Prawn stuffed chicken wrapped in turkey bacon

Third course, the meat!

Now to go really crazy with the amounts of meat I loaded up onto one plate I decided to make prawn stuffed chicken wrapped in turkey bacon!

Takes a bit of time to assemble but after that it is smooth sailing because you can knock it in the oven and forget about for a bit while you get onto to something else. I love dishes that you can forget about for a while because I think you need at least one of those when you serve courses. It is vital that you move quickly. I had problems being quick serving a party of eight, so I don’t think I want to think about entertaining more without any help. Stews and other slow cooked dishes might solve my problem here but I’ve realised that these dishes have slowly started to become a trend in my little swarays. Slow roasted lamb, goulash, slow cooked lamb shanks, chilli... No! It was time to cut down the cooking time from 4 hours to a maximum of 30 minutes!

I normally do not cook chicken unless it butter chicken! When I cook for people I generally like to do something a little more special and memorable, not fancy but something that is exciting to prepare as well as eat. However I have to agree that there is something very homey about chicken whether it is a roast bird, chicken rolls or a plain old curry.

Keeping in the theme I chose stuffed chicken because I love how something that looks so ordinary can have so much more depth and detailed when cut into.

Prawn stuffed chicken wrapped in turkey bacon

Serves 8

For the meat

• 8 large prawns, cleaned, deveined, skins removed
• 8 chicken breasts
• 19 strips of turkey bacon (You may need more or less depending on the size of chicken you use)
• 200g sharp cheddar, grated
• Rosemary and Olive seasoning (You can use any seasoning you have. This was just what I had at hand)
• Salt and Pepper for seasoning
• Olive oil

Place the chicken flat on a board and using a meat tenderizer flatten out the breast slightly.

Rub with salt and pepper

Using a small knife create a long, deep incision on each breast enough to place a prawn inside

Sprinkle the prawns with the seasoning and place it within the cavity created keeping enough space to overlap the two sides of the chicken later

Sprinkle some cheese over the prawn

Overlap the two sides of chicken, closing the opening

Wrap the bacon around the chicken.

Heat oil on a wide frying pan over medium heat

Place the wrapped chicken carefully in the pan and sear all sides till the bacon looks golden brown and crispy

Now transfer the chicken to a slightly oiled baking dish and bake at 180^o C for around 20 to 30 minutes 

For the Sauce

• 1 large onion,diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 large whole peeled tomatoes, chopped
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 1 tbsp dried basil
• 1 tbsp fennel seeds
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Olive oil

In a saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring until golden brown

Add the garlic, fennel seeds and cook for about a minute

Stir in the tomato paste, tomatoes and herbs

Season and allow to simmer over low heat, covered for half an hour

Remove the cover and simmer for an added ten minutes.

To assemble

• 2 handfuls of baby spinach
• Balsamic reduction (optional)

Place the spinach on the dish and drizzled the reduction on top

Slice the chicken breasts into one inch wide slices and lay the bed of spinach

Pour over the sauce and serve warm

Ricotta and walnut ravioli

In news.... I got a pasta machine for my birthday!! :D so exciting! Oh the possibilities! Since I haven't been home since May last year I just got it!

I tried making tagliatelle and ravioli the first time and it turned out decent. In all honestly it isn't that hard to make fresh pasta! Plus side it hardly takes anytime to boil and it tastes much better than any dried pasta!

The basic recipe for pasta is 1 egg + 100g flour per person. Although I've seen it been done in a food processor, I have it a shot with my hands. Kneading does take a bit of work. If you are completely unfit like me your arms would probably be aching by the time you knead dough for 8 people. If you aren't a replica of the feeble me you'd probably just do fine.

"There's no secret to kneading. You just have to bash the dough about a bit with your hands, squashing it into the table, reshaping it, pulling it, stretching it, squashing it again. It's quite hard work, and after a few minutes it's easy to see why the average Italian grandmother has arms like Frank Bruno!" Jamie Oliver

Once you've created the dough you can either roll it immediately or cover it and put it in the fridge for about half an hour. Letting the dough rest will make it a little bit more easier to work with. I used my dough immediately but didn't have any troubles. To make things a little more easier to handle I worked in small batches.

For second course I made ricotta and walnut ravioli with a spiced pumpkin puree. Its not a looker for sure but bare with me. I promise to get better :)

 

For the filling I mixed the ricotta with chopped walnuts and basil. I made the terrible mistake of not seasoning so make sure you season to taste! Ricotta is a very mild cheese and it compliments bolder flavors in the dish with its rich creamy texture. I roasted the pumpkin with salt, cumin and pepper, pureed it and spooned it over the silky pasta.

With ravioli, the possibilities of stuffing is really endless! Its so exciting!! If you want something that doesn't take much work try a stuffing of smoked salmon and cream cheese with chives... absolutely lovely!

Amalfi Salad

First course was a simple Amalfi salad that i got from Jaimie's Italy. Its a lovely dish to start out with because its light and flavorful and probably a good way to build up to the heavier dishes.  This salad originates from the Amalfi coast, a stretch of coastline in Southern Italy. Amalfi is well known for the abundant citrus fruit that grows here and rightfully so this salad packs in the flavors with slices of sweet orange.

The key to this salad is to slice all the vegetables very thinly. My knife skills are pretty lousy so I used a kitchen mandolin which made things much more simple.
Simple slice up baby radish, cucumber, fennel, red onion and oranges and toss it in a dressing of olive oil, vinegar and salt and pepper.... rather effortless I would say!

Im back with the big dinner #2!

Those who know me well would already know how much I love big dinners, the preparation, the decoration, the theme and most importantly the food!
Ever since I got to Oman, its been days of working, dreaming about food and procrastinating on uni applications. Really really need to get around to it! No really!

My sister and cousin were in town so it meant more nights of long movies (I was always the first to nod off), idle chat and no sleep. Both of them are going back to uni soon while I remain behind still trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life. Its been lovely to be back home, no doubt but living here can sometimes be incredibly boring. Which means that most of the time you need to come up with things to amuse yourself like this dinner....
I figured ... a going away dinner? Why not?

For sometime now I have been really drawn towards pastels and neutrals, lace, flowers, the classics, stamps, postcards and antiques. There seems to be so much beauty and sentiment in things that have been collected over the years, so for this dinner I wanted to dress everything up to look pretty, elegant and detailed.
Scavenging through the house I came up with ;
 

 A whole load of old and new put together to set the mood perhaps?

 

Postcards and a few classic novels

 

An old pendulum clock, jewellery and a picture of my brother and mum

 

Dad's old briefcase and stamp album from when he was 12

 So here's me setting the mood with little vanilla cupcake, pomegranate fizz and my 'vintage' (almost) set up.  

 

Ditched the napkin rings for some peach ribbon and added a tiny bouquet of flowers to each setting. To make the bouquet I folded a sheet of dolly paper into a cone... thats it, but the little lace-like dolly paper added a little interesting detail

The Menu

Amalfi Salad

Ricotta and walnut ravioli

Prawn stuffed chicken rolls wrapped in turkey bacon

Poached pear

Keep posted for more on the food!

Panda Cupcakes

Sometimes I have these fabulous ideas and I never follow through. I almost never try and make something happen.

It has been an interesting few months. Never thought I’d end up here but here I am. I’d love if this was all fun and games but its not and I really can’t wait to go back home. I’ve been thinking of what I would do when I go back home and I really think I should do something with my cooking/baking seriously this time. Take on a few orders and give it a shot. Trying to reach for the stars here but who knows really what can happen.

I took on my first cupcake order a few weeks back; 40 cupcakes for a 4 year old boy’s birthday. I don’t think I’ve ever made 40 cupcakes so I needed to keep the icing a bit simple. Especially with my dire lack of tools and ingredients it was a bit daunting to make tiny neat things. I’m really glad I gave it a shot. Sure they weren’t perfect but maybe the imperfection added to the quirky appearance of the little ……………………….

Pandas!

Doing some research before I made these cupcakes, I must say that there are a number of panda cupcake designs online. I am sure you could attempt most of them if you had the ingredients but I had to make do with what I had.

For the icing I used a normal butter cream icing, desiccated coconut, royal icing (brown and white) and a bit of chocolate icing.

I used a very basic chocolate cake recipe by Nigella (who else do you think of when you say chocolate cake?)

First I covered the cupcake with the butter cream frosting completely and dunked the top of the cupcake in desiccated coconut. If you live somewhere where you have an abundance of white dusting powder you can use that. Even though I initially just used coconut for the colour it ended up looking like fur which was perfect!

Next the eyes and ears. For this I used ready-to-roll royal icing that I have been raving about in previous posts. Only problem is its white. So you will have to colour the icing to make it black or dark brown for this. If you have ready made black fondant then problem solved: D I had to add a lot of black and brown colour to get the right colour. Again I had no gel colours so I used food colouring which I definitely will not recommend for this. The consistency of the colour won’t remain the same and it is so messy to handle when you add liquid colour to royal icing. Go find the gel!

Once I had shaped the black part of the eye I just stuck a tiny ball of white icing on top. Used the back of a satay stick dipped in black colouring to add more detail.

The mouth was just chocolate icing piped out of a bag and the nose was a normal sized chocolate chip.

I really enjoyed this because….. it worked out! :D I thought I was creating Frankenstein but who knew they would actually be kind of cute.

So my first cupcake order has been a success and I am looking forward to maybe doing a few more before I leave Sri Lanka. Ill be here till the 22^nd of December so If you know someone who’d like some cupcakes give me a call.

Sweet Treats

Sweet treats for everyone!!

Ok maybe not everyone... just for my colleagues at work.

This is a post that should have been written AGES ago but as usual I never got around to it.

Ever since I’ve started baking, I love an excuse to dress up food. Why would anyone pick an ordinary cookie over one that has a bow around it? Everything looks better with a bow around it !

So for the last two Eids I wanted bake goodies and put them into cute little individual boxes. For the first Eid, I probably went a little overboard and decided to make 6 sweets in a little box. I probably pushed it a bit with the 6 sweets in 2 days because on the day of Eid I was still at the supermarket buying eggs and running around town trying to find peppermint extract.

 

 Fortunately except for a few mishaps it all came together and I was able to come up with something I was very happy with!

 

The boxes had

·         A chewy chocolate chip meringue

·         A rainbow whoopee pie

·         A piece of carrot cake

·         2 pieces of Mint and chocolate fudge

·         A piece of chocolate cake

·         Dates (that should have been Turkish delight L )

The chewy chocolate meringue (from bakerella) was my favourite treat from the box. They really were chewy like a good cookie with the surprise of mini chocolate chips inside. Couldn’t help eating a whole bunch of them as they came out of the oven :D

 

For some reason the Turkish delight didn’t quite turn out right and had to be chucked last minute L After all that stirring, I was quite disappointed. 

 

Aaaaand for the second Eid, I decided that I probably should try to do something a little bit simpler; COOKIES. Now every time I make a cookie I ask myself why on earth we buy cookies from the store, when it is so simple to make them at home. Laziness I suppose. Something I’m experiencing right now on this very slow rainy Saturday evening. I want a raisin cookie but I’m too lazy to walk to my kitchen and make it. The bed shall be my home today :D

The initial plan was to make five kinds of cookies and put them into transparent cookie bags, tied with polka dotted ribbons. However on the way to the bookshop to buy wrappers, I came across these absolutely ADORABLE gift boxes that made life so much easier. How cute are they??

 All lined up waiting to be eaten :D

The cookie boxes had;

·         Every cookie box HAS to have a chocolate chip cookie
·         A peanut butter cookie
·         An orange glazed cookie
·         A filled raisin cookie
·         Carrot and ginger spiced cookie

Now as much as I love a good chocolate chip cookie I was very surprised with how amazing two of the cookies on the list turned out.

While I was making the orange glazed cookie, I misunderstood the recipe and made the glaze really runny. I poured it over a batch of cookies turned the other direction for a minute and the next, the glaze was dripping all over my kitchen. So I made the glaze again! Finally using some common sense I added more icing sugar and the glaze sat beautifully on the cookie. Thing is once I was done cleaning I didn’t feel like trying even one of the orange cookies because everything I touched smelt like orange and I was feeling a bit sick. Fortunately at work the next day my stomach was growling (as it always does because  I cant seem to ever make time for breakfast) and I ate one of these guys and I was pretty blown away! Definitely making that one again. Super impressed with how well it kept as well. 

The next one I loved was the raisin filled cookie. Generally I don’t like raisins in anything other than cookies. I was originally planning on making oatmeal raisin cookies but decided on these at the end. I’m glad because not only where a delight to eat but now I know how to make a stuffed cookie! Sure it takes slightly longer to make than other usual scoop batter and bake cookies but it is worth it.

So I’m going to give you both recipes so you can go make it and tell me what you think!

Orange glazed cookies
Filled raisin cookies

Dripping Quiches and Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Its been ages since I updated this blog. I have been cooking and baking but I think I have been shying away from uploading the tiny things I’ve made because of all the crappy photography. I wonder why I can’t spend just a few more minutes and take a decent picture. (Always in such a hurry….. -.-)

Over the last month I made an upside down apple cake, red velvet cupcakes, a failed quiche and chicken pot pie.

The quiche is an interesting story because I love quiche!! I can eat quiche for breakfast, lunch and dinner! My favorite quiche is spinach and cheese and although I planned to each quiche last week I wasn’t destined to. I think once again I should refer to my disaster making pouring fondant but this time really it was nothing but my stupidity that ruined what could have been a beautiful quiche. I stay away from making dough due to my lack of confidence but then earlier this year my friend Simone’s mom made these yummy little quiches using store bought puff pastry.

Mistake number 1; I thought it was brilliant and I decided to give it a try, except for some ridiculous reason I decided it would be easy to make it in a pie tin.

5 mins in the oven and pastry fell and about 1/3 of the filling dripped out through the bottom.

Mistake number 2; I should have listened to my father. When I bought the oven my dad mentioned that I should probably keep the cookie tray underneath the wire rack if I was going to bake something that might overflow. Well I obviously didn’t do that or it would have saved me the trouble of cleaning cream and cheese off the bottom of the oven. -.-

I did salvage it though. I pulled the pastry into a silicone cake tray and put it back in the oven to see if it would work out mainly because it was too late to go out and buy dinner. It was fine. Obviously the pastry wasn’t great because it was soaked through but it was edible. Unfortunately by the time I cleaned the gigantic mess in the oven and the floor of my kitchen I had lost of appetite. So I gave the quiche away.

On a happier note, I found some really cool ingredients and baking stuff. Those of you who are my friends on facebook and follow me on twitter would know that about a week ago I found Polenta! ; an ingredient that I have been looking for high and low in Oman. I found it!! In Sri Lanka! Who would have thought?  I am super excited to make Polenta! Insanely excited!! So keep posted for something this weekend. 

I have been having a major cookie craving! That too for Subway cookies. Does anyone else think that Subway cookies are way better than any store bought cookie? Yesterday was Poya, (Poya is a Buddhist public holiday here which occurs every full moon day), so I moved my lazy ass to the store and bought all the ingredients and made a gigantic batch of cookies. Super easy, no mess cookies which I’d like to think are pretty healthy.

I used a recipe from smitten kitchen 

I was very pleased. No issues what so ever. If you prefer a sweet cookie you might want to add more sugar to the recipe.