The 'Here's what I had for dinner last night' thread - Part II - Don't quote pics!

iwantmydinner

Last night I cracked out a staple of the iwantmydinner arsenal - red pesto cream penne with chicken and chorizo - for me new fella. He was suitably impressed!

Had it with that lovely Chilean Merlot from Lidl. My palate is pretty ignorant but I thought they went really nicely together.

ibarelycare

iwantmydinner wrote: »

Last night I cracked out a staple of the iwantmydinner arsenal - red pesto cream penne with chicken and chorizo - for me new fella. He was suitably impressed!

Had it with that lovely Chilean Merlot from Lidl. My palate is pretty ignorant but I thought they went really nicely together.

That pasta dish sounds delicious. Recipe??

iwantmydinner

ibarelycare wrote: »

That pasta dish sounds delicious. Recipe??

It's so good, and so simple, and cheap. Easily adaptable to suit your own taste as well. I usually cook enough for 4 or 5 meals as it tastes pretty good the next day as well, so that's about how much you'll get from the below quantities. It's pretty filling so a little goes a long way!

Put on the penne to boil (I think whole wheat tastes best)

Peel a chorizo ring and slice up into rounds, about 1cm thick. Fry in a frying pan until lots of lovely orange oil is in the pan.

Remove the chorizo pieces to a bowl, but leave the oil in the pan. Fry 2 diced chicken breast fillets in the chorizo oil.

Return the chorizo pieces to the pan, reduce to low heat, and add in the red pesto (I use the wee jar from Aldi - the whole jar). I like to add in a generous teaspoon of tomato puree and some chilli flakes here as well. Once that's been cooking for about two minutes, add in your cream (judge how much cream you want yourself - I'm a bit heavy handed )

After another minute or two, once the cream is heated through, throw the whole lot in on top of your drained pasta and stir around to coat the pasta well and distribute the meat pieces.

Hope that's all clear! Enjoy!

ibarelycare

Yum! I'm obsessed with chorizo! That sounds amazing, thank you!

gucci

Longtime lurker, first time poster:

Last night I made Spicey chicken wraps with Watermelon & Tomato Salad/ Fillings. Absolutely amazing!! I hadn’t time to take a picture as it was too tasty to stop for breath!! Try it!!

I have never eaten watermelon in a salad before, and the combination with the hot sauce and the yogart……I think I will be eating this again as soon as I can!!

I got it in a magazine and it was promoting Nandos, but I used a different hot sauce.

• 4 Chicken fillets, each cut into 3
• ½ Cup Hot sauce
• 2t Ground turmeric
• 1 Cup (250ml) plain yoghurt
• 2T Cumin seeds, lightly toasted
• 4 Tortillas
• 15g micro herbs
Watermelon and tomato salad
• ½ Watermelon, cut into chunks
• 200g Ripe tomatoes, quartered
• 15g Fresh mint
• 1 Lemon, squeezed
• 2T Extra virgin olive oil
Mix together the ground turmeric and Hot sauce sauce and coat the chicken fillets in the mixture.
Heat oil over a medium heat and brown the chicken until cooked.
To make the salad, mix the watermelon, tomato and mint and dress with the freshly squeezed lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil.
Mix together the yogurt and toasted cumin seeds ( I ground them in a pestle and mortar to get a finer sauce / more flavour) and set aside.
Toast the tortillas in a dry pan over a high heat.
To assemble, place the toasted tortillas on a plate and top with the watermelon salad and chicken and spoon over the cumin yogurt. Garnish with micro herbs and serve.

the beer revolu

I did bacon (ham really) and cabbage at the weekend for some friends.
Honey and mustard glazed, studded ham. Mashed potatoes with leek. Sweetheart cabbage stirfried with ginger, garlic and lemon zest and some ham cooking water. Parsley sauce.

It was very nice (didn't get a pic) but the best part was the leftover meals it produced.

I made pea soup from the cooking liquid. I just blitzed the veg I cooked the ham with (carrot, celery, onion, leek) and a load of frozen peas.
We got two day out of this, I served it with some fried ham skin, natural yoghurt, chopped mint and some wallnut oil.




I also did bubble and squeak with the leftover spuds and cabbage.
This went surprisingly well with a tomato, basil and garlic salad - really well.



I also did fried rice with the ham. Brown basmati rice, the last 1/4 of the cabbage (raw), onion, garlic, ginger, red pepper, chilli, egg, ham, soy sauce.

A meal that just kept giving and giving:D

dibkins

Many a time i made fried rice in college with the end of the ham me mum gave me going back on sunday:) All that looks amazing! What do you do for fried ham skin exactly?

Gloomtastic!

Fried ham skin, manna from heaven I'd say!! (Don't those damned people who issue healthy eating advice have taste buds?)

Mrs Fox

Salmon in sweet chilli soy glaze, a stir fry of beansprouts and carrots, and rice flavoured with ginger and sesame oil.

Ilyana 2.0

^^ Snap, I had salmon and rice too!

Mine was far less sophisticated though. Baked peppered salmon with egg fried rice from this recipe.

And I'm eating the remnants of the rice from the lunchbox that was supposed to be for tomorrow. Because I'm classy like that.

fiddlechic

I was ravenous by the time I ate my dinner tonight, so that might account for the extreme enjoyment I had eating it. It was so good.
Had a massive marrow from my aunt in the fridge for the last fortnight that I want to use up. I also want to appreciate pearl barley more, so I made Ottolenghi's pearl barley tomato and garlic risotto and used that to the stuff marrow rings. Covered with parmesan and cheddar cheese and then some coriander. It was amazing. There's loads of the pearl barley left, which I'll eat as per Ottolenghi - with feta.
Only problem was that it took me about 2 hours to make it - need 2 heads of garlic, peeled and quartered, and to skin tomatoes - and then cook pearl barley as risotto before baking the marrows. But I'll be making it again.

sblythe

Chicken burgers with chorizo. I usually have these on a ciabatta but the bap was a nice change. Sorry about the rubbish photo, thats my phone camera at work there...It looked much better in person too

Gloomtastic!

Caramelised onions, roasted peppers with Gorgonzola and rosemary pizza.




Base test....

StripedBoxers

Roast Lamb, broccoli and potatoes for dinner tonight. Delicious.

jordata

I was looking for inspiration this evening to feed a group of teenagers. I stumbled across this recipe for savoury mince baked potatoes on the bbc website. Delicious and so easy. Will definitely use it again for a group.
Link: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1254/baked-potato-with-cheesy-mince
I used beef instead of lamb because that is what I had in the fridge.

Kovu

Sweet Chilli & honey beef with broccoli, lots of garlic, onion & chilli.
I'd have eaten twice what I made if I had it!

gjc

Kovu any chance of the recipe my mouth is watering at that lovely dish

Kovu

gjc wrote: »

Kovu any chance of the recipe my mouth is watering at that lovely dish

Not much of a recipe! Nice piece of round steak, cut up into bite size pieces and tossed in seasoned flour.

Fried them off in a really hot pan and shallow oil and set aside. Drained the pan, leaving only a small bit.
Then chopped a small head of broccoli, 2 small onions & 1 red one, v large clove of garlic and a red chilli, (I left the seeds in) flash fried those until just done, then added my steak pieces back in.

Meanwhile I heated equal parts honey & sweet chilli sauce in a saucepan and chucked that into the pan at the end!

Very simple dish and also works great with chicken.

Marty McFly

Tonight we had the cooking clubs Jalfrezi served with cauliflower rice .

fiddlechic

Marty McFly wrote: »

Tonight we had the cooking clubs Jalfrezi served with cauliflower rice .

What have you in that very fancy looking cauliflower rice?

Marty McFly

fiddlechic wrote: »

What have you in that very fancy looking cauliflower rice?

It was my second time trying cauliflower rice first recipe I used was incredibly bland so after a bit of googling I decided to give this one a try.

I left out the cashew/almonds.

http://www.goodfood.com.au/good-food/cook/recipe/indianspiced-cauliflower-rice-20140805-3d5vf.html

Overflow

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Caramelised onions, roasted peppers with Gorgonzola and rosemary pizza.

Could you post the recipe for your base. I'm a pizza fanatic and yours looks very nice and crispy. Just curious to see what you do different to my own.

Thanks

Overflow

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

Caramelised onions, roasted peppers with Gorgonzola and rosemary pizza.

Btw, if you looking for some more interesting toppings. Try making a goats cheese bechamel (white sauce) for the base. Top with a little mozerella, chopped figs, sun dried tomatoes, caramelized onions, slice pears, crumbled goats cheese on top. Then when cooked top with ruccola and drizzle with a balsamic and honey reduction when cooked.

Gloomtastic!

Overflow wrote: »

Could you post the recipe for your base. I'm a pizza fanatic and yours looks very nice and crispy. Just curious to see what you do different to my own.

Thanks

It's basically Jamie Oliver's recipe with 800/200 Tipo flour/semolina. http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/recipe/pizza-dough

If you prove your pizza dough in the fridge it takes longer (a day+) but I think it makes it crispier. If you haven't got the time prove it in a warm place so it doubles in size then knock it back and prove in the fridge for an hour or so.

When you're rolling it out cover your work top with lots of semolina and then cover the dough ball with the same. This helps with rolling and dries out the base.

Place your rolled out dough on to a greased pizza tray, cover with toppings (keeping any wet topping to a minimum) and place in a your oven preheated to it's highest setting. After 4/5 minutes transfer the pizza from the tray to a pizza stone (put stone in oven when you start to preheat it).

4/5 minutes later it should be ready.

I've spent about 10 years trying to perfect my pizzas. I'm about half way there I reckon.

hdowney

No pictures sorry but last nights dinner was my home made Chow Mein that I did for the cooking club earlier in the year. Delicious as always. The night before I did steamed baby potatoes, giant mushrooms, samphire and hake in a home made lime, chilli, ginger sauce

Pang

Parma ham wrapped chicken fillets stuffed with garlic butter that I had left over Tuesday night's steak, with potato gratin.

Alun

hdowney wrote: »

No pictures sorry but last nights dinner was my home made Chow Mein that I did for the cooking club earlier in the year. Delicious as always. The night before I did steamed baby potatoes, giant mushrooms, samphire and hake in a home made lime, chilli, ginger sauce

Where did you get your samphire from if I may ask?

Gloomtastic!

Alun wrote: »

Where did you get your samphire from if I may ask?

If you walk along the marsh on the Clontarf side of Bull Island (park at the Sea Scouts centre), there's loads growing there.

Alternatively, the fish shops on Howth Harbour sell it.

Alun

Gloomtastic! wrote: »

If you walk along the marsh on the Clontarf side of Bull Island (park at the Sea Scouts centre), there's loads growing there.

Alternatively, the fish shops on Howth Harbour sell it.

Long way to go from Bray I noticed hdowney's Location in his profile was set as Wicklow so asked him as I wondered if there was a source closer to home.

Gloomtastic!

Alun wrote: »

Long way to go from Bray I noticed hdowney's Location in his profile was set as Wicklow so asked him as I wondered if there was a source closer to home.

You don't get that info on the mobile site. :mad: