Wednesday 26 January 2011

A Few oF my Favourite things.....Macaroni Cheese

Oh How do I count the ways I love thee..... So easy and so comforting, perfect for cold January days. All you need is a good home-made cheese sauce pored over cooked macaroni with more cheese and a bit of Parmesan for that extra crispy topping, pop in the oven for 10Min's and then serve with whatever you fancy. I decided a thick slice of gammon, corn and fried tomato's, the creamyness of the mac N cheese with the salty ham, perfect.

Photobucket

Monday 10 January 2011

Curry Paste...sort of

I love curry but I always seem to end up buying ready made curry paste even though I have a cupboard full of many many spices. To be fair you can buy very good authentic Thai curry paste but Ive never fond a good Indian one and I would never buy a jar of curry sauce as it's against my religion!!
I made a kind of curry paste this evening but It's hard to do when one does not have the correct tools that one needs to make a 'paste' so I just improvised and carried on regardless. The main problem is that my blender sadly broke a few days ago when I was making soup and I seem to have misplaced my pestle and mortar which has confused me greatly, how the hell do you loose a bloody great pestle and mortar?!

Curry 'Paste' Ingredients.

Groundnut oil and a knob of butter
3 crushed garlic cloves
A small piece of fresh ginger
a small red chilli
toasted cumin seeds
toasted Fenugreek seeds
garam masala
hot chilli powder
crushed pepper corns
Tomato Paste



Creamy Chicken curry Ingredients

Home Made Curry paste
Mix of chicken thighs and fillets
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Bag of baby leaf spinach
2 Onions
Natural Yogurt
Cream
Flaked almonds



I just dry roasted the seeds and mashed the other ingredients together with a fork before frying the paste in some clarified butter adding 2 large chopped onions and a mix of chicken thighs and breast. I fried it all for around 6-7 Min's before adding chopped tomatoes and let it reduce by half which took around 40 Min's. I removed all the meat from the thighs before adding them back into the sauce and put a dollop of Greek yogurt in, a bit of double cream and some flaked almonds.
You may have noticed I didn't mention adding the spinach but that's because mine had gone a bit slimy so I had to leave it out of the recipe but It does go very nicely so if anyone out there does actually make this you should put the spinach in!

Photobucket