Herb Crusted Lamb

I love lamb and I saw one of the cooks on Master Chef cook herb crusted lamb and I just had to make it!

I google searched some recipes, found one I liked, tweaked it slightly and the end result was pretty epic!

The crust is so fresh tasting and full of flavour, the potatoes were crispy on the outside but fluffy on the inside. This dish was simple but the end result is visually beautiful and big o flavour!

Serves 2.

Ingredients:

• Rack of lamb, French trimmed (with 6 racks)
• 600g baby new potatoes
• salt & pepper
• 2 slices of bread, crusts removed
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 5 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Cook the potatoes in a saucepan of boiling water. Once cooked, drain and place in an ovenproof dish. With a masher, lightly press on the potatoes to crack them open. Drizzle with olive oil then season.

Put the bread into a food processor and blitz to create crumbs. Transfer to a bowel and add the chopped parsley, crushed garlic, lemon zest, salt & pepper then mix. Add olive oil to combine, about 5 tbsp.

My Rack of Lamb

Herb Crust Ready To Go

Place the lamb into a roasting tin, fat side up and then put the herb crust on, patting it onto the lamb.ensuring it is in place.

Lamb Ready to Cook

Put the lamb and potatoes in the oven and cook for around 45 minutes for medium, but keep checking as it depends on the thickness of the lamb. Add more olive oil and seasoning to the potatoes every now and then to help crisp up the potatoes.

Ready To Carve

Carved & Ready To Serve

Once cooked, cut the lamb and serve.....bon appétit! 

Bone Appétit! 

The Very Best Shepherds Pie

I was flicking through my Delicious magazine and came across a recipe for shepherds pie by the head chef at The Ivy.

It looked good and what really caught my eye was the fact the recipe calls for both lamb and beef mince. Plus, if it's one of the best selling dishes at The Ivy then it's good enough for me!

This is another dish I had never attempted to make before but will be making this again as it was the best shepherds pie I've ever tasted.

You can either serve in one big dish or individual dishes like I did.

Ingredients:

• 400g lean lamb mince
• 400g good quality beef mince
• Sunflower oil for frying
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 3 fresh thyme sprigs, leaves picked
• 200g button mushrooms, quartered 
• 2 medium carrots, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp tomato purée 
• 400g can chopped tomatoes
• 150ml red wine
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 4 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 300ml fresh veal or beef stock 
• 3 fresh oregano sprigs, leaves picked and chopped

For the topping:

• 1kg potatoes (King Edward or maris piper), peeled and chopped into equal chunks
• 50g unsalted butter
• 50g strong cheddar, grated

Put the lamb and beef mince in a bowl, drizzle with a little oil, then mix well with your fingers. Heat a large frying pan until smoking, then cook the meat, mixing continuously, for about 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Transfer the meat and juices to a bowl. 

In the same frying pan, heat a little oil, then gently cook the shallots, thyme, mushrooms and carrots for about 8 minutes. Return the mince and juices to the pan, then mix in the tomatoes purée. Cook for 5 minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes and red wine, then bubble to reduce for about 10 minutes. Add the flour and mix well, then add the Worcestershire sauce and stock, bring to the boil, then tedyce the heat and simmer for 25-30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, taste and add more Worcestershire sauce if needed. Add the oregano, then set aside.

Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4. Cook the potatoes in a large pan of boiling salted water, covered with a lid, for 15 minutes or until soft. Drain in a colander, then return to the pan and set over  a gentle heat to remove any excess moisture. Take off the heat. Using a masher or potato ricer, thoroughly mash the potatoes, then mix in the butter and season to taste.

Spoon the meat mixture into a 2 litre ovenproof dish or 6 individual ovenproof dishes. Top with the mashed potato, then sprinkle with the cheese. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes or until golden and piping hot.

Carrot Cake

I love carrot cake but have never made one before. I'd always thought it was tedious and didn't want to spend a lifetime grating carrots!

After daydreaming about carrot cake for almost an entire week, I started researching different recipes...there are sooo many to choose from!! Then I remembered my trusted Hummingbird Bakery recipe book, they have a perfect recipe in there and it's straightforward, result!

This is a triple layered, moist, carrot cake which tastes utterly amazing! The fact it contains carrots and walnuts means it's healthy, right??! Well, that's what I'm telling myself as I've consumed over half all to myself!!

You will need three 20cm cake tins (lined with greasproof paper).

Ingredients:

• 300g soft light brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 300ml sunflower oil
• 300g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon (plus extra for decorating)
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 300g carrots, grated
• 100g shelled walnuts, chopped (plus extra for decorating)

Cream cheese frosting:

• 600g icing sugar, sifting
• 100g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cubed
• 250g cream cheese, cold

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F.

Mix the sugar, eggs and oil together in a food processor ensuring they are well incorporated. 

Gradually add the flour a little at a time, then add the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, ginger. cinnamon, salt and vanilla extract. Mix well.

Then stire in the carrots and walnuts by hand. Once evenly distributed you will need to divide the mixture evenly between the 3 cake tins.

Bake in the oven for 20/25 minutes. The sponge should be golden and springs back once touched. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

To make the cream cheese frosting, put the icing sugar and butter in a food processor until smooth. Then add the cream cheese and mix. 

Once the cakes have cooled, put one on a plate/cake board and spread 1/3 of the cream cheese frosting. Ensure it is evenly spread or the cake will be wonky! Put the second cake on top and spread another 1/3 of the frosting. Then place the final cake on top and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides. Then decorate with some cinnamon and chopped walnuts.

Steak & Stilton Pie

I've never made a pie before and when I saw photos of this specific pie my Maman had made, I just had to make it myself....with a little help from my Maman of course (since I recently had my folks over from France, yay!).

I love beef and I love cheese so this is the perfect pie dish for me. The original recipe is from Tom Kerridge but we've changed it up quite a bit so I guess it's now our own version.

The Stilton literally melts whilst cooking and the end result is this amazingly wine flavoured beef, with a Stilton wine sauce....honestly, I had a party in my mouth eating this!

My Maman made her own shortcrust pastry but you could use ready made if you are short for time or just don't like getting pastry stuck under your nails!

We served this with mashed potato and it was just pure heaven. I used individual pie dishes but you can use a normal sized pie dish and cut portions for each person.

Serves 4.

Ingredients:

For the pie filling:

• 800g braising beef, cubed
• 500ml red wine
• Olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 shallot, peeled and finely diced
• 200g pancetta lardons
• 30g dried mushrooms
• 1 parsnip, peeled and cubed
• 100g stilton, crumbled
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 6 garlic cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 2-3 tbsp plain flour

For the pastry:

• 450g plain flour
• 200g buetter, diced
• Pinch of salt
• milk 

Add the beef to a tupperware box/bowl and add the red wine, whole garlic cloves and bay leaves. Leave to marinate overnight.

Once you are ready to cook, drain the beef and keep the red wine as you will use this later. Discard of the garlic and bay leaves.

Preheat the oven to 180C/fan 160C.gas mark 4.

To make the pastry, sift the flour into a large bowl, add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Stir in the salt, then add 4-6 tbsp water and mix to a dough. Knead the dough briefly and gently on a floured surface. Wrap in cling film and chill while preparing the filling.

For the dried mushrooms, follow the instructions on how to prepare. Keep the juices once ready to use as you will add this to the wine.

In a deep sauté pan, fry off the pancetta until nice and golden. Once cooked, set aside on a plate. With the cooking juices still in the pan, fry off the shallots and garlic until softened. Then add the parsnips and cook until softened. Once ready, add to the plate with the pancetta and set aside.

Add the beef to the pan, season and cook until browned. Sprinkle 2-3 tbsp plain flour (this will make the sauce nice and thick) and ensure the beef is well coated and it's mixed in.

Add the pancetta, parsnips, shallots, garlic and mushrooms then pour the wine. Mix well and cook for about 20 minutes on a low heat. The beef will become tender and the sauce will thicken.

Roll out your pastry and you will need to cover the base of the pastry dish as well as covering the pie.

Beef filling added

Once your dish is lined, fill with the beef then top with the crumbled stilton. With some milk, wet the edge of the pastry so that the pastry case you place on top will stick down. Press down the edges to secure then crimp the edges with a fork. Make a small hole in the middle of the pie then wash the pastry with the milk (this will help it to get nice and golden).

Ready to decorate & bake!

You can decorate the pie with any leftover pastry, just remember to brush with milk.

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, until golden brown.

Tastes so good!!

Bon appetit!

The Cheese Shed

As well as my love of chocolate, I am also utterly obsessed with cheese!! It must be the French in me....the stinkier the better but I do also love mild cheeses. The only cheese I can't stand is goats cheese! No offence to goats but the smell alone makes me gag and don't get me started on the taste!!

My parents recently visited me from France and they always bring me two of my favourite French cheeses, Camembert & Maroilles. I love so many different kinds of French cheese and am ashamed to say I dont know many English cheeses, other than Cheddar, Stilton, Stinking Bishop....I can't really say I've tried many others.

I know English cheese is good enough to rival the French so wanted to place an order of several selections and have a cheese & wine party with my parents...how very civilised of moi!!

I came across The Cheese Shed online whilst researching and instantly fell in love with their website. There are so many cheeses to choose from and each described exceptionally well with a history of how the cheese came to be made, so you really know what you're getting when selecting what you want.

I was a little overwhelmed with which cheeses to select (I literally had about 15 cheeses in my basket!!) so I e-mailed Ian who was ever so helpful and he made some suggestions for me based on the type of cheeses I love and wanted to purchase.

I decided to order:

• Quickes Vintage - 24 month matured cheddar.
• Little Ryding - is a soft cheese with a creamy texture and rich, deep flavour.
• Cornish Blue - designed to be eaten as a young cheese. This is moist, sticky and Gorgonzolaish.
• Francis - supple & rich flavoured. This is a very pungent cheese with a sticky rind.
• Morn Dew - soft, springy cheese with a sticky, red-orange rind.

The packaging was great and I loved that it came with a letter detailing each cheese. The communication from when you place your order, to delivery is perfect.

Now for the important stuff....what we all thought of each cheese!!...

We are utterly in love with all 5 of the cheeses! Honestly, I thought I'd died and gone to cheese heaven!! Why the English do not market their cheese I will never know, would really give the French are run for their money!

The cheddar is by far the best I have ever had. The flavour  is slightly woody and the texture was just perfect.

The Cornish Blue was like a moist, creamy version of Stilton, It was so devine!

Francis reminded me of the French cheese "Livarot"...which is one of my favourite cheeses so I fell instantly in love with this one. This cheese smells pungent so I knew it would be love at first sight!

Mont Dew is a soft cheese with such amazing flavour. It's not a strong smelling cheese but it has a mild but very flavoursome taste. Loved this one!

Little Ryding looks like a Camembert but it's milder but still tastes really good. I'm not sure whether it has the consistency to go all gooey like a well done Camembert does but who cares??? When a cheese tastes this damn good it doesn't need to!

From left to right: Quickes Cheddar, Cornish Blue, Mont Dew, Little Ryding & Francis

I will most definitely be ordering from The Cheese Shed again and trying out some new cheeses!

I am off to Normandy next month to visit my Mamie so will be taking some English cheeses for her to try out!

If you would like to view their website it is: www.thecheeseshed.com

Disclaimer: I would like to add that these cheeses were not given to me, I paid for these myself and I have not been paid to review their products.

Prosciutto Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breasts

I have a confession, I have a girl crush on Chrissy Teigen. Which is utterly normal as LOOK AT HER!!!!! She is perfection! So when I found out she was launching her first recipe book, I was super excited, especially after seeing all those food photos on her Instagram account.

I purchased her recipe book "Cravings" a few weeks ago, it was an absolute mission to get my hands on!! Sold out everywhere but being the stubborn woman that I am, I continued with my mission and finally found a stockist who had some in stock, hooray!!!

This is the first recipe I have cooked from her book, I have tweaked it slightly as she uses goats cheese which I hate and I used Boursin instead of making the herb and garlic cream cheese from scratch. I served mine with my sauté potatoes (to view the recipe for this, check out my post "Midweek Dinner - Steak, Sautéed Potatoes & Creamed Spinach") and it tasted ahhh-maaaaa-zing!!

It's really simple to russell up and the chicken is so moist and full of flavour!

Serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 4 skinless chicken breasts
• 1 tub of Boursin
• 2 rashers of bacon
• Salt & pepper
• 16 plum/cherry tomatoes
• Olive oil
• 8 rashers of Prosciutto
• Fresh Thyme sprigs 

Fry the bacon in a frying pan with a little olive oil until crispy. Place on some kitchen paper to soak up any excess oil/grease, set aside and leave to cool.

Put the chicken in a freezer bag (one at a time) and bash with a rolling pin until flattened. Once flattened, trim off any bits that don't look pretty or are sticking out too much. Place on a large plate and repeat this step for the other 3 breasts. Season with salt & pepper on each side.

Once the bacon has cooled, crumble it up and leave on the kitchen paper until ready to use.

Spread some Boursin onto each chicken breast (I don't want to see any chicken underneath that cheese!!) then sprinkle the crumbled bacon on top. Season with pepper.

Now you need to roll each chicken breast carefully then wrap with 2 rashers of Prosciutto. Brush a little olive oil on top and season with some pepper.

Place the breasts seam side down in an ovenproof dish, then scatter the tomatoes around the chicken and place a sprig of fresh Thyme on top of each breast (if using). Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the Prosciutto is nice and crispy.

Voila!! Your dinner is ready....bon appetit!

Sweet Chilli Chicken with Egg Fried Rice

I was set a challenge to cook something out of my comfort zone and this was the dish chosen for me. As nervous as I was cooking Chinese cuisine for the very first time, the competitive side in me just had to rise to the challenge and (hopefully) smash it.

I'm happy to announce that said challenge was smashed and I now have a new found confidence to try out recipes I would usually be too apprehensive to attempt.

I recommend you have everything chopped and prepped so it's ready to use as soon as you need it, as once you start cooking it's all pretty fast paced.

It may seem complicated but trust me, it's fairly straightforward and the outcome is so flavoursome and scrumptious!

I did only use 1 chilli so do use more if you like a kick. Although, I must admit, next time I will use a little more as I could have done with slightly more "oomph".

Ingredients:

For the Sweet chilli chicken:

• 2 skinless chicken breasts
• rapseed/sunflower oil
• Plain flour
• salt & pepper
• 1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 80ml water
• juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 2 tbsp honey
• thumb sized piece of ginger
• 4 spring onions
• 1 large red chilli (or more if you like it hot!)

For the egg fried rice:

• 3 tbsp groundnut oil
• 350g cooked jasmine rice, at fridge temperature
• 2 eegs, beaten with 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 spring onions, fine chopped

Cut the chicken breats into thin strips. Add some flour, salt & pepper to a bowl and add the chicken strips, ensuring they are coated with the flour. Set aside.

Peel and finely slice the ginger. Cut the chilli into thin strips whilst removing the seeds in the process. Set aside.

Get a wok (or large sautée pan) and heat your rapseed/sunflower oil. You'll want a good amount to deep fry the chicken. 

Meanwhile, juice the lemon into a medium sized bowl, add the chilli sauce, soy sauce, water and cornflour and stir until well combined. Set aside.

Fry the chicken in batches for a few minutes in the hot oil until golden brown, remove and drain on kitchen paper to soak up the excess oil. Repeat until all of the chicken has been cooked.

Discard all of the oil apart from 1 tbsp and gently fry the ginger and chilli for two minutes.

Add the honey to the wok and stir whilst it starts to bubble for another minute or two. Then add the lemon and chilli sauce mixture and keep stirring and bring to the boil, the sauce will start to thicken.

Add the chicken to the wok to heat through for several minutes, stirring to ensure the chicken is coated in the sauce.

Slice the spring onions and throw onto the chicken.

For the egg fried rice, heat the groundnut oil in a wok or large sautée pan on a high heat until smoking, then add the rice. Spread out the rice so it all heats through, and then toss until coated well with the oil.

Add the eggs, and stir furiously so most of the egg is absorbed into the rice, then continue to stir-fry for a couple of minutes until some of the rice has just began to caramalise and toast. 

Throw the spring onions on top of the rice and serve with the sweet chilli chicken.

Bon appetit!