Chicken Tikka Masala

My Mum’s kitchen is one of the main advantages of living at home for me. Having a ‘flour cupboard’ of every flour you can imagine, or a row of labelled jars of different grains and a shelf in the larder stocked full of different Lidl dried fruit and nuts come in very handy when baking or cooking and is something I know I shall miss when I go to uni in October, no matter how much I may joke about it now. I find the lengthy ingredient lists for curries can be intimidating, but a search through the cupboards showed me that we already had everything needed to make this dish…apart from the chicken.A quick trip to Sainsburys later and this problem was solved and I was ready to get cracking! I wanted to make a curry from scratch to practice balancing different spices and flavours and also to have a go at making one of my favourite convenience dinners. My family have our Marks & Spencer ready meal favourites sorted: a moussaka for my Mum, pizza for my Dad and always a curry (and some sneaky Percy Pigs) for me. This recipe was from Sorted Food which is a group of guys who run a YouTube channel and website that I love – proved by the fact that I currently have 25 of their recipes bookmarked! This recipe intrigued me because you marinade the chicken in a spice paste and then add this to an onion base mixture containing several other spices, almost like making two separate curries and combining them halfway through cooking. The curry was spicy for a spice wimp like me, but nothing that an extra dollop of yoghurt or drizzle of cream couldn’t solve. I was really happy with the end result and, marinading time aside, it probably didn’t take too much longer than walking to Marks and back to pick up a curry. You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Chicken Pasties

As this blog clearly shows, savoury cooking is not my thing like sweet cooking and baking is. I do cook and enjoy savoury food, of course, but it rarely features on this blog because I don’t often stretch myself or try new things as often as I do with desserts. Something I rely on in savoury cooking quite often is chicken as it’s an easy staple we always have in our house and there’s so many ways to cook it. As this is a baking blog, I also often use pastry in my savoury baking. Today I combined the two to make jumbo chicken and carrot pasties.I’d had these saved in my Savoury To Make file for a long time, and one blustery day I just really had a craving for a properly hearty dinner. I made them in a few stages – the pastry and filling one day, and then basically cooked them to order the next day whenever somebody wanted one, just rolling out a wodge of pastry and forming the pasty and cooking one or two for that meal. I originally found them on this blog here where I think they were made for a picnic but I made mine much bigger. They were perhaps a bit too big – but they were filling and delicious! I added a slosh of cream to the filling and think perhaps they could have done with another small chicken breast, but overall I was pleased with how easy and successful they were. They have piqued my interest in savoury explorations! Enjoy :)

Chicken Tikka and Naan Bread

So, it’s been a while. To put it simply, I had twenty-three big exams lasting for a month and once they finished I was off to Glastonbury festival to celebrate. I have missed this blog and have definitely missed reading all the other great blogs on a regular basis. I’m back now, on my summer holidays until September, and look forward to getting this blog busy again with lots of delicious things planned! Starting with…a savoury dish!I don’t often cook savoury food, and so the ideas of proper amounts of spicing and seasoning are not familiar to me. I thought a good place to start would be Indian food – giving me a chance to use new flavours and see the awesome combinations that make spicy food taste so good. I love curry (my Mum makes a fab chicken korma and Thai green curry that I really want to learn to make) but as we’re in July I wanted to make something a little more summery so I made chicken tikka, cucumber raita and naan bread. I can imagine making large batches of this chicken for summer barbeques or cold for a picnic: delicious.  Both the chicken and the breads were surprisingly easy. I used a Mary Berry chicken tikka recipe (her recipes are always foolproof) and a naan bread recipe from Anjum Anand’s book, Indian Made Easy. The naan bread recipe doesn’t use yeast which makes it really simple and quick. I used caraway seeds and black onion seeds (also known as nigella seeds) from above to top the naan breads and they were delicious. The black onion seeds in particular are just perfect and give off a very tempting aroma. The chicken marinade was simple to make and I was surprised by the inclusion of ground nutmeg – not something I expected to see there.  Once the three components were ready it was time for the all important taste test. Spicy chicken, cooling raita, crisp buttery naan bread. Eaten in my garden in the July sunshine, it was good. Very good. All in all, a delicious introduction to Indian cookery for me and I look forward to making more. If all savoury cooking gives results like today then expect to see a lot more of it around here!The recipe for the naan bread can be found here, although there is a typo: the bread needs to be left to rise for 1hour, not 10-15mins.
Chicken Tikka from Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook
Ingredients: 750g skinless,boneless chicken breasts, cubed
Marinade: 2tbsp plain yoghurt
2tbsp tomato puree
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1tbsp tamarind paste
1tbsp paprika
1tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
large pinch of cayenne pepper
large pinch of grated nutmeg
1. In a bowl, combine all the marinade ingredients.
2. Toss the chicken in the marinade. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
3.Thread the chicken on to the skewers, put under a hot grill and cook for 3-5 minutes on each side. Serve at once, with a cucumber raita.

Chicken Pie Terrine

Most people who know me, and anyone who reads this blog, will have realised by now that I’m not much of a savoury cook. My Mum can make gorgeous dinners: roasts, homemade curries, pastas, risotto, soup, pies – everything. Me, I tend to stick to “dessert duty”. In fact of all 62 posts so far on this blog (this being the 63rd), only two could be properly classified savoury. And both still involved baking. Well, things look set to change around here.
My heart is always going to lie with all things sweet. Lemon tart is always going to grab me more than smoked salmon. Yet, as I have been told many a time, a career in food is going to be much harder if all I can make are cupcakes and brownies. Plus, as delicious as sweet treats are, and as enjoyable as the family finds them, its not fabulous for the waistline. So, a new Father-implemented rule has entered the kitchen: for every sweet thing I bake, a savoury thing must follow. A hard task for me personally, but one that must be followed if my new To Bake list is ever to be accomplished. Starting, with this scrumptious chicken pie/terrine. 
This pie comes from the little cookery book compiled by my old Primary School a couple of years ago. The original recipe was from a Delia Smith book, but this version is altered a little. Essentially, you have a short crust pastry bowl, with a layer of sausage-meat (with spring onions, parsley and lemon), layer of chicken&nutmeg, more sausage-meat, the rest of the chicken, topped with sausage-meat and a pastry lid. The layers are what make me call it a pie/terrine as it is not quite the traditional white-sauce chicken pie. The pie took me quite a while to get together, partly I think as it was my first time properly using savoury ingredients alone. For a more seasoned cook, I’m sure this would be a breeze. There were plenty of moments throughout the preparation where I yearned for a sprinkling of sugar, spoonful of jam or handful of chocolate but I did it. And to be quite honest, I was mighty proud when my pie came out the oven, ready to be served for dinner. With no back up!
This pie was delicious! The sausage-meat was juicy and fragrant, the chicken was moist and fresh-tasting, and the pastry kept everything sturdily happy. The layers turned out prettily, and my favourite flavour was the juice and zest of a whole lemon in there – keeping the pie bright and light! If I were to make this again, I think I would make it less complicated by doing it how Delia does: just having three layers: two sausage-meat and one chicken in the middle. Also, the adapted recipe I was using didnt have enough pastry for a lid, so I used some puff pastry. Here is the link to the Delia recipe, with my shortcrust pastry amounts below.  Try it, its a lovely savoury thing to serve up. Now… where’s that cookie recipe…
Chicken Pie/Terrine Pastry:
100g butter
225g plain flour, sifted
Cold water to mix (about 4tbsp)
Beaten egg to glaze

1. Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the sifted flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add just enough water to make a dough, place in cling film and chill for 30minutes in the fridge. Use this pastry to line a 20cm deep pie dish.