Kharcho

Roll up, roll up for my second favourite Georgian dish. It's an amazing and filling meaty soup. There is a chill in the air, the internet is full of pumpkin spice lovers and people who make fun of them, so I think we can say it’s coming into autumn. And this soup is a perfect autumnal soup.

I have mentioned my love of Georgian food earlier, and this is another gem from the Georgian cookbooks. It’s a strong, herby, beefy soup with rice. Mine turned out a little bit more like a stew than a soup but it’s still delicious. Could be fixed with less rice or more water, but I liked it just the way it was.

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.

Cheesy Stuffed Chillies

Ooh, I like all of these things. A bit of spice, a bit of cheese, some delicious smoky spices.

These are a great little side/snack. The original recipe called for jalapenos which I couldn’t find. So I got padron chillies which are a little smaller and just with a little spice kick. I think bigger chillies could be better because you can stuff more delicious couscous filling in them. You could even use sweet peppers if you have a spice-hater at home.

Versatile, easy, quick, yummy, veggie!

White Chocolate Chunk Cookies - New and Improved!

I told you guys I'd give it another bash! Here's a little middle of the week pick me up.

I have modified one of my all time favourite recipes - the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, as it has the perfect texture that I was looking for. I did a little tinkering with the recipe and I think I have struck gold! To me, this is about as close as I'm going to get to the correct flavour and texture. 

The only thing that needs improved is the white chocolate - ideally I'd have something thicker than 2 chocolate buttons but thinner than a chunk from a chocolate bar. I tried a few with 3 chocolate buttons and that is almost perfect! But then you're into a second bag of giant chocolate buttons. 

Experimentation is fun! And delicious.

Green Rice

So, I won’t eat cauliflower rice. I just won’t do it. I love rice too much to substitute it completely away.

When I was in Edinburgh recently, I hit up Dishoom (a favourite Indian of mine, with loads of chains in London) and had the most delightful broccoli, pistachio, mint and chilli salad. It was intense and perfect with a skewer of delicately spiced chicken (and a huge pile of garlic naan).

I will re-create that salad one day, but for the meantime I got to thinking how good a side of broccoli was with curry/spiced food. And how maybe I could bulk out rice with some nice greens to easily increase my vegetable consumption. The great thing about this is the versatility, you could easily bulk it up further by adding pistachios and some sliced chillies.

So I decided to throw in what I had on hand - some random spices, shredded broccoli and peas into some cooked rice and see what happened.

The majority of the ingredients

What happened was deliciousness. See below.

Aubergine Curry

This is SO GOOD.

I love a good curry. This one is filling and wholesome and really delicately spiced. And veggie! I do want to reduce my meat intake slightly and I think Indian-style foods and spices are the perfect way to eat veggies.

I've had it for dinner yesterday and for lunch today - it's that good!

And it's a perfect one for a meal prep as you can add some delicious toppings and keep the variation up. I went with some flaked almonds and later (after photos) I added some shredded roast chicken. You could also add some fresh coriander, some pomegranate seeds, some pickled diced chillies.. whatever you fancy.

I also served mine with my favourite new creation of green rice (rice with shredded broccoli and spices) for which a post is coming soon.

Turkey Meatballs, Italian Style

I'ts nearly the weekend! And I can't think of any better way to celebrate than with pasta.

Turkey mince makes cracking meatballs. I have waxed lyrical about it before with another recipe with Honey Sesame Sriracha Sauce.

Well, I was planning to make that again this weekend but then I made some killer Italian style bread and needed to dip it in a rich tomatoey sauce. So I changed tack and changed the flavour a little.

Dinner and bread

This was a triumph and I'll be doing it again. It's basically an extra saucey bolognese. The addition of the milk is something I've heard about and read about but I was always a little nervous to add it. But then I thought - milk is similar to cheese and I will happily heap Parmesan in there until I have to be physically stopped. So I put it in and it worked! It takes the bitterness out of the tomatoes and just leaves a lovely silky texture for the sauce.

Enjoy!