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!

Sausage Plait

Today is the second instalment in the ‘Lucy’s Recipes’ series of podcasts over on podium.me and it is one of my favourite recipes – sausage plait! I spoke briefly about this a few months ago but it really is a weekday favourite at my house. With only 4 ingredients it is so simple but worth it and perfect for after a long day at work or school – and then the leftovers are just as good in a lunchbox the next day. It’s also really versatile to adapt to your favourite flavours – you an experiment with different types of sausages, herbs and spices. It also doesn’t require exact quantities – if you have some leftover sausagemeat or puff pastry it is You can find the recipe below and listen to the podcast here – enjoy! Sausage Plait

Ingredients: 350g puff pastry
8 sausages
1 apple
1 onion

1. Preheat the oven to 190’C. Dice the apple and onion – there is no need to peel the apple.
2. Remove the sausages from their skins by making a small cut in the casing and peeling it off. Add the sausages, apple and onion to a large bowl.
3. Mix with a wooden spoon or your hands until the apple and onion are evenly distributed throughout the sausage meat.
4. Roll out the puff pastry on a floured surface to a large rectangle, a few mm thick. Shape the sausage mixture into a rectangle down the centre of the puff pastry.
5. Cut diagonal slits an inch apart in the puff pastry either side of the sausage mixture, towards the same end of the plait on both sides.
6. Starting at the end nearest you, fold the pieces of pastry over the sausage meat alternately, forming a plait effect. Bring up the ends of the pastry and trim off any excess.
7. Brush the plait with beaten egg and place on a large baking tray. Bake for 30minutes until the pastry is risen, crisp and golden. Enjoy!

Red Pepper Sausage Rolls

I’m currently working at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, serving in the umpire’s restaurant.  I’m essentially a posh dinner lady (think the mass catering challenges in Masterchef) but it’s actually really enjoyable, soaking up the Wimbledon atmosphere and listening to the stories of the different umpires. The umpires come from all over the world to judge the tennis – from Sweden, Italy, Australia, America, China and more. One bizarre fact I have realised whilst serving them at lunch is that many of the ones travelling from further afield have never tried a sausage roll before! I wasn’t aware that sausage rolls were a particularly English thing, but time and time again this week I have watched as the umpires point curiously at the sausage rolls and ask me to explain exactly what they are before nervously deciding to try one out. As a result, this week’s recipe is in honour of them!I’m not going to lie, I made these ages ago. I was going through my photos on my computer and discovered these hidden away in an obscure file, dated November 2012. 7 months have passed between the baking and the posting of this recipe, for no explainable reason as they were so good!Sausage plait is a midweek favourite at my house (I’m surprised I’ve never blogged it) and is something I’ve gradually introduced all my friends to as they have come for dinner at mine or I had it in my school packed lunch. It has also recently been made more famous here in the UK due to Nanny Pat frequently making them on Towie. Essentially, a sausage plait is just a giant sausage roll that can be sliced and shared, but this Alice Hart recipe shakes it up a little with some added flavour from sweet roast peppers. The result was really delicious, super juicy, bursting with flavour – I think the umpires would be a big fan! You can find the link to the recipe here – enjoy!

Mini Pork Pies

I just don't get the jelly in pork pies.

The pork sausagemeat: obviously, yes, delicious. The pastry: thick, crunchy, preferably in generous amounts.The hard boiled egg: technically we're talking a Gala pie now but still very much acceptable and welcomed. The jelly? No. Not a fan. A strange added layer squeezed between the pork and pastry which I find slimy and tasteless and annoyingly time consuming to remove. Hence why I got rather excited when I saw Lorraine Pascale’s Pork Pies with Cider recipe – due to its total lack of jelly.I’m sure that to a lot of people a jelly free pork pie seems like sacrilege (and a jelly-free pork pie with a quails egg in the middle even more so) but stick with it. These are delicious. I made these with my friend E. (my fellow foodie friend and a savoury cooking genius) on a bake day. We had an immense day and have another day planned – involving duck dumplings! We didn’t have any cider for the pork pies so we used apple juice which worked very well as you could taste the sweetness this brought and made the meat mixture extra juicy. These were mini pies, so they were a bit time consuming to make, but really enjoyable and strangely relaxing! It was our first time making hot water pastry and although we found the bright white lard a bit strange, the pastry was very easy to work with. I’d also never used or even tried a quails egg before – they are so adorable!The end results were delicious. Whilst the recipe states it makes 8 pies, we ended up with 12 – a happy bonus. They would be perfect for a picnic or a delicious summer lunch with salad. The pies got our imaginations going and we are looking forward to making more variations on pork pies – spiced ones, herby ones, a large one in a loaf tin with a whole line of full eggs. So, maybe I just haven't tried a good enough jelly-included-pork pie yet. Perhaps it is a taste that grows with age. Until then, I'm more than happy eating these little guys instead. Enjoy!

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.