Thursday 18 June 2009

Saturday is baking day

These days, although we would all love to eat fresh, fully prepared, home cooked meals every day, it is sometimes hard to do much more than re-heat a ready meal in the evenings after work. Especially, ironically if you have been at the allotment till 7pm (!).

But Saturday is our foodie day. We love to think about what we can incorporate from the plot on the menu that night, and we have the time and energy to try something new, rather than a tried and tested recipe.

This weekend we had little else to do, so we worked in four new dishes with our own home grown stuff.

First on the menu was Chicken in Marsala sauce. This is cheating a bit, because the only ingredients from the allotment were bay leaves and thyme, but it is worth noting nonetheless.

Ingredients:
Chicken quarters or thighs, skin & bone on.
1/2 bottle of Marsala wine
A few sprigs of Thyme
2 Bay leaves
1/2 head of garlic
Splash 0f olive oil
Splash of balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to season
Fresh parsley
(optional) mushrooms

The basic recipe follows the standard chicken one pot meal, like chicken and tarragon. You fry off the seasoned chicken in olive oil till it goes brown, then add the other ingredients, leave it bubbling away for a while, keep an eye on it, then reduce down the stock that's left.

Reducing the stock is particularly important in this case, as you end up with a really nice sweet, sticky sauce, which coats the chicken really nicely. The final step is to chop the parsley and add just before serving. We followed this with:

Strawberry and Vanilla Custard Tarts.

Strawberry tarts
Strawberry tarts


These were made with Colin and Gail's eggs which we think explains why they have an amazingly yellow colour.

Ingredients:
Ready made sweet pastry
Vanilla pod
300ml Double Cream
5 egg yolks
75g granulated sugar (or vanilla sugar)

Line small tart tins with sweet pastry. Bake blind for 10 minutes then allow to cool.

Make the vanilla custard, by heating up cream in a saucepan with the vanilla pod. Beat together the egg yolks and the sugar in a separate bowl. Carefully drip in slowly some of the warmed milk, and beat until smooth. Continue doing this with about 1/3 of the milk then return the mixture to the saucepan with the rest of the milk. Heat carefully. When the custard begins to cool it will set, and then you can add the strawberries and custard to the tart cases.

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