Chicken Diane

Ingredients:

• Free range chicken
• Red rascal potatoes
• Green beans
• Red onion (or eschallots I guess)
• Parsley
• Garlic
• Lemon juice
• Chicken stock
• Brandy
• Cream
• Butter
  
• Balsamic vinegar
• Dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

Method:

1. Peel and dice potatoes.
2. Spread on baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil and season.
3. Stick in preheated 180 degree oven.
4. Dice onion as small as possible.
5. Break down chicken (save frame to make stock)
6. Chuck about 30g of butter in a pan along with 30ml or so of Olive oil and brown the chicken all over.
7. Put on a baking sheet and put in the oven.
8. Soften onions and garlic in same pan.
9. Add cream, brandy,mustard, balsamic, stock to pan and reduce about half.
10. Having begun to read The French Laundry cookbook, I now strain sauces (when I remember).
    

11. Blanch the beans, boil the corn. Add the lemon juice and parsley just before plating.

Time to cook: 35 minutes
Cost per serve: $9
Inspiration: Feb 2008 issue of delicious magazine.

Chorizo and potato stewed in verjuice.

Ingredients

• Corn
• Sliced beans (frozen)
• Thyme
• Tarragon
• Coriander
• Onion (grated)
• Chorizo (sliced)
  
• Potatoes (new, sliced)
• Vegetable stock (store bought, but good quality)
• Olive oil
• Butter
  
• Salt
  

Method

1. Sweat onion in olive oil and butter, with a few sprigs of tarragon and thyme
2. Fry chorizo in oily mess until soft
3. Throw in potatoes and deglaze pan with verjuice, then add a splash more (maybe 1/2 cup total)
4. Almost cover potatoes with vege stock and stew until the sauce reduces to a nice consistency, the potatoes are soft and your mouth is watering.
   
5. When just about done pick out the thyme and tarragon and add the chopped coriander.
6. Serve with steamed corn and beans

Time to cook: About 20 minutes
Cost of per serve: $5.50
Inspiration: Last weekends good weekend.

Tagliatelle With Pesto, Beans, Potatoes and Sausage

Taglietelle With Pesto, Beans, Potatoes and Sausage












Bit of a comedown from last nights dinner, but tasty all the same and wonder upon wonder the three year old cleared his plate without the normal pleading, cajoling and threatening. The wife also cleared the plate and proclaimed can you please give me smaller serves in the future, I clear the plate cos it's tasty not cos I want to eat it all.

Ingredients:

• Tagliatelle
• Pesto
• Green beans
• Potatoes
• Sausage
  
• Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil
• Salt

Fry sausage, blanch beans, boil spuds (I used the pinenut pan for the sausage well actually I used the sausage pan for the pine nuts, and the pasta pot for the spuds and beans). Stuff in pan with a little oil and then add cooked pasta. Stir through pesto. Season, taste smile.

Tagliatelle

• '00' flour
• Eggs
• Salt

I still haven't figured out portion control yet, how much does a person eat in fresh pasta. I've been whittling it down from 200g to 150 to 100g and it still seems I have leftovers. That aside making pasta is a dodle. 100g flour to 1 large egg to 1 pinch of salt dumped in the kitchen aid with the dough hook and left on slow until it forms a smooth shiny mass. Run that through the pasta rolling machine thingy and you are done.

Pesto

• Basil
• Garlic
• Pine nuts
• Parmesan cheese
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive oil

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan and then apply more machinery, bung all ingredients in food processor and blitz adding enough oil at end to make 'wet enough'

Cost of ingredients: $30 ( I stupidly bought a kg of pine nuts which jacked the price as I include the cost of the pine nuts that hit the floor when I tried to pour them into my pinenut jar.)
Time to prepare: 45 minutes
Number of serves: 4
Recipe inspiration: Tagliatelle genovese in one of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks

Chorizo, Chicken and Cannelini Beans in Tomato Broth

Chorizo, Chicken and Cannelini Beans in Tomato Broth












This was a fantastic, tasty quick meal and for once in my life I almost got portion control right to boot (no huge ass plastic tub full of leftovers in the fridge; just a small one this time). I think some crusty bread would have finished this off nicely, but that would have broken the one starch rule.

Ingredients

• Chorizo
• Chicken tenderloins
• Cannelini beans
• Tomatoes, tinned
• White wine
• Salt
• Coriander
• Pepper
• Olive Oil

Time to prepare: 15 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $23
Number of serves: 2.5
Recipe inspiration: Nothing in particular, but it was all mine.

Cannellini Beans Cooked in White Wine With Roast Capsicum, Rocket and Chicken Sausage

Cannellini Beans Cooked in White Wine with Roast Capsicum, Rocket and Chicken Sausage











For a fancy pants looking dish this was really quick to cook and very tasty (I think it was down to getting the seasoning right, and beans need a lot of salt.) Eaten with gusto by all and sundry, except the 3 year old turned his nose up at the rocket. The 6 month old did a little better tonight with his rice gruel (red bowl in the background of the photo), perhaps on 50% of it came straight out again rather than the previous 75%. I think he's holding out for real food, instead of his gruel, as he watches most intently when people eat around him.

Ingredients

• Chicken sausage
• Cannellini beans (canned)
  
• Capsicum
• Rocket
• White wine
• Onion
• Salt
• Pepper
• Parmesan cheese
• Olive Oil

Time to prepare: 15 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $15
Number of serves: 4
Recipe inspiration: June issue of Delicious magazine
Current weight: 105.1kg

Restaurant Meal: Santa Clara Taco Bell

Burrito Supreme and Nachos


Suprisingly this meal wasn't enormous, was tasty and wasn't particularly expensive.

Detectable Ingredients

Burrito

• Flour tortilla
• Chicken bits
  
• Beans
• Lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Sour Cream
  
• "Cheese" (it was bright orange and had the right texture, but that's about it)

Nachos

• Corn chips
• Melted "cheese" (again bright orange)
  

Time to prepare: Less than 5 minutes
Cost of ingredients: $5.49
Number of serves: 1
Recipe inspiration: No idea

Restaurant Meal: Terminus Hotel

"Bangers and Beans"


No photos again, I asked at the bar and they said that they didn't allow photos inside the pub? WTF? Anyways, I had a very tasty Kransky sausage on a bed of cannellini beans, tomato and chorizo.

Detectable Ingredients:

• Kransky sausage (they claimed free-range, but I've never seen a sausage gamboling in a paddock under the bright yellow sun)
• Cannellini beans
• Tomato
• Garlic
• Chorizo sausage
• Parsley

Time to prepare: 15 minutes
Cost of meal: $14

Chicken, Chorizo and Butter Bean Casserole

Chicken, Sausage and Butter Bean Casserole












Recipe was adapted from a Delicious magazine article. Everyone happily dug in.

• Chicken breast, corn fed with skin
• Chorizo
• Italian Sausage
• Tinned Tomato
• Butter Beans
• White wine
• Chicken stock
• Salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil
• Smoked paprika
• Coriander
• Potato
• Butter
• Salt
• Nutmeg

Time to cook: 50 minutes.
Approx cost of ingredients: $25