFC. I will blog the latter in due course once we have got the recipe perfect.

This week, though, we decided to do a bit of fakeaway fusion by creating the Tonkatsu baoger. 

Tonkatsu is a Japanese dish which consists of a breaded pork fillet that is fried until crispy and drizzled with a ketchup based sauce. Bao buns, meanwhile, hail originally from China and are particularly popular in Taiwan. Bring the two together in a burger type fashion, add a dill pickle and put fries and slaw on the side and, lo and behold, you’ve insulted a minimum of two great cuisines. But you’ve made something yummy in the process.

I’ve written about making bao buns before - my original recipe is here (and by mine I mean David Chang’s). But Chang calls for skimmed milk powder and, alas, I had none. I only keep it in for the odd occasion when I make bao and last time I checked it had completely solidified so I got rid. As an alternative, I used this recipe from BBC Good Food and was pleased with the results. Maybe one day I’ll do a side by side taste test (although given that bao are a bloody faff, and I am fundamentally quite lazy, maybe not). Anyway, for the baoger, you want to follow the methodology but make the end product bigger: a baoger bun has the equivalent amount of dough to three normal sized bao buns. I won’t reproduce the recipe here, but I will remind you that if you intend to make these, allow plenty of time. You can make them in advance and revive them when you come to eat (instructions on my original post).

The sauce, incidentally, is Tim Anderson’s from his lovely book, Namban. I’ve reduced the quantity here but you might still have some leftover - it’s a strong flavour so you don’t want to use TOO much at once.

Ingredients

2 large bao buns (see above)

1/4 cucumber

3tbsp rice vinegar

3tsp caster sugar

100ml just-boiled water

Tsp salt

Tsp dill

2 pork loin steaks, visible fat removed 

50g flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp white pepper

Egg, lightly beaten

Panko breadcrumbs

Tbsp vegetable oil 

3 tbsp ketchup

1.5 tbsp Worcester sauce

Tsp mirin

Tsp soft brown sugar

Tsp tamarind paste

1/2 tsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp English mustard

Pinch of garlic powder

Pinch of white pepper

Tsp wasabi

Serves 2 

Prep begins early in the day. Trim the pork (if necessary) and, using a rolling pin or similar, bash the steaks out so that they are nice and thin. Exact thickness will be to your preference of course; ours were about 5 mm. The important thing is to have them as even as possible.

Season the flour with the garlic powder, salt and pepper. Toss the pork well in the flour, cover and chill. If you remember throughout the day, turn the pork steaks in the flour to make sure it absorbs as much as possible and that all sides are well coated.

Combine the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Reduce the cucumber to ribbons using a potato peeler, sprinkle well with salt and set in a colander or sieve over the sink. Prepare the pickling liquor: whisk the sugar into the vinegar until dissolved then pour over the just boiled water and season with salt and dill. Allow this to cool for around 10 mins before rinsing the cucumber, squeezing out any excess water and transferring it across to the water-vinegar combo. Set aside.

About an hour before cooking, remove the pork from the fridge to come up to room temperature. 

Just before cooking, take two flattish dishes. In one, lightly beat the egg with a little salt and pepper. In another, strew across half the Panko breadcrumbs. Dip the pork steaks in the egg then transfer to the breadcrumbs. Sprinkle the other half on top of the meat. Turn a couple of times to ensure that the steaks are well covered.  You could double dip (in the egg and then back in the breadcrumbs) if you're feeling particularly fancy.

Set a frying pan over a medium high heat, and get the oil nice and hot. Fry the pork steaks until cooked all the way through - depending on the thickness this will likely only take a couple of minutes on each side. While the meat is cooking, revive the bao buns and spread them liberally with the sauce on one side and the wasabi on the other.

Transfer the meat to the buns. Remove the cucumber from the vinegar and again squeeze out to get rid of any excess. Place on top of the pork, fold the bun over and devour.

Recent Eats (a "Summer in Lockdown" edition)

Hello, hello, hello!  How is everyone?  Hopefully well, as we continue to be...although perpetually slightly tired, slightly grumpy, slightly fed-up.

Working from home has long ceased to be a novelty and now the days drift, inexorably, into each other with very little to distinguish between them.  The weather in Yorkshire has been rather grey for the past few weeks which rather exacerbates the monotony.  When we first went into lockdown, I found the sunshine to be irritating - as if the universe was mocking us with its glorious blue skies and golden warmth while the world went to shit.  Now, I miss it.  But I was ever contrary.

Although lockdown has begun to lift in earnest, we are staying put for the time being.  As long as we are able to work from home (and no return to the office is being mooted for a good few months) and can get all shopping delivered, it seems silly to take unnecessary risks, however much part of me longs to go and sit in a pub.  In common with many people, anxiety over the immediate threat of the virus has now been replaced by anxiety at venturing back out into the world.  In fact, that might end up being our biggest challenge.  But plenty of time to think about that later.  July, at least, will see very little change chez Seren.

Cooking continues to be my preferred form of distraction - well, cooking and reading, although my attention span hasn't been great so not all books are grabbing my attention.  My favourite discovery of the last few months has been the two Hawthorne books by Anthony Horowitz - if you enjoy classic police procedural novels then these are great, and they have a pleasingly (to this former literature student) meta twist - although D found it to be slightly annoying.  I'm quite sad that he hasn't written more, as I gulped them down. 

Anyway, food! Yes.  I uploaded a few photos to Google to prompt this post and, because I have long since ceased to have any shame about my complete lack of ability to make ANY food look decent in photography, I will share them here.

Possibly the prettiest dish of lockdown was this lovely dish adapted from a Diana Henry recipe - chicken baked with nectarines, honey and lavender.  I adore Diana Henry and own most of her books but if you don't, she has been making useful recipes available throughout lockdown on the Telegraph website where usually they lurk behind a paywall.  The original recipe is here - although obviously I'm not sure if this will remain freely available for ever.  This dish sounds like it will be too sweet and perfumed to be palatable but I found it to be incredibly well balanced.

Less pretty, but still a magnificent beast - this is the roast rolled pork belly that D cooked a few weeks ago for Sunday lunch.  I know that pork belly is not for everyone with it's unctuous layer of fat, but we really enjoyed this and LOOK at that gloriously crispy skin!  D has been using Farmison and Co every month to source our household meat.  It's not the cheapest but everything we have bought has been of excellent quality and we are sure to stretch things as far as possible.  Also worth noting that they experienced very little by way of delays or supply issues even in the height of lockdown.

Ah, and now back to pictures of beigey brown slop.  Delicious!  But, truly, we have a newfound respect for pulses as a household and a VERY well stocked dry food pantry now where we used to rely on tins.  The top picture shows an attempt at a sort of cross between egg and beans and shakshuka which was delicious but I just can't get the cooking of the eggs right when I do these sort of dishes on the hob, which is so annoying as I love shakshuka (try Ottolenghi's recipe if this is a new one on you).  I have consulted the internet and next time I make something like this I am going to transfer to the oven for the final cooking stage.  If I crack it (ooh, egg pun!) I'll report back.

And curry - pretty much every curry we have at the moment has some sort of dahl on the side.  This split pea dahl was from the blog archives - 2011, can you credit it?  But, actually, the star of this dinner was the humble looking flat bread you see acting as a baked parasol type thing.  This was a peshwari roti, the recipe taken from Meera Sodha's wonderful "Made in India".  I fear I have condemned myself to produce these every time we have curry in future.  But, like every other recipe we have tried from this book, it is relatively quick to do, simple and tasty.  Probably not a tome for people who are advanced practitioners in the art of spice, but as a source of speedy weeknight curries, excellent.  I'm eyeing up the rest of her oeuvre.

Finally, Saturday nights have been fakeaway nights recently,  Pictured here is D's first attempt at a homemade KFC (DFC???) which was delicious - I'll blog it once we've got it absolutely perfect.  There is also a recipe for a tonkatsu "baoger" to follow shortly - yes, another crappy pun and (according to Google) not even one that I am first to use (although I was so proud of myself when I thought of it that if I was capable of patting myself on the back I probably would have done).

Hope things remain safe (and delicious) with all out there in the ether!  

MPM: 12th August 2019

For the first time in a long time, last week we cooked, and ate, all seven meals as planned. It felt good to be in control to be honest.  All to often, if we deviate, it is because we have "accidentally" gone to the pub after work and ended up ordering a takeaway or eating toast in lieu of an actual meal OR it is because we have been infected with a generous dose of ennui and ended up not eating a proper meal at all but grazing.  To make a plan, stick to a plan and actually enjoy eating all meals on said plan was really nice.

Oh, and Beth - chickpea mash?  The recipe is here.  A pleasant twist on the classic bangers and mash although I found that the chickpeas did need a judicious whack of seasoning and lemon juice to perk them up and the inclusion of a scattering of caramelised onion was a welcome note.

Onto this week, and the plan is to be in every night again and eat as follows:

Monday: carrot, tomato and feta soup (the other half of the batch we started last week.)

Tuesday: a freezer dive - chilli con carne with rice and a decent dollop of cooling sour cream.

Wednesday: pasta with nduja pesto and roasted cherry tomatoes.  Now, this pesto is part of the Sacla range which tend to be pretty good for a weekday meal.  But I'm not clear on how nduja pesto is different from just plain old nduja.  I guess I am soon to find out!

Thursday: a red wine and mushroom risotto, from The Silver Spoon.

Friday: and diving once more into the recipe book library, tonight we will be cooking Gung Bao chicken from Fuschia Dunlop's fantastic "Every Grain of Rice".  If you are a fan of Chinese food then I would highly recommend this tome.

Saturday: lamb seekh kebabs - sides tbc.

Sunday: Pollock (or whatever white fish looks good at the fishmongers) with chickpeas and chorizo, courtesy of Mr Tom Kerridge.

Have a good week one and all!

MPM: 27th May 2019

For some reason, I failed to hit Publish on this yesterday so here it is, a day late...

Happy Bank Holiday weekend to all UK readers! And a very happy birthday to my lovely Mum who is twenty one again today.

Meal planning this week - we're both out on Friday night (separately) so nothing planned then and D is popping out for a couple of end-of-the-month pints tomorrow so something quick and easy that can be thrown together when he gets in is required. 

Otherwise (and some of these are uncharacteristically vague):

Monday: salmon and rice bowl with pickled ginger and radishes, spring onion and pea omelette, wasabi and sesame cucumber salad, crispy onions, crushed wasabi peas and Sriracha mayonnaise.  It's suppose to sort of nod towards sushi flavours.  (Edit: we didn't end up cooking this last night as I was suffering from tummy trouble. Apparently, the medication I'm on to counteract my body's total inability to handle food is in short supply which means despite putting my repeat prescription in well over a week ago, I still ran out and had to miss some doses.  Sigh.  I've been in a tremedous sulk over this, since I'm actually in quite a lot of discomfort and spending far more time on the toilet than is ever desirable.  Sigh again. I'm supposed to be cooking it this evening, but I'm still feeling a wee bit delicate so might do something a bit less elaborate and bump this to next week.)

Tuesday:  leek, potato and taleggio tangle pie.  A tangle pie, by the way, is when you use shredded filo sheets on top rather than pastry so it feels slightly healthier than a normal pie.  Making the filling with lots of oozy butter and cheese should successfully counter any health benefits.

Wednesday: spaghetti Carbonara

Thursday: fish (whatever looks nice) with new potatoes and asparagus

Saturday: it's a weekend fakeaway, courtesy of a Teeside Parmo

Sunday: roast pork belly (from the freezer) with, er, two vegetable sides, tbc.  I was thinking this braised fennel recipe might be nice.

Recipe corner: Nando’s chicken pitta

I used to really like a cheeky Nando’s, even though admitting it may lead to the rescinding of my foodie credentials. And when I discovered what good points value it was under the new WW Flex system, I started jonesing for a chicken pitta. Unfortunately, said chicken pitta was 8 Smart Points worth of disappointment. So, I determined to make my own.

Now, Nando’s do sell a supermarket range of marinades and rubs so I could have just gone down that route which would have been an awful lot less faffing around. But I had an idea for a marinade in my head and really wanted to try it out. The results were extremely pleasing and, I think, worth a bit of effort.

I served the chicken pitta with spicy rice from this this recipe which was absolutely gorgeous and worked out at 5 Smart Points per serving (basically you only need to count the rice). I also made Macho Peas from this recipe which were also fabulous and 2 Smart Points per portion based on 10g of butter between two. You could reduce this if you so wished. It was one of the nicest meals that I’ve cooked for ages and I’ve been on form recently, so that is really saying something.

It’s a loooong list of ingredients, but most of this is standard store cupboard stuff.

Ingredients

2 large chicken breasts, cut into chunks

Red pepper, deseeded and cut into quarters
2 red chillies, deseeded and cut in half lengthwise

Tsp of rapeseed oil
Shallot, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Tsp smoked paprika
Tsp dried oregano
Tsp ground coriander
Tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Tbsp tomato purée
2 tsp rapeseed oil
Tsp red wine vinegar

To serve:
2 medium pitta breads
10g mayonnaise
20g fat free natural yoghurt
50g half fat cheddar cheese, grated
Handful of lettuce leaves, shredded

Serves 2, 10 Smart Points per portion (WW Flex)

I would suggest putting the chicken on to marinade the night before.

To make the marinade, first, you need to set your grill to it’s highest heat and pop the pepper and chilli slices under there to blacken. When they’re good and singed, transfer to a bowl and cover with clingfilm. This will make it easy to slip the skins off a little later on.

Heat a teaspoon of oil over a low heat and sweat off the shallot for around 5 mins, until soft and translucent. Add the garlic and dried spices and cook off for a further couple of minutes until everything has lost its raw smell.

Remove the skin from the peppers and chillies and put the flesh into a small blender, along with the spiced shallots. Whizz to a coarse mix then add the additional oil, the vinegar and the purée and a good splash of water to help it all come together into a loose paste.

Take two tablespoons of the mix and combine it with the mayonnaise and yoghurt - set aside. Then add the chicken pieces to the remaining marinade, cover and leave for a few hours or overnight if possible.

When ready to serve, preheat the oven to 180. In a dry pan (the oil in the marinade should prevent any sticking) fry the chicken off for 2 minutes on each side. Then sprinkle over the cheese and transfer, covered, to the oven for a further 8-10 minutes to cook through.

Lightly toast and split the pitta then fill with the lettuce, the spiced mayonnaise and the cooked, cheesy chicken.

YUM.

MPM: 13th August 2018

I’m so tired this morning. This, despite the fact I had a nap yesterday afternoon and then went to bed at nine o clock, I feel like I could sleep for a week. Thankfully, God invented caffeine and I’m sure that the second cup of strong coffee will be the charm.

Anyway, meal planning. A quiet week ahead with some nice food to look forward to.

Monday: Pan fried salmon with Bois Bourdan sauce and crushed potatoes. A Heston Blumenthal recipe from his “At Home” book.

Tuesday: Creamy butternut squash and red pepper soup, homemade flatbreads brushed with smoked butter

Wednesday: Kale and blue cheese gnocchi

Thursday: D is out, so filled pasta for me.

Friday: Skate wings with black butter and capers. This is one of my all-time favourite things to eat but, dear Teapot, butter is high in points. The recipe I’ve used before suggests 75g butter between two people. That’s 14 points worth of butter a portion! I mean…I’m going to eat it, but I will be licking any excess butter off the plate when I’m done and will probably be whingeing about it a LOT.

Saturday: A homemade fakeaway - Nando’s chicken pitta. Now, we went to Nando’s the other week on a pre cinema jolly and I was SO disappointed. I think they might have changed their recipe, or else we just got a really duff cook because it was not nice at all. Too much chill heat without any rounded flavour, woolly, over cooked chicken and the chargrilled vegetables were not so much chargrilled vegetables as crappy, overcooked mulch. So I’m going to make my own Piri-Piri style chicken at home and it will likely cost a hell of a lot less than the £30 we paid for two of us to eat remarkably mediocre food.

Sunday: roast dinner. Probably chicken. Depending on the weather, I’ll either do roast potatoes and standard trimmings, or we’ll have it with a couple of salads, maybe some bread. It’s distinctly cooler and greyer this morning here in Leeds, perfect roast potato weather, but we’ll see how the week pans out.

MPM: 26th February 2018

I cannot tell a lie, when I weighed in this morning and the scales yielded me a mere 0.4 lbs loss, I was disappointed.  I try to be very, very realistic about what I can expect on 5:2 but less than half a pound still stings.  I'm hoping that now my digestive system seems to be settling down a bit, if I keep on with the old keeping on I will see a better result next week. 

Talking of better results, yesterday saw me dip the very tip of my littlest toe back into the exercise pool.  Long time readers might remember that we have a treadmill in our garage, purchased back in the days when D was a keen(ish) marathon runner.  I've long been using every possible excuse to avoid venturing out there and climbing aboard, but given that it is clear that my 2018 Weight Loss Campaign needs a boost, I've done it.  And by "it", I mean I completed the Couch to 5k week 1, day 1 workout, which is really more walking than anything else.  Let's see if I can manage day 2 and 3 this week and maybe even reach the giddy heights of week 2.

Meal planning - we are out on Wednesday (a quick bite before a trip to the theatre) and on Sunday (lunch with the parentals).  Today and Wednesday are fast days.  There's not an awful lot else to plan.

Tuesday: Beef and fennel stew (from the freezer), mashed potato

Friday: Nigel Slater's fettucine with fennel and prawns - how adorably simple and delicious does this dish look?  Perfect for an end-of-the-week-collapse-on-the-sofa supper.

Saturday:  D is cooking two dishes from The Palomar Cookbook (a recent addition to our collection).  He plans chopped liver followed by a deconstructed kebab.  I shall be contributing homemade pitta breads to the proceedings.

The first meal plan of 2018

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! I do hope that you had a lovely time and are ready for a fabulous 2018. I myself have spent much of the day dozing over an Agatha Christie novel - starting as I mean to go on, you see.

We are all sorted for a meal plan this week and, indeed, are starting as we mean to go on by including some new recipes from a new recipe book on Saturday. We're aiming to cook at least one new dish a week this year.

Fasting is back on the menu as well and, to be completely honest, I'm almost looking forward to it. The first one in particular will no doubt be tough but my system feels a bit overwhelmed at the moment after a couple of weeks of profligate consumption. I'm keen to give it a bit of a break. Lunches on non fast days will be kept light and simple and veggie packed and, hopefully, once I'm back in routine, normal digestive service will be resumed (ahem).

Monday: we're neither of us inclined to do much today so it will be a few M&S nibbles from the freezer and some cheese and biscuits. I did mention something about baking bread but I'm hoping that oatcakes will suffice since I really can't be arsed.

Tuesday: fast day - soup

Wednesday: some midweek vibrancy courtesy of one of our favourites - salmon with pasta pesto. The pasta will be packed full of courgettes and peas to boost the green quota.

Thursday: fast day - soup

Friday: D is out and, at the moment, scrambled egg on toast is looking like my top choice for a solitary supper.

Saturday: a Chinese fakeaway, and, an opportunity to cook from one of the new additions to the household library - Fuschia Dunlop's "Every Grain of Rice". We'll be having smacked cucumber in garlicky sauce followed by chicken thighs with black beans and steamed rice.

Sunday: the rest of the chicken thighs will be roasted up and served with mashed potatoes and a selection of veg - so sort of a roast dinner. I'm seriously considering making Sophie Grigson's delicious sprout gratin as a side dish, not having had any Brussels so far this year. Although I am not sure that cream, bacon and cheese fits in with my current yen for all things ascetic.

TWTWTW: Winter is coming

It appears to be one of the depressing truths about getting older that time is permanently getting away from you.  I am sure that when I was a child, a single weekend would stretch out for days, summer lasted pretty much forever and a year was a lifetime.  And now, at the grand old age of thirty-ouch the whole play reel has sped up to an alarming degree.  I don't know how it can possibly be nearly the end of October, and 2017 approaching its final throes. 

I mean, I understand logically that we must be nearly into November, and thus practically at Christmas, because I made my Bonfire Night parkin today.  It was my second attempt, I am very sorry to say, the first being an abject lesson in trusting my cooking instincts.  Basically, we have an absolute beast of an oven and always have to reduce both cooking temperatures and times whenever we make anything to ensure that it isn't overdone; even bearing this in mind, I still managed to over bake my first parkin until it resembled nothing so much as a big, spicy HobNob biscuit.  Nothing wrong with the flavour, and, if you're happy to lose a few teeth, perfectly edible.  But not squishy, sticky parkin.  For those unfamiliar with this particular bake, I'll stick the recipe up next week.  The key thing to remember is that if it looks ready, smells ready and is only slightly springy to the touch DO NOT PUT IT BACK IN THE OVEN.  Even if you've only baked it for half the specified time.

I've titled the post, winter is coming, but last night's weather - full on wind and rain screeching and battering at the windows - made me think that it is pretty much here.  It was a perfect night to be inside, with all the sparkly loveliness of Strictly on the TV and a fire blazing in the log burning stove.  That stove, which we had fitted back in early summer, finally seeing off the Gawdawful 70s-style gas fire monstrosity, has proved to be our most worthwhile purchase of the year.  It was the first real stamp we put on this house after we bought it from our landlord and it's fabulous. Every home should have one, plus a cat to stare wistfully into the flames.  Example:

I say wistful.  That particular emotion might be slightly beyond her but she does a good impression, no?

In addition to the fire, we were also warmed on the inside by the delicious Rafi's curry that we had for supper (do you see how elegantly I segue into food chat?  Seamless!)  It had been quite a few years since we'd used one of their curry packs, but, now they have a permanent presence in Kirkgate market I can see us buying them much more regularly.  The Xacutti curry, which we made with chicken thighs, red peppers and onion, had a wonderfully rich, almost smoky quality to it.  We both agreed that we could have taken more heat, so, if we repurchase will request the mix be made hot rather than medium.  Served with nothing by rice and a supermarket naan bread it was a perfect Saturday supper.

Recipe corner: Cashew chicken with egg fried rice and crispy garlic kale

Photo courtesy of the BBC Good Food website

Usually, you have to put up with my less than stellar food photography - however, on this occasion, I have shamelessly borrowed someone else's so you can see what this dish could look like.

I did snap it myself and ended up with this:

Photo courtesy of me and several glasses of wine

The less said the better, eh?

I served this for our Friday night supper last week and we both hoovered it up, making yummy noises all the while.  Cashew chicken is one of my favourite dishes from the Chinese takeaway, so I expected to be all over it, but D was looking forward to it rather less - he was happy to revise his original opinion on eating.  It doesn't have many ingredients, and I considered adding garlic or more spicing to the stir fry, but stuck to the original recipe and actually, I think the deeply savoury simplicity of it is the charm.

This recipe is absurdly simple for all that it requires a wee bit of prep, and if you want properly good egg fried rice you really do need to initially cook the rice the day before.

Ingredients - chicken

2 skinless chicken breasts, chopped into chunks
1 egg white
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp cornflour
50g cashew nuts
1 tbsp rice wine (or dry Sherry at a pinch)
1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tsp vegetable oil

Ingredients - rice

100g basmati rice
1 egg
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1 tsp vegetable oil

Ingredients - crispy kale

Several large handfuls of kale
Tbsp garlic oil

3-4 spring onions, shredded

The day before (or, at least far enough in advance to allow it to cool properly) cook the basmati rice.  Cool and refrigerate until needed.

Combine the chicken with the egg white, the sesame oil, the cornflour and a touch of judicious seasoning and set aside for at least 20-30 mins prior to cooking.  Preheat the oven to 180.

Beat the egg together with the chilli flakes, the five spice and a decent pinch of salt and set aside.

Bring a pan of water up to the boil, and simmer the chicken for 4-5 mins until the meat has turned completely white.  This is known as velveting - you can also do it in hot oil but this method has the virtue of being somewhat lower in fat.

Now, you want two large frying pans or woks on the go at the same time, so get them on the hob to heat up while you toss the kale in the garlic oil and some salt and pepper and place in the hot oven to roast for around 10 mins until crispy (but not too singed).

Put the oil into the hot pans.  In one, add the cooled basmati rice, in the other, the cashew nuts.

Cook the nuts for around a minute, and then pour in the rice wine and the soy sauce and allow them to bubble down slightly, before adding the chicken.

Now add the beaten egg to the rice and stir well to combine.  Both the chicken and the eggy rice should cook for a further couple of minutes.  Ensure the chicken is entirely cooked through before serving (the easiest way to do this is by eating a chunk and that is the cook's prerogative).

Serve with the kale - I used my crispy greens as a base for the whole, but dumping it on the side is equally valid.  Either way is absolutely delicious.  Sprinkle the shredded spring onions over the top as an artistic garnish.

TWTWTW: Back in the kitchen and the return of the Fakeaway

As mentioned many times on this blog for some unknown reason, when life gets stressful, one of the first things that flies out of the window is the cooking and eating of sensible meals.  I often lose my appetite, which feels ridiculous to say out loud since I do not look like the kind of wan and waif-ey creature who can't bring themselves to eat.  I certainly lose any desire to be in the kitchen.  In these dark days, the toaster becomes the most regularly used tool in the arsenal.

How lovely, then, to finally have got back into some sort of good routine this week.  We have cooked and eaten a number of gorgeous meals and both of us feel a lot better for it.

Yesterday evening, I decided to do a Friday Night Fakeaway for the first time in ages, and cooked a delicious but incredibly simple chicken with cashew nuts, which recipe can be found here.  Chunks of chicken breast are combined with egg white, cornflour and a little sesame oil for twenty minutes or so before cooking, which makes them incredibly tender in the stir fry. Seriously, give this one a go.  I also highly recommend drizzling some curly kale with garlic oil, sprinkling with salt and roasting in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes - you end up with something very akin to the seaweed they serve up at Chinese restaurants; it makes a great side dish and doesn't taste virtuous at all (which is clearly one of the points of fakeaway).

My mojo has returned to such an extent that I currently have some bread dough proving in the sun and, later, I will be giving my new baguette baking trays a whirl.  I have tried baguettes before, and although the taste was successful the shaping...not so much.  Paul "Silver Fox" Hollywood makes it look easy and it really isn't.

I must admit, no points are being counted at the moment - that's the next thing to add in and I'm going to have to spend some proper time pondering how to make the new Smart Points work better for me - my initial impressions were not favourable but the thought of going back to Pro Points, when I rely quite heavily on the online tools, is not really tenable.  I even found myself wondering about sticking my toe in the proverbial Slimming World pool this week - my Mum has had a lot of success on SW and is looking amazing at the moment - but I think that a) I would find it quite limiting and b) I'm just making excuses to avoid putting my head down and getting on with it.

Obligatory cute cat pic of the week:

Minx is, as ever, a furry, purry angel - even despite the fact that she has a charming new habit of coming and waking me up in the early hours for a little bit of a stroke and a cuddle.  Who needs beauty sleep anyway?