Cherry's English Kitchen

In the Bag November - Chestnut & Chicken Supper

So, once again we have reached the point in the year when there is very little natural light and every picture that I take of food has an orange glow to it. Forgive this, it will be better next April!

My entry for this month's In the Bag food event is this Chestnut & Chicken supper. My parents have a sweet chestnut tree in their garden that is around 500 years old, it produces many, many chestnuts each year which I should have had the forethought to grab and use in this dish as I did last year.

However this year I was in my back garden and not theirs so I had to make do with buying some ready shelled chestnuts form my local Waitrose.

Cherry's Chestnut & Chicken Supper

Serves two

Break up several pieces of day old french stick or chunky white bread and dry fry for two mins on a medium heat. Then place the bite sized pieces in to a large mixing bowl. Drizzle the bread pieces in EV olive oil, mince one clove of garlic on to the pieces and add a few grinds of the pepper mill. Stir well, coating the bread in the oil, garlic and pepper and set to one side.

Gently fry 100g of chestnuts, broken up in to much smaller pieces but not crumbs, 1 red pepper, chopped in to smallish pieces,  50g of sliced chorizo, half a de-seeded red chili (finely chopped ) in olive oil for about 7 mins on a medium heat. Add 50g of pre-cooked chicken that you have shredded with your fingers in to finer pieces. This meal is perfect for a Monday night after you have had a roast chicken for Sunday lunch.

When the oil form the chorizo is covering the other ingredients, the peppers have softened a little and the chicken is cooked through (again) tip the whole lot into the bowl with the previously garlicked pieces of bread. Add 100g of cooked cous-cous  and a small bunch of fresh coriander, chopped with kitchen scissors finely and  mix everything together well.

Place a bed of baby spinach onto a plate, serve the ous-cous dish on top of the spinach and drizzle the lot with my homemade dressing.

A little bit about the dressing.

I use this dressing almost every day and always have a drizzler full of the stuff on the go in my fridge. I simply top it up from time to time depending on what ingredients it needs. Here is a very, sorry, SUPER rough guide to making a dressing that goes with pretty much everything.

Pour three inches of EV Olive Oil in to a receptacle that is good for pouring with ( told it was a rough guide), add two teaspoons of Dijon mustard, one and a half inches of balsamic vinegar, one sugar cube, one clove of garlic (minced) and one inch of lemon juice. Shake well, pour some onto the back of your hand, lick it off and decide whether to add more of something or leave it just the way it is.

Enjoy.

Cherry

Pumpkin & Pancetta Risotto - which is also heavy on the black pepper

My entry for this months In The Bag - Cooking the month of October food blog event, hosted this time around by the delicious Julia is a risotto. The risotto itself is totally delicious and I am/was very pleased with it. But it appears that I was so pleased with it that LBH and I consumed both portions before I remembered that I had to photograph the beast as proof that I had actually tried the dish. My profuse apologies, but there is no photographic evidence of this dish and it feels like we are going back to the good old days of cookery books with no pictures. I'm convinced that they didn't add a picture of the dish if it didn't work.

Anyway, this risotto did work, I promise and it is my entry for this months event.

Cherry's Pumpkin & Pancetta Risotto - which is also heavy on the black pepper

Serves two

Finely chop 1 golden onion & mince 1 clove of garlic. Add to your risotto pan along with 70g of cubed pancetta and add a tablespoon of olive oil. Heat gently and soften these ingredients down.

Hollow out 1 small or medium sized pumpkin and grate or finely chop the flesh, leaving out the seeds and stringy bits that you are bound to come across. Put the pumpkin flesh to one side.

Chop, using scissors, 10 fresh sage leaves into small pieces over the risotto pan, adding them to the onions, pancetta et al. Then add 250g of risotto rice to the pan, mixing well until the rice is almost glassy in it's appearance, this should take about 90 seconds on a medium heat. Tip in the grated pumpkin at this time and give the whole pan a good stir.

Add 4 ladles of vegetable stock (you will need 600ml of stock in total) and then lower the heat so that your risotto begins to simmer. Add a twist of salt and a whole heap of freshly ground black pepper at this stage, about 8-10 twists of the pepper mill. Continue to add the stock, ladle by ladle, when the rice soaks it up. Test the rice after about 15 mins to see whether it is cooked or still crunchy. Do make sure that you don't let the rice become one big mushy mess by over cooking however! If you run out of vegetable stock before the rice has cooked then simply add tablespoons of water.

When you are certain that the rice is cooked to your liking add 2 heaped tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan. Mix well and serve immediately, piping hot and straight from pan to plate. I don't add more cheese than this as the sage and pancetta are more than tasty enough so you don't want to mask these flavours with lots of cheese.

Enjoy this risotto, we did! I promise that next time I make it I shall post a picture for all to see.

This has been my entry for In The Bag - Cooking the month of October. Hosted by myself Cherry Menlove, A Slice of Cherry Pie & The Real Epicurian