White Chilli Chicken Enchiladas

I invented this quite by accident. I was trying to follow a chicken lasagne recipe and discovered half-way through making it that I was missing half the ingredients – it turned out that I had no lasagne pasta and what I thought was the can of cream of chicken soup that the recipe called for turned out to be cannellini beans when I dredged it from the back of my cupboard. I’d picked up some tortillas on special that morning so I grabbed some mild mexican spices and some sour cream – I didn’t have enough so I added some cream…

It turned out delicious!

Serves 6
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 cloves fresh garlic
1/2 green capsicum
1 stalk celery
1 tbsp Greggs Chilli Seasoning Mix (or 2 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp chilli powder)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
2 cups water
2.5 tsp chicken stock
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup cream
½ tsp salt
black pepper
400g tin cannellini beans
500g shredded roast chicken
6 whole large (or 12 small) tortillas
1 can chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup grated cheese
1/2 cup fresh coriander

Preheat oven to 200C.

Grease a 40 x 25 casserole dish.

Crush the garlic, chop the onion, capsicum and celery – I julienne the celery and then chop it to the size of the onion.

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan and sauté until the onion is clear.

Add the chilli seasoning, cumin and oregano and stir for a minute taking care to not burn the spices.

Add the water and chicken stock and bring to a low simmer. Turn the heat down and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the sour cream, cream, salt and pepper. Cook for another 3 minutes.

Add the beans and chicken. Bring back to a simmer and simmer for 2 minutes.

Taste seasoning and adjust salt if necessary. Turn off the heat.

Let the mixture cool and then spoon into your tortillas, roll and place seam-side down in your oven dish. Pour the chopped tinned tomatoes over the top, sprinkle with salt and top with grated cheese.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Sprinkle chopped coriander over the top and serve.

Sticky Date Puddings with Maple Butterscotch Sauce

When the family first tried these puddings, unanimous approval and ecstatic gastronomic utterings were issued all round – the youngest even said they were better than SSCP (which if you knew the youngest you’d get just what a compliment that was!)

These puddings are special. So light and fluffy and the sauce… Oh the sauce! Seriously guest-appropriate.

Even if you don’t like dates try them – 5 out of the 6 of my family said they were certain, before trying these, that they did not like dates but now all are converts. Just chop the dates small or use your food processor to pulverise them into the mix so you get the flavour without the texture.

I make this in my Magimix (food processor). You can make it by creaming the butter and sugar with an egg beater and adding the vanilla and eggs 1 at a time and then combining the remaining ingredients if you want. I initially made it this way but then after measuring out the number I wanted with date bits in them I then put the remainder through my magic bullet processor so I had a couple with no date bits for my family members with texture issues. Those processed puddings rose significantly higher than the others – in a way that suggested it was not just the weight of the date bits causing the others to not rise so much – though both were very light and fluffy. Now I use the Magimix just so everyone feels like they are getting more

Serves 8 - leftovers freeze and reheat excellently (not that we ever have any!)

Ingredients
2 cups (250g) pitted dates
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 1/2 cups boiling water
125g butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp mixed spice

Sauce
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp maple syrup
50g butter
300ml cream
1 tsp vanilla essence

Chop the dates and place them in a bowl with the bicarb soda and boiling water. Leave to stand.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 8 (1 cup capacity) ramekins.
[Note: coffee mugs work fine, so do muffin tins - the mix will make 16 muffin -puddings; you can also bake the mix as one pudding, use a 23cm dish.]

Soften butter and then place butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs in your food processor and mix until pale and creamy. Add flour, baking powder, spice and the bicarb water the dates have been sitting in – I just put my clean hand over the dates and tip – if a few dates fall in I just go meh! Blend until mixed. Then add the dates and any remaining water and gently pulse through (or blend thoroughly if you don’t like date chunks).

Spoon into prepared ramekins. Bake for 20 minutes.
[Bake for 15 minutes if you are using muffin tins or 35 minutes if you are using one single dish].

While the puddings are cooking make the sauce. Put the brown sugar, maple syrup and butter in a pan and slowly bring to the boil. Keep the heat low so it does not burn. Let the mixture bubble for a minute, stirring occasionally, before carefully adding the cream. Stirring well, cook for another 3 minutes or until the sauce is thick. Stir in the vanilla.

Turn the puddings out and evenly distribute the sauce over the puddings.

Creamy Tomato Pasta

Rich, creamy and on the table in under 15 minutes. This is fast food at its best. When I get in late and the kids are hungry and I sooo don’t feel like cooking this recipe is great – I can do it without thinking and with minimal effort; on nights like that we have it as is with grated cheese over the top but when I have a little more energy I use it as a base and go with one of the variations. It is so good that I will serve it to guests and I do get requests for the recipe.

Serves 6

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups dry pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
25g butter
1 small onion
3 cloves garlic
2 x 400g tins tomatoes
1/3 cup Leggos tomato paste
1/4 cup fresh parsley (if you don’t have fresh cut the quantity down to 1 tsp of dried herbs and add to the oil and butter just before you add any tomatoes)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Cracked pepper to taste
1 cup cream

Put the pasta onto boil in salted water with a dash of olive oil.

Heat the olive oil and butter in a heavy pan. Pulverise your onion and garlic with your tomatoes in your magic bullet and add to the pan (or finely chop and crush you onion and garlic, saute in the oil and butter, then add your tinned tomatoes). Then pulverise your second tin of tomatoes with the fresh parsley and add to the pan.

Stir in the tomato paste, sugar and salt and turn the heat down to a gentle simmer.

When your pasta is done add the cracked pepper and cream, stir through. Drain your pasta return it to the pan and pour the sauce over and mix through.

Serve as is with a little grated cheese or parmesan over the top or use it as a base for one of the variations:

• Add in chicken, bacon or capsicum at the oil and butter stage
• Throw in olives, baby spinach leaves or fresh basil at the add the cream stage
• Especially nice over ravioli, tortellini or any other kind of fresh pasta but it works fine over dried pasta too!

Crock-Pot Lasagne

If you have a crock-pot or slow cooker and a food processor you’ll find this recipe useful, it is so handy when you just want to do something really quick and easy for dinner that you know the family will eat. It is also helpful when you have to take a hot meal somewhere and share it; just start it at home then unplug it, put it in the car, drive, plug it in when you arrive and finish it off – if you get it good and hot before you leave then it will keep cooking in the car!

It is not as flash as oven lasagne but the fact you only dirty your food processor and one knife during prep and you can have it in the crock-pot cooking in under 5 minutes makes it flash enough for me!

This makes enough for 6-8 people.

Ingredients
3 cloves garlic (use fresh garlic – NEVER use pre-crushed garlic it tastes awful, nothing like real garlic)
1/2 a small to medium onion (I love onion but do not overdo the onion here – trust Mads)
1/2 capsicum
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1 x 400g tin of tomato soup concentrate (yes you read that right)
1 x 400 g tin of tomatoes
1/2 cup Leggos tomato paste
1/3 cup red wine
2 tsp powdered beef stock
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp sweet basil
500g beef mince
1 x 300g packet of dried lasagne pasta

Topping:
1 cup grated cheese
1 egg
2 tsp cornflour
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup milk
pinch nutmeg
dash of salt and pepper
1 tsp paprika

Put the first 11 ingredients (everything but the mince and pasta) into your food-processor. Process until it is all chopped up.

Drop all your mince into the food processor and then gently pulse until the mince is just combined with the other ingredients. Do not over-mix the mince in or else your food processor will chop the mince itself up too fine and the texture becomes weird.

Now, spray your crock-pot or slow cooker. Drop in half the dry pasta, cover with half the mince mixture, spread it out evenly, then cover that with the rest of the pasta and top that with the rest of the mince mixture, again spread it out evenly. Turn your crock-pot onto high and take note of the time.

There is one proviso with crock-pot lasagne DO NOT OVERCOOK IT overcooked pasta is horrible. The art is learning how long your crock-pot will take to cook this recipe. Mine takes 2 hours. If I double the recipe it takes 3 hours. My crock-pot is fairly fast cooking. I suggest that you pull a piece of pasta out of the middle after 2 hours and see if it is cooked – the minute the pasta is cooked in the middle you want to turn the heat off. Take note of how long it took to get the pasta in the middle cooked for next time.

Once you have the meat and pasta in the crock pot you will want to make the topping – now if you need to be dairy free it is actually quite tasty without the cheesy topping but if you are going what? lasagne with no cheese sauce? what’s wrong with you?!? then make the topping.

I use my magic bullet but you could just whisk it all up in a bowl. Lift the crock-pot lid and sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the top of your lasagne. Blend together all the rest of the topping ingredients but for the paprika. Pour the topping over the cheese and sprinkle with paprika.

Toffee Nut-Bread Pudding

Crispy caramely and decadent – this is not the soggy, stodgy bread pudding you grew up with!

Serves 6 – you won’t have leftovers.

Ingredients
6 soft white bread rolls sliced and then cubed
(I use rolls because they produce more crust areas when cubed – the crust bits go crunchy… mmmmm – but you can use any kind of white bread – you want about 5 cups cubed)
2 eggs
25g melted butter
1 tbsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup cream
1 cup raw sugar
Pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp white sugar
70g slivered almonds – finely chopped

Preheat oven to 160 degrees.

Spray a large rectangle oven dish (mine is 35 x 20) with canola spray.

Spread the cubed bread rolls out in the dish.

Beat together eggs, melted butter, vanilla, milk, raw sugar and nutmeg; mix until sugar is dissolved. Pour over the bread taking care to soak it all – gently press the cubes into the egg mix with a fork if necessary.

Sprinkle white sugar over the top and then the slivered almonds. Bake for about an hour – until crust is golden brown over the top.

Home Made Chai

Never bother with Chai teabags again and who needs expensive, sugar filled, chai powder or $5 Chai lattes? My girlfriend from India taught me this recipe, I’ve tweaked it a bit as is traditional to do to make it my own – but it is now just how I like it!

While it is nice to use the whole spice, if you only have ground spice that will work too; I have put the substitutions for the whole spices in parentheses below.

This takes just over 15 minutes to make enough Chai tea to serve 6-8 people.

Ingredients
3 cm of fresh ginger root (or 1 tbsp of fresh grated ginger from a jar)
2 cinnamon sticks (or 2 tsp ground cinnamon)
1 star anise (or 1/2 tsp of ground star anise) (optional)
10 whole cloves (or 1 tsp ground cloves)
5 black peppercorns (or 1/8 tsp ground black pepper) (this will produce a mild Chai, add more if you like it spicy hot)
5 cardamom pods (1 tsp ground cardamom)
4 cups water
6 teabags (English breakfast or something with a fairly standard good flavour will work)
4 cups milk – if you have the means to steam it til it is frothy do!
1/3 cup of soft brown sugar or honey or splenda
1 tsp fresh orange zest (optional)

Peel the ginger root and thinly slice, place the slices into a saucepan.
Measure out the spices, crush them gently to bruise them a bit (I put them on a clean breadboard and roll them and bump them a bit with a rolling pin) then add them to the saucepan with the water.

Cover and bring to the boil, then reduce heat and gently simmer for 10 minutes. Turn the heat off, add the teabags, cover and leave to steep for 5 minutes. Remove the teabags (just fish them out with a fork) and then add the milk, brown sugar nd return to the heat. Watch the pot at this stage as you do not want the tea to boil, you are just bringing the heat up to almost boiling. Add the orange zest if using, stir, taste to see if it is sweet enough for your liking (Chai should be sweet) adjust if necessary and then serve – it pays to sieve it.

Have you got Chai teabags you now won’t use? Use them in Chai Gingerbread Blocks.

Country Captain Chicken

This is probably my favourite main meal in my repetoire. I love it because it hits all the five basic tastes in a perfect flavour balance; I love meals that do that. The colours in this dish are also cool.

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 Tbsp butter
500g chopped, boneless, skinless chicken
2 onions chopped
4 cloves of fresh garlic crushed (never use prepared, pre-crushed garlic, the flavour is just not the same)
1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger (prepared, pre grated ginger is fine to use here, unlike garlic, ginger’s flavour remains the same when pre-prepared)
1 green capsicum chopped (do not substitute for other colours – you need green)
1 red or yellow capsicum
3 tsp curry powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp paprika
1 x 400g tin of tomatoes
1/2 cup of water
1 tsp powdered chicken stock
1 tsp salt
1 tsp oil
1/2 cup raisins
1/4 cup of flaked almonds
1/3 cup chopped fresh coriander

I make this in my electric wok but if you have a steep sided frying pan it will work fine.

Heat the oil and butter until fairly hot – think close to high but don’t burn the butter – then drop in the chopped chicken – try to drop it is spread out – and then leave it for 1 minute before stirring it (this sears it quickly and gives the chicken a better colour).  Stir it then leave it to sit for another minute. Stir it again.

Throw in the onion and  let sit for 1 minute, then add the garlic, capsicum and ginger. Let it sit for 1 minute then stir.

Add the curry powder, cinnamon and cloves and stir for 30 seconds – taking care to not let the spices burn. Add in the tomatoes, water, chicken stock and salt and stir. Cover with a lid, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.

While the dish is simmering, heat the 1 tsp of oil in a small frying pan on medium. Add the raisins and almonds and toss until the raisins are puffy and the almonds are just starting to brown a little. Remove from heat and set aside.

Taste the chicken dish and and adjust seasonings if necessary – add more salt if bland, add a little more water if too salty or if it is drying out at all.

Just as you are about to serve add the raisins and almonds and stir through. Serve over basmati rice with fresh coriander sprinkled over the top.