Mughlai Chicken - Creamy Almond Chicken

This delicately spiced meal is visually reminiscent of a korma, but it's got a huge depth of flavour that I'm obsessed with. It's borrowed from my ride-or-die Nigella, with a few little tweaks.

It's one of those brilliant meals that's even better re-heated the next day and it's quick and easy enough to whip up after work! If I'm willing to make that effort on a weeknight then it must be easy, I swear. The whole spices make it taste like a meal that takes a lot more effort than it actually does. 

Speaking of the spices, I'll admit that there are a fair few ingredients. Having said that, the whole spices don't really go off and I find myself reaching for them often - it's worth having them in your cupboard!

Ras El Hanout Baked Chicken

This is a perfect midweek “throw it all in one pot and cook” dish which packs the most ridiculous flavour punch while being the most low-effort dinner I’ve made in a while. You could use skin-on chicken thighs (use 8) but I don’t really like those.

Ras-El-Hanout is a fabulous mix of spices. I got mine from a little deli, but I’m sure I’ve seen it in world food aisles of bigger grocery shops. It means “head of the shop” and is usually made up of the best of spices. The exact spices and quantities are not set in stone, but usually combine all of the delicious ones – cumin, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, cardamom etc. Mine had rose petals in it too!

This is a full on one pot dish – everything in an oven-proof dish, bake, serve. So quick. So delicious. So what are you waiting for?

Butter Chicken

The very best curry is fairly time consuming but so, so worth it. That’s how I categorise this meal; it’s more of a delicious weekend effort than a weekday meal. It involves juggling a few things and throwing in a lot of ingredients.

Served with some Nigella seeds and I reserved a little of the fried garlic for a topping

But during the cooking process it smells INCREDIBLE and the end product is one of the best curries I've ever eaten - woooooorth it!

Georgian Walnut Chicken

Okay, strap yourself in for some former Soviet delicacies! I am just back from a holiday in Russia and I ate A LOT. And discovered Georgian food. And I’m in love. Russian food was lovely, but Georgian food was a complete surprise. It totally wasn't on my radar as a top cuisine, but I enjoyed everything I ate in the many Georgian restaurants we frequented. They have this beefy tomato rice soup called kharcho which is incredible (and coming up on the blog!), and these amazing dumplings called khinkali! Which I might not make because they looked like they would be difficult to put together.

But my favourite thing was this walnut chicken stew dish which is flavourful, warming, delicately spiced and super-duper delicious. So, as I always do, I got home and immediately googled some recipes and got the basics down. And I added a few spiced additions just to get it close to the one I had in St Petersburg.

This is super easy to make, with an incredible creamy sauce (always my favourite part of any meal). You can easily double the paste ingredients to allow you to make this again quickly. Because you will want to. Because it’s delicious.

Middle East Feast!

Guess who just got back from Beirut? This moi!

Lebanon is gorgeous, and I literally didn't have a bad meal there. This is a feast I made a few months back, before I'd gone. So because all I want to eat now is Lebanese food, I thought I'd post this while I'm whipping up some slightly more authentic recipes of deliciousness for you all.

Sometimes I just get in the mood to adapt/bastardise some cuisines into a feast of a dinner. This dinner requires a little preparation but is actually quite quick and easy to put together. We have an amazing Lebanese restaurant nearby and every time we go, I have a crisis about what to order. Because I want it all. So, when I fancied that kind of dinner, I MADE IT ALL.

I don’t think any of this is particularly authentic, because I’ve tweaked it to my tastes, adding sesame to the falafel, and turmeric to the tahini sauce etc, but it's really quite delicious. 

Sauce!

You could add in some more chicken, slice up extra pita bread, throw in some hummus and make this a finger food buffet feast for a party! But it makes a really delicious indulgent feasting dinner for two as well.

Chicken Noodle Curry

I really love a good Thai green curry, but in the past I’ve really only served it with rice. So, when I came across this recipe for cooking the noodles *in* with everything else, I was intrigued. I do love a one-pot meal, and this combines a lot of my favourite flavours.

Very simple, but do be warned, the noodles suck up the sauce like no-one’s business, so it isn’t the soupy/saucy thai green curry you may be used to. It is nevertheless delicious! One of those perfect weekday meals when you’ve come home wanting something low effort, but still warming and utterly delicious. I added broccoli as a side, but it didn’t work all that well, might have been better chopped smaller and added at the beginning of the veggie cooking process.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 chicken breasts, sliced into strips
• 3 spring onions, diced
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
• 3cm piece of ginger, frinely chopped
• 1 tbsp green curry paste
• 300ml chicken stock
• 200ml coconut milk
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 100g egg noodles
• Juice of 1 lime
• Optional: 2 tbsp peanuts, to serve (I didn’t have any!)

Method

Heat 1 tbsp oil and fry off the chicken for 3-4 minutes until cooked through. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add the rest of the oil, and fry the scallion for a few minutes. Then add the garlic and ginger. Cook for 1 more minute and then add in the curry paste and stir.

Add in the chicken stock, coconut milk and fish sauce – bring to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add the noodles and chicken, and allow to cook until the noodles are cooked through – about 5-7 minutes.

Spoon onto the plate and sprinkle the peanuts on top.

Sticky Honey Chicken

I really like Chinese takeaway. But, unfortunately I can’t eat takeout every day. Would that I could!

So this weekend, try this little homemade wonder. It is basically is my at home version of honey chilli chicken.  It's easy to whip up, and it really does satisfy that hungover craving that you may or may not suffer from come Sunday...

The chicken comes out beautifully sweet and tender and this is fast becoming one of my favourite dinners!

The great thing about making it yourself is that you can play up the flavours that you prefer – I don’t like sour so I keep the vinegar element to a minimum, but I like honey and chilli so I amp up those, and I throw in some sesame for good measure. Peanuts would also be killer with this.

Chicken Noodle Soup - Meal Prep with Sunday Roast Leftovers

I don’t know about anyone else, but I really like the concept of Sunday meal prep, so you have healthy and nutritious lunches set up for the rest of the week instead of relying on packaged sandwiches from the shop (which can definitely be a bit hit and miss!).

I also hate waste. I like to use everything I can and not waste food if I can. And on top of that I'm a bit lazy, so if I can get away with cooking one big dinner to serve as the basis for my meal prep then I’m all over that too.

Meal prep Sunday nights

So, this meal is perfect for me. It’s a really yummy, packed-full-of-veggies soup that is almost no effort, seeing as I am basically using all leftovers from the Sunday roast I already made. I already was chopping leeks and carrots for the dinner, so doing another one each wasn’t much more work, and the chicken was roasted for dinner and then the leftovers were shredded.

Slow Cooker Honey Chilli Chicken

Ooh, this is a good one. I haven't had time to cook much with work and revision, so anything to make the process simpler is a good one for me!

The slow cooker is such a great invention. I use mine at least 2-3 times per month, normally on a weekend. There's nothing better than shoving some food into the slow cooker on a lazy Sunday morning and knowing that dinner is taken care of so that you can focus on the important Sunday activities which include sitting on the sofa and reading the paper.

I don't know about anyone else, but my favourite takeout is Chinese food, and I love a good deep fried honey chilli chicken. I'm always looking for ways to recreate those flavours at home and this one really hits the nail on the head.

This is one of the most simple meals I've made, and the first time I made it, I'll admit, I didn't have high hopes. But the flavours are insane! This is a really delicious dinner, and super simple. Make sure to scoop out some of the sauce because it is really amazing over rice. And apart from all the other things that make this meal amazing, it also is basically made from kitchen staples - I always have these items on hand which means I can have this dinner whenever I want. Which is often, no shame.

Mmm, gotta sop up that sauuce

serves 2 with leftovers

Ingredients

• 3 medium chicken breasts
• 1 red onion, roughly chopped
• 1 red pepper, roughly chopped
• ½ red chilli, deseeded and chopped small
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• ¼ cup tomato pasatta
• ¼ cup runny honey
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp sesame seeds

Method

Chop the chicken breasts in half and line the bottom of the slow cooker. Sprinkle over the onion, pepper and chilli.

Mix together the garlic, pasatta, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, oregano and paprika until smooth. Pour this over the top.

Cook on low for 5 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

Remove the chicken and veg onto a plate, and pour over the sauce. Sprinkle over the sesame seeds and serve with rice or noodles.

Chinese Chicken and Broccoli

I really need to get my blogging-self back into gear. I haven't had much time lately to cook, so the blog has kind of had a back seat because I haven't had the material to post. But I'm back, baby. I have found some recipes that I'm really excited about and I thought I'd start with one of my favourite styles of meal - homemade mid-week takeout!

Quick dinners are really important on days when you’ve been in work and all you actually want to do is bundle up on the sofa with Netflix and peanut butter.

Quick dinners that taste a bit like a Chinese takeaway are even more important!

I’m not a big veggie fan, but I do like broccoli and leeks, so I try to shoehorn them in wherever I can, and they really work here. It's a lovely plate of golden chicken and green veggies and it just tastes like a big hug of a dinner. Serve with noodles or rice, or whatever you fancy.

Honey Mustard Chicken Tenders

I really love chicken. Definitely my favourite meat to cook with, because it’s just so easy and versatile. Somehow I don’t think I’ve ever made little chicken tenders before, which is a real shame. The blog has been skewing sweet lately, because Christmas = sugar. So I thought these would be lovely little morsels to re-introduce some savoury and make the sugar crash a little more bearable.

These are delicious little morsels of spiced, crispy chicken that are super easy to make. They might be baked, but the little drizzle of butter before baking gives them that delicious fried taste, without using a potful of oil.

These can be served however you like, but I was using mine in lieu of a Sunday dinner, so I went with comfort food – gravy, mash and sweetcorn. Broccoli, peas and carrots could easily have been added to the plate also but I was feeling lazy. Or you could serve with a crispy peppery salad instead. Or in a brioche bun with a drizzle of mayo.

Versatile and delicious. KFC has got nothing on me.

Creamy Jamaican Jerk Chicken

I am incredibly impressionable. We went out for dinner to the new Caribbean restaurant recently and I immediately came home and started researching Caribbean recipes. Now, for my tastes there is a lot of fruit kicking about in their savoury recipes. This is most definitely NOT in my wheelhouse. Like pineapple on a pizza, mango in a curry is not acceptable to me.

But, I like lots of other aspects – the bbq charred aspect, coconut EVERYWHERE, rice with all kinds of stuff in it.. I’m well up for all of that. Also, a lot of this style of food was “on the bone” which is fine and delicious, but I am a creature of habit and I usually default to cooking with chicken breasts. But if you have chicken thighs around, feel free to marinade them instead!

Now, for the rice part, I know traditionally you have kidney beans in it, but I didn’t have any on hand, and I don’t really like them anyway. So I added some extra veggies, and forgot about the beans. feel free to add them if you like them, this is a very laid back style of cooking, just go with what feels right.

Indian Feast - Chicken 65, Lentil Rice and Creamy Chickpeas

It was my birthday yesterday! And I celebrated it.. In work. Luckily my lovely boyfriend got me some great presents and delicious slices of cake to sample. AND he booked us a dinner for tonight to my favourite Indian restaurant. It's my favourite because the food is great and they encourage you to order a lot. It is an Indian street food place, so they encourage you to eat tapas-style. And everyone knows, tapas = ordering insane amounts of food.

And this restaurant inspired me to make something delicious recently. I’ve said it numerous times, but while Mexican food is my absolute favourite, Indian cuisine is my real and true first love. The first thing I ever learned how to cook from scratch was a curry. It wasn’t super delicious, but it was mine and it wasn’t from a jar, and I loved having created something from basic ingredients. I still make a version of that curry today and it has fond memories for me.

The ingredient list might be daunting, but pretty much all of them are my absolute cupboard staples!

But, we all know that Indian food is about a lot more than curries, and this is my take on some Indian-style street food, with a bit of everything – spiced fried chicken, flavourful lentils and rice, and some creamy chickpeas. Of course, these elements can be mixed and matched, but I like piling them all on my plate together – a feast for the senses – it looks good, smells FANTASTIC and tastes amazing!

Fajitas, Tomato Rice and Salsa

Oh, you know I love a bit of Mexican food!

I can't help myself, and I know that I have done fajitas before on the blog (and this recipe is much the same) but I’ve added some absolutely scrummy sides which just serve to enhance the whole shebang, so I’m posting them again, this time as part of a full meal.

The sides in question are a flavourful roasted tomato salsa and some spiced tomato rice. Now, I know. I am not the biggest fan of tomatoes, and this meal is fairly tomato-heavy. But we all have whims, and I just felt like having tons of tomatoes that day! Feel free to make the salsa and go with plain rice if it all feels a bit  much, or ditch the salsa altogether. Speaking of salsa, you can use this recipe at other times, especially excellent for dipping tortilla chips.

I will finish by saying that I love fajitas. I don’t know who doesn’t (well, apart from my long-suffering boyfriend). For me, fajitas are the perfect midweek meal – meaty morsels of succulently spiced chicken, balanced on top of some flavourful rice and wrapped up warm in a tortilla blanket. My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

Chicken and Falafel Salad - Or: My First Salad

I'm going to take the blog in a slightly different direction for this one, because.. THIS IS MY 200th POST!

And for that, I’m going to let you all into a secret.

I’ve never made a salad before.

Because I had always held the belief that..

And to be honest, this is definitely true..

I was never particularly bothered about it, apart from having a sneaking suspicion that I am missing out on something which could be quite delicious. I had never really considered salad a dinner. It was what you'd eat when you were punishing yourself for whatever reason. It was about tolerable on the side of something actually delicious, or on top of a burger. 

I resolved to make a foray into salads after eating a particularly delicious one while on holiday in Lisbon. It had crisp lettuce, delicately spiced chicken, a host of veggies and a balsamic dressing. I was smitten.

I decided that I’d give salads a go myself, seeing as we are coming into salad and beer-garden season (HAH! It's been snowing recently..). But to keep it safe, I wanted to stick to flavours and textures which were familiar to me, so I thought I’d try an Eastern-inspired chicken salad with some sesame baked falafel on the side. It's simple, but tasty. And I'm using it as a springboard for more elaborate salads in the future!

And while simple, it's goooood. The parts themselves are delicious together or separately. Those falafel would be really delicious in a hummus pitta. The chicken would be equally delicious over couscous with roasted vegetables. Go wild!

Chicken Noodle Soup

Yes, I realise it is halfway through bloody springtime, but the days have been really damn cold lately, so I think a nice warming bowl of soup is in order! As I type is it is literally hailing sideways. It's upsetting. Soup is the only answer.

When will the lovely crisp springtime arrive? I’m still trudging around in my wintery duffel coat, and Easter has been and gone!

This is a twist on your typical noodle soup, I’ve given it a hint of a Chinese flavour with some of my favourite ingredients, which I think go really well with this soup. I love sesame and soy and they go really well with this filling noodley-vegetable soup! Feel free to mix it up with your favourite things too – some chillies or mushrooms could really shine here too!

It really couldn’t be simpler- fry off some veggies, pour in stock and flavourful things, and stir through noodles and chicken. Top with more lovely flavourful things and enjoy!

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Curry

Would you believe that someone specifically asked for got a slow cooker for Christmas!

Now, I’ll be real with everyone for a minute. I was pretty resistant of the slow cooker juggernaut. I know, I know. The benefits are endless. But I was scared of leaving the house with something cooking. It worried me. What if I came home and everything was on fire, an ashy lump of rubble where my home once was? But then, I thought how useful it could be for times when I’m mainly in the house but don’t want to stand over a pot, stirring. So, while I don’t think I’ll be throwing things in it and wandering off to work all day, I find myself using it on weekends and half days, where I basically put dinner on after breakfast and allow things to slowly cook and infuse with delicious flavours all day.

And onto one of the best slow cooked meals I've tried in it! It's a lovely noodle stew with Thai inspiration. And it took like 10 minutes to prep everything, then I was done until the food was ready to go! Technology is grand. This is a perfect slow-cooker meal.

Slow Cooker White Bean Chilli

It's not the prettiest bowl of food, but it is damn delicious!

I love chilli. I have always, and will always love chilli. I thought everyone felt the same. But then I shacked up with someone who DOESN’T LIKE IT. I assume he must be the only one. He’s certainly the first person I’ve met who doesn’t care for it. My mum and I could live off a big pot of chilli con carne for days!

I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried not making it spicy. I’ve tried not putting beans in, I’ve tried slow cooking it with hunks of stewing beef.. Nada. So, I decided I should take a different approach entirely. Let’s turn the notion of chilli on its head. Using typical chilli spices, with shredded chicken instead of beef mince, and with a white, creamy sauce instead of a dark and tomato-y one. And of course, I’m using my slow cooker.  The finished  product is a bit like a cross between a roasted chicken soup and a chilli con carne, and I’m well on board for that – comfort food and spice, a killer combination!

As an aside, apparently beans/no beans is a huge argument in the chilli world – I couldn’t imagine a decent chilli without some beans. This chilli could easily work with just one tin of beans, but I went with two because I'm a bean-fan. I used to hate beans, but I have grown to love them, they are great at bulking out a dinner and are so wholesome and filling. You still won’t catch me eating baked beans on toast, YUCK.