Midweek Meals - A little goes a long way (with chicken)

(1, 2 - some interesting chickens)

Perhaps I've been studying too much Modernist architecture, but the phrase 'Less is More' seems to have sunk into my mind-set, and my cooking. Of course, it could also be the tight bank budget caused by staying at uni during Easter to revise / balls & graduation tickets / desperate impulse eBay buys spurred on by hopeless boredom from revision. Whichever way you look at things, chicken is expensive and, as I refuse to buy an animal that has effectively been tortured its whole life, I can't bring myself to buy anything other than free range. So I thought I'd share with you how I managed to use pretty much every part of such a pricey purchase!

Firstly, I buy a whole chicken, and cut it into parts. After all, a couple of chicken breasts can cost you the same as a whole bird, so you might as well start sharpening your carving knife. This delightful chap taught me how to do it, and it's actually pretty easy if you follow the lines on the meat itself (what can't you learn on youtube?! It's brilliant). Once cut up, I divide the thighs, drumsticks, wings & breasts I'm left with and bag them up for the freezer - you can get plenty of meals out of them already!

 

For my chicken korma, I just used one chicken breast, plus half a small butternut squash, and a couple of handfuls of red lentils. To make it I used this "Spicentice" mix I found in Tesco reduced section (now really sad I didn't buy more of them, they were amazing!) which came with a sachet of marinade spice you add to your chicken, yoghurt, garlic & ginger mix and leave for half an hour; a packet of cinnamon bark/cardamom pods/cloves that you fry with onion, more ginger & garlic and eventually the third spice mix plus all of your other ingredients (squash, lentils, tomato puree, chicken & marinade and coconut milk or cream) along with some water. VERY good. And made about 4 servings, with just one chicken breast!

 

One thing remained at this point though... the carcass. I didn't have much in the way of vegetables to make a stock with, so I just boiled it up anyway in a large pot for about an hour with water & salt, then strained off the liquid once this was done. I also picked off any bits of good meat that had cooked on the carcass for my soup. And with similar ingredients to the Korma I made a simple soup...

I fried an onion & some garlic, added ginger, paprika & cumin, added the rest of the squash (which I had roasted in the oven), the chicken pieces & more lentils. Finally, add the chicken stock, a few spoons of coconut milk and simmer for 15 mins. Easy. I'm off to eat it for lunch now! 



Lavender Cake & City Gardens

When you're not worrying about the reams of information about you on the internet, you've got to love how random it is sometimes. I love the fact that from my blog statistics I can tell that someone has been searching "end of exams cake" and come up with my blog. Well, they came to the right place! Because this week's cake was so good that I made it twice in one weekend, and it was STILL all eaten before I had time to get a proper photograph! This lavender & lemon drizzle cake was soft & subtle and highly suitable for stuffing your face in large quantities. Before exams finish or after exams finish. It will definitely improve your quality of life.

Lavender & Lemon Drizzle Cake
This recipe is in cups, cos that's the way I found it, and it was a convenient way to spend a revision break!
 - Cream together 1/2 cup of butter and 1 cup caster sugar
 - Add 2 beaten eggs, bit by bit so the mixture doesn't curdle
 - In separate bowls measure out a) 1.5 cups self-raising flour, pinch of salt & half tsp baking powder, and b) half cup of buttermilk (or milk with a dash of white wine vinegar left for a few mins) with juice and zest of half a lemon
 - Mix in the flour & buttermilk bit by bit to the first mixture, starting and ending with the flour - don't over-mix, just keeping going until the mixture is incorporated.
 - Crumble in with your fingers around 3 tsp of dried lavender buds (this gives quite a subtle taste, you could add more)
 - Pour into a lined/greased loaf tin and bake for about 40 mins on 160-180 degrees C (depending on whether you have a fan oven) until a skewer comes out clean.
 - When cooled, pour over a glaze made from half a cup of sifted icing sugar, juice of half a lemon and 1 spoon of Greek yoghurt.

In keeping with the weekend of flowers, Seb & I visited a few of Earlsdon's open gardens on the bank holiday Monday...

Had to take a picture of this one, or else I thought my mum might not believe me!....

We were serenaded....

Hope you enjoy the recipe! It's brilliant - many people have said so. Make it.

PS. I'm afraid that this blog is on a sort of half-hiatus until the exams are finished in less than three weeks time. Plenty of excuse to amuse yourselves in the sun!

Spring Celebration Cake

Term Three. In Earsldon the sun has finally arrived, at my desk I watch as cats skulk around the quiet street outside gazing at twittipated spring birdies, it's light for our cycle to campus and back, and Earlsdon festival is on its way. On campus, the atmosphere is quite different. Flowerbeds full of colourful blooms mean planting up for graduation days and tours for new students. The place is rammed with tense students revising and finishing essays, or at the very least drinking espressos and lucozade while boasting about the number of all-nighters they have pulled so far, the library is open 24 hours and nerves are running high there resulting in the occasional spat between finalists snapping at first-years over-stepping the reasonable conversation-levels line in the quieter zones.

Tense war-zone-like caffeine-driven fury of campus aside, I am buoyed up by my brand new bicycle tyres, a warmer journey to campus and cupboards stocked with a mix of brain-empowering veg & salads and enough waffles & ice-cream to ease me through the bad revision days.

But you don't want to hear about all this, do you? I know what you come to this blog for. Cake. So I give you.... CAKE! Spring-time cake. With some happy sheep cake-pops, and some slightly more sinister--looking-like-Frank(-from-Donnie-Darko)-rabbit-pops. Enjoy.