Chicken, Bacon and Leek Pie

It's the time of year again when you need to eat pie. I love pie more than I could merely express in words on this blog, any kind of pie and I am happy whether it be sweet or savoury.
I had a whole chicken than I bought from the butcher and decided to roast it to make several meals over the next few days, the first being a delicious and comforting pie. Chicken, bacon and leek pie is so easy to make and takes no time at all.
When the chicken was roasted and rested I stripped enough of the meat off for my pie and started on making the filling by sauteing a whole leek I had cut into thin strips in butter with 4 slices of smoked streaky bacon. I then added the cooked chicken, some fresh chicken stock made from last weeks roast, white wine, some double cream and seasoning, that's it.
It was horrible weather yesterday so I didn't want to walk to the shop to buy pastry so I made some using a basic recipe of flour, butter and water, I have to admit the pastry was not great but it all tasted amazing and that's the main thing! Sorry the pictures are not the greatest but I was in a rush as the camera was running out of battery fast. I have just had to add in that three of my photo's of the fillings and other exciting things have been deleted by mistake so now you just have pictures of pastry, I am sorry but the show must go on so here is my pastry.



I couldn't find my rolling pin so had to use a role of tin foil, it worked quite well though!





My pie was a little burnt around the edges and sunk slightly in the middle but it was delicious served with buttery mash and savoy cabbage and I don't care what you lot think anyway so there ( I do really).
For lunch the next day I made the leftovers into a pie version of bubble squeak with some extra cabbage and bacon, I highly recommend you do the same.

Portuguese Baked Pork and Orange Ribs with Butter Rice

I took this recipe from a beautiful cookbook called 'Piri Piri Starfish:Portugal Found' and it worked so well. Gorgeous sticky ribs with an amazing orange flavour as well as the roasted peppers that I tucked under the ribs when they were cooking. I served this with butter rice and salad.

1KG of pork short ribs
125ML olive oil
1 Red and one yellow pepper (optional)
2 bay leaves
125ml white whine
juice of 1 orange plus 2 oranges quartered
1 large onion chopped
3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons of passata or tinned diced tomatoes
a pinch of piri piri (optional)

First of all brown off your ribs in half the olive oil and in a separate pan saute the chopped onion, next add the crushed garlic and after a few minutes add the passata and piri piri if your using it. Place the orange segments and sliced peppers onto a roasting tin before placing the ribs on top and then pour over the sauce and bake for around 40mins. I made some butter rice to serve alongside this by just frying onion and garlic in oil and butter and the adding the rice to it and frying for a few moments before adding water to boil. In the original recipe peppers are not included but I think they go really well and you can also add more passata for more sauce to eat with your rice.
It's quite possibly one of the messiest meals to eat so have lot's of napkins ready, Mercer managed to get sauce in his ear and he's 27....

Portugal trip.

Sorry I have not posted anything for awhile but it's been rather a hard month and I lost a very dear friend so have not felt up to much, but now I do so onto happier things!
My Mum and her husband have recently moved to Portugal for 6 months and so I was lucky enough to go and stay with them for a week in a tiny village called 'Villa du Bispo' in the Algarve. My Mum is just as much into food as I am so I knew there would be lot's of food adventures to be had and my first morning there I was taken to a market in a place called 'Lagos' and it was fantastic, the amazing choice of gorgeous fresh produce was so varied. There were lot's of locals with fruit and veg they had grown in there gardens and live chickens and rabbits for sale that were clearly bound for the pot!







We bought some fresh sardines and I gutted them with Mum and we just covered them with lemon juice, sea salt and the BBQ'd them. We just served them with them salad and bread we had bought at the market. Very delicious!







I adore Portugal and have been twice before to Lisbon which is one of my favourite city's I have ever been to. I was lucky enough to go to the best bakery in Portugal that is known for making the best Portuguese custard tarts in the world and it's called 'Pasteis de Belem' and my God they really were the best, crunchy flaky, chewy pastry filled with sweet, rich, thick and creamy custard filling with a glorious slightly burnt top, oh how I love Custard Tarts!





My Mum has a great Portuguese cookbook called 'Piri Piri Starfish, Portugal Found' with the most beautiful photo's in it. We took turns in cooking recipes from it including pork ribs with orange, pork and clams served with sauteed potatoes and I made seafood rice using crab claws, mussels, prawns, squid and clams. Unfortunately there are no photo's for thses dishes but I can assure you they were all very delicious.

The Brighton Food Festival.

Horay it's the Brighton Food Festival!! Well actually it started on the 1st of September and runs until the 7th of October but due to no internet I can only blog about it now.
As part of the celebrations today was the fiery food Chilli Festival that I went along to with my lovely friend Becky.
I do love spicy food but I can't handle very hot stuff as I found out today when I accidently ate the hottest chilli jam in the world. I saw a pot with 'Apple and Chili' jam written on it in the tasting tent and thought 'yum' that sounds good and so had a try, within in secomds I though my throat was going to close up and it was on closer inspection that the description next to jam claimed it as the hottest in the world due to the type of chilli they used in it, never again is all I can say on that one.
To cheer myself up I bought the most beautiful chilli plant called 'Numex Twilight' which has little chilli's that start off purple, then yellow, then orange before finally turning red when they are ripe.



All in all it was a lovely day with some great produce and lovely food and I will be going again next year for sure. Sorry about the lck of pictures but I did not have my camera with me, foolish I know.

Camping and cooking in the Kent countryside.

Hello again, it's been far to long and I have really missed my little blog and the few lovely people who read it! I am once again connected to the internet and so can at last update you all on some food realted things starting with a three day, last minute camping trip with my wonderful best friend Gem to the idiylic Kent countryside for a little adventure! Unlike me Gem can drive so we packed up her car, not entirely sure where we were going to camp but full of positive thoughts so off we went and found a few campsites but none of them were really what we looking for and we had been driving around for rather a lot longer than we had wanted to, so we bit the bullet and I rang my Mum, yes I know a fully grown 26 year old woman ringing her Mum for help but it had to be done and I am so glad I did! Her and her lovely husband Dave looked on the internet while me and Gem sat in a pub car park waiting for some good news and of course my Mum came through as she always does and told us of a very delightful campsite called 'Bedgebury Camping' where you could have your own campfires and there was a stream, sounded great and I can happily say it was!
We bought a two burner camping stove with us which also had a little grill and it did us proud! On our first morning I got up very early and started to make a proper fry up in the dewy morning air, and it was totally blissful.
For one of our evening meals I decided to make pork loin, with pan fried apples, cider sauce, sauteed potatoes, spring greens and romanesco caulifower cheese which sounds like a ridiculous thing to cook on a camping stove, but I did it, it worked and I have the pictures to prove it....behold.

Here is a selection of the local, organic produce I used to make the meal, including a free range organic pork loin from a farm shop we visited.







Here is the lovely pork loin that I pan fried in butter before adding apple that I scrumped( is that a real word?)from an orchard (naughty) with onions and cider.
Next to the pork are my florets of Romanesco Cauliflower boiling away, before I covered them in cream and local chedder cheese and put them under the tiny grill.
I just par-boiled the potatos before finishing in the pan I cooked the pork in. It was a ridiculous juggling act but it worked out well in the end!



Here is the finished meal.



Until next time...

I am still here!!!

I am having severe withdrawal symptoms......I really want to post lovely stuff on my blog but I can't because Virgin are the worst Internet provider I have ever come across. I was supposed to be connected a week ago but they keep pushing the date back and now I have to wait until the 17th of September. So I will be back as soon as I can or as soon as Virgin allows me.......

Will be gone for a week or two......sad times

I am moving house this weekend and may have no internet access for up to a week, depending on how quick it gets connnected again, very very annoying as I have a great post to put up about a lovely camping weekend in Kent but I guess it will be something to look forward to! See you lovely people very soon.xx