Roast chicken with tarragon potatoes and green beans

I had some bits and bobs in the fridge to use up so this was a bit of a freestyle dinner, but boy was it good! It turns out creme fraiche, mustard and tarragon are a match made in heaven! Plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow from the below recipe (my husband prefers a more ‘minimalist’ plate of food – see the next picture down, whereas I am a farmer’s daughter who loves a big plate of spuds!)

Ingredients (serves 2)

2 chicken thighs & 2 chicken drumsticks (or 4 of either)

100 ml white wine

small bunch of thyme

500g baby new potatoes

200g green beans

200ml creme fraiche

2 tsp wholegrain mustard

small bunch of tarragon, leaves picked and finely chopped

small bunch of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200c. Place a large cast iron skillet over a high heat with a glug of oil. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper all over. Pop the potatoes into a pan of boiling salted water and bring up to the boil again with a lid on.

2. Place the chicken pieces, skin side down, into the skillet and move them around to prevent them from sticking. Keep moving them around until the skin has gotten crispy, then flip over and cook for a few more minutes.

3. Remove the chicken from the pan. Drain all but a teaspoon of the fat away from the chicken pan, then put it back over the heat and pour in the wine – there will be steam! Add the sprigs of thyme and the chicken, then put a lid on it and place in the oven.

4. Add the green beans to the water with the potatoes. After about 3 minutes, test the potatoes – if they are parboiled, drain everything. If not, wait another few minutes until the potatoes are almost cooked (don’t let them go too far as they’ll turn mushy, and you’ll be finishing them off in the oven anyway).

4. Lift the chicken pan out of the oven. Pick the leaves off the thyme sprigs and discard the stems. Add the potatoes and beans to the pan, mixing well to make sure everything is covered in the nice chicken juices. Pop back in the oven with the lid off for another 20 minutes or so, until the chicken pieces are cooked through and the potato skins have gotten a little brown. Give everything a shake after about 10 minutes, to make sure the potatoes brown all over.

5. While that’s cooking, simply mix the creme fraiche, parsley and mustard in a bowl. Add half the tarragon first, and if it’s not too overpowering keep adding it until the sauce is to your liking. Set aside.

6. When the chicken and potatoes are ready, remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon and mix them in the creme fraiche sauce. Plate them up with the chicken and beans, spooning some of the delicious cooking juices over the beans. Bon appetit! 

Fish Fajitas

This is a quick and pretty light supper – ideal last night, when we were both in the office until after 8pm! The recipe is influenced by Rick Stein’s Baja Fish Tacos, from Coast to Coast. 

I went a bit overboard with the fish, as you can see above! I wanted to try both cod and sea bass to see which one works better in this recipe so I used two fillets of each. I can confirm that cod is the definite winner, and that is reflected in the recipe below. 

I served these with white wraps and shredded iceberg lettuce – if you wanted to be really virtuous, you could use leaves of iceberg as your wrap.
Ingredients (serves 2)

2 fillets of cod, bones and skin removed

100ml sunflower oil

For the batter:

200g flour

200ml sparkling water

2 eggs

For the salsa:

1 red onion, finely chopped

220g baby plum tomatoes, cut into 1/8ths

Juice of one lime

1 tsp sugar

1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped (or 2 if you like more heat!)

Handful of coriander, chopped

For the guacamole 

2 avocados, peeled and pitted

Juice of 1 lime

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

To serve

1/2 iceberg lettuce, shredded

4 white wraps

Mayonaise or soured cream (optional)

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients for the salsa in a bowl; season with salt and pepper and set aside.

2. Mash the avocado with the lime juice, add the chilli and mix well. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

3. Cut the cod into 2-inch chunks; season with salt and pepper and dust with a light dusting of flour.

4. Combine all the batter ingredients and mix in a food processor until smooth.

5. Heat the sunflower oil in a large deep pan (if you have a deep fat fryer, it would be handy here. I used a wok!) until very hot. Test it with a drop of batter – if it rises to the top, the oil is hot enough.

6. Dip each of your fish pieces in the batter, holding them above the bowl for a minute so that any excess batter drips off, then drop them into the hot oil. Cook for about five minutes, turning once to ensure all the pieces are golden brown all over. Use a slotted spoon to remove them onto a warmed plate with kitchen paper.

7. Warm the tortillas for 30 seconds in the microwave.

I like to serve everything on the table and let everyone help themselves in assembling their tortillas! Enjoy!

Chicken and Cauliflower Curry

This dinner is brought to you by the letter C! The main ingredients are chicken, cauliflower and chickpeas; the sauce uses coconut milk, and it is served with a chapati on the side!

Ingredients (serves 2, with leftovers for lunch)

1 onion, chopped finely

1 thumb-sized piece of garlic, finely chopped

2 red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 cauliflower, cut into florets 

Handful of spinach leaves

2 chicken breasts, sliced

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander 

2 tsp turmeric 

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp garam masala 

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tin chopped tomatoes 

1 tin chickpeas

1 tin coconut milk

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

2. Toss the cauliflower florets in a splash of olive oil with the cumin seeds and some salt & pepper and pop in the oven.

3. Heat a tablespoon of oil (or ghee) in a large saucepan, then add the onion, ginger, garlic and chillies and cook until soft.

4. Add the dried spices and mix well. Allow to cook for a minute or so, until fragrant.

5. Add the chicken pieces, stirring well to cover. Cook for about five minutes, until the chicken is nicely coloured.

6. Add the tomatoes, chickpeas and coconut milk; bring to the boil then simmer for about 20 minutes. Add the roasted cauliflower pieces for the last 10 minutes or so. Towards the end, stir in the spinach until wilted. Serve with chapatis, chutney and yoghurt. Enjoy! 

Harissa salmon, wilted spinach and sweet potato wedges

My husband is away with work this weekend, which means that I can cook all of the things that I love and he doesn’t! Top of this list is sweet potato; I’m not ashamed to admit that there have been entire weeks of my life that I’ve eaten roasted sweet potatoes and cauliflower cheese for dinner every night while el husbando has been away! 

This is a really quick and simple but delicious supper. What’s more, I have a calorie tracker on my phone and was amazed to find that this whole plate comes in at under 500 calories! I made double, keeping the leftovers for lunch; my colleagues in the office will be jealous!

Ingredients (serves 2)

2 salmon fillets (approx 120g each)

2 tsp rose harissa 

3 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 8 long wedges each

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tbsp paprika

1 tsp ground coriander 

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

90g baby spinach

1 tsp ground nutmeg

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C.

2. Place sweet potato wedges in a large baking tray. Add the olive oil, cumin, paprika and coriander along with a good dash of salt and pepper and use your hands to mix everything well. Pop in the oven on the top shelf and roast for 20 minutes, shaking the tray every 5 minutes or so to make sure the wedges cook evenly on all sides.

3. Place the salmon fillets skin side down on a piece of tinfoil twice their size. Rub a teaspoon of harissa onto each fillet, then fold over the tinfoil to make it into a little parcel. Place on a baking tray and bake for 20 minutes, folding back the the last five minutes to let the salmon fillets crisp up.

4. Pop the spinach into a non-stick frying pan, put a lid over it, and cook over a gentle heat for 5 minutes, until the spinach has wilted. Add the nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste.

Easy Sauce Nantua

I haven’t posted in a while as I have been really busy with work, including a trip to London last week for dinner at the Inner Temple, where I am an Academic Fellow.

I can say without hesitation that I have had some of the best meals of my life at the Inner Temple, and last week’s dinner was no exception! The main course was breast of duck with dauphinoise potatoes, Chantenay carrots, green beans and a black cherry sauce, which had a real kick to it. Desert consisted of a huge portion of sticky toffee pudding with malted milk ice-cream (divine – I cannot wait to get my ice-cream maker out again, once the Welsh weather takes a long-awaited turn for the better!).

However, the star dish of the evening for me was a quenelle of pike with a Sauce Nantua. I had never heard of Sauce Nantua before (and I think this may have been my first time eating pike too), but this intensely fishy sauce was an absolute revelation. I spent most of my train journey back to Bangor wondering how I could recreate this delicious sauce from home!

Some internet research revealed that Quenelles de Brochet Sauce Nantua is a popular dish in Lyonnaise cuisine. Amazingly, they even sell a tinned version in France!

The sauce takes its name from Lake Nantua, where the crayfish that give the sauce its fishy base are caught, and pike (‘brochet‘) are caught from the river Rhône. The reason they are served in quenelles is that pike is a very bony fish, so it makes sense to create bone-free dumplings by mixing the de-boned fillets of fish with cream, eggs and seasoning and leaving the mix to set overnight.

Some day, when I manage to source both pike and whole crayfish in North Wales, I will make this recipe. In the meantime, I set to making a cheat’s version, seen above, served with sea bass fillets and wild rice.

Ingredients (serves 2)

25g butter

5 shallots, very finely chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and very finely chopped

1 clove garlic, very finely chopped

25g flour

1 tbsp tomato puree

pinch of saffron

pinch of cayenne pepper

125ml fish stock (I used one Knorr fish stockpot)

1/2 tin chopped tomatoes

120g crayfish tails (I used these; if you can get unpeeled crayfish tails, even better – use the shells to make an even more intense sauce)

75ml cream

Method

1. Melt the butter, and sauce the shallots, garlic, and chilli over a low heat until soft.

2. Add the flour and stir, then add the tomato puree, saffron, cayenne pepper and a pinch of salt and pepper. Gradually add the tomatoes, stirring constantly, and the fish stock. Bring to a boil then add the crayfish tails. Leave to simmer over a low heat, stirring every now and again, until the sauce has reduced by about half and the flavour has intensified. Taste, adding more seasoning if necessary.

3. Liquidise the sauce in a blender until it is a smooth consistency. You can pass it through a sieve at this stage if you prefer a smoother sauce (I didn’t).

4. Return the sauce to a saucepan, gradually heat, and add the cream. Serve immediately.

—

I had some leftover sauce, which I served for lunch the next day with a boiled egg and some crusty bread, scattered with some parsley leaves. I love throwing together lunch from what’s left in the fridge, and this one was surprisingly tasty (although the photo below admittedly looks a little odd – I wanted to recreate the look of the clean quenelle of pike sitting in the thick, rich, Sauce Nantua that I had seen two nights previous, but failed somewhat on that front!)

 

Celeriac, leek and mushroom pie

Writing this blog has made me realise we eat a lot more red meat than we should! So I decided to remedy this with a vegetarian option tonight. I remember the days when celeriac was a super exotic ingredient seen only on Masterchef (usually in puréed form). These days, you can get it in almost every supermarket, and it’s in season around this time of year.

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 celeriac, peeled and chopped into small chunks

2 leeks, sliced

8 chestnut mushrooms, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, very finely chopped

A couple of sprigs of thyme, leaves picked

50g butter

500ml milk

3 tbsp flour

100g grated cheddar cheese

1 tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp wholegrain mustard

1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry

1 egg, beaten with a drop of milk, to glaze

Method 

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan.

2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the celeriac and leeks, stir, and cover with a lid. Leave them to saute for around 8 minutes, stirring every once in a while.

3. Add the mushrooms, thyme and garlic; stir and cover. Leave for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

4. Add the flour to the mix and leave to cook for 1 minute. Add the milk, stirring constantly. Cover and leave to simmer over a low heat, stirring every once in a while. After  around 10 minutes, test the celeriac to see if it’s soft; if not, leave the mix to cook for another few minutes until it is the texture you like.

5. Add the cheese, the mustards, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Taste and add more seasoning or mustard if you like.

6. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and place the puff pastry sheet over the mix. Trim the edges of the pastry; you can use these to make some shapes on the pastry lid, or set them aside for another purpose. Use a fork to crimp the edges of the pie, brush with your beaten egg mixture and bake for 20 minutes, until the pastry is golden and crispy.

Mmm… Pie!

Spaghetti with prawns, chilli and tomato sauce

I absolutely love simple suppers like this – from chopping board to table in 15 minutes or less! The River Cafe Cookbook is full of delicious, quick recipes – this one is loosely adopted from their ‘spaghetti in a bag’ recipe. I love the mix of spaghetti, prawns, chilli and tomato from their recipe, but am not so keen on the eponymous ‘bag’ – a tinfoil parcel in which the dish is cooked and served. The thought of accidentally biting on some tinfoil somehow takes the joy out of eating it for me!

I also prefer fresh tomatoes to the tinned ones in the River Café’s recipe. Larger tomatoes, peeled and deseeded, in place of the chopped cherry tomatoes here would give a smoother sauce, but I quite like the little bits of tomato skin and anyway, life’s too short for peeling tomatoes!

Ingredients (serves 2)

180g spaghetti

3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 large clove garlic, peeled and very finely chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded and very finely chopped

220g cherry vine tomatoes, chopped

1 packet (150g) cooked king prawns

2 tbsp basil, roughly torn

Method

1. Place the garlic and chilli into a small saucepan.

2. Pour the olive oil over the garlic and chilli and set the saucepan over a medium heat. As soon as you hear them starting to sizzle (about 30 seconds), add the tomatoes to the pan and mix well. Season with salt and pepper, reduce the heat to low and stir intermittently until the tomatoes have broken down and the sauce is reduced to a nice consistency (about 10 minutes).

3. Cook pasta according to packet instructions.

4. When your sauce is nice and reduced, mix in the prawns and the torn basil leaves. Mix the sauce with the cooked pasta and serve immediately. Buon appetito!

Chinese New Year Feast: General Tso’s Chicken; Changsha Beef; Egg Fried Rice; Pak Choi & Beansprouts

Happy Year of the Rooster! What better excuse to indulge in a feast of Chinese cuisine! The chicken and beef recipes below are from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook; her recipes are so lovely and easy to follow. The egg fried rice and pak choi dishes are my own recipes – the latter just using up stuff I had in the fridge.

There are a few unique ingredients below that are worth taking the trip to a specialty shop for – luckily, we have a huge Chinese supermarket in Bangor so I had no problem sourcing potato flour and Shaoxing rice wine. But if you don’t have access to such ingredients, cornflour works well in place of the potato flour, and you could use mirin or a dry sherry as a substitute for the Shaoxing wine.

The key to doing a buffet-style meal like this is to have all of your ingredients prepared in advance, as the cooking part happens quite quickly and everything is best served just-cooked. This is what my worktop looked like before I started the actual cooking!:

As such, I have not divided the ingredients by dish below – I thought it was easier than telling you to chop three scallions for one bit and two scallions for another element. But if anything is unclear, leave a comment below or send me a message and I can clarify!

Ingredients (serves 2)

120g basmati rice, cooked and left to cool

3 eggs

1 white onion, chopped into small dice

7 scallions, 6 chopped lengthways into fine shavings and 1 sliced on the diagonal

5 cloves garlic, very finely chopped

2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, very finely chopped

2 red chillies, 1 de-seeded and very finely chopped; 1 sliced on the diagonal

3 baby pak choi, leaves picked

Handful of beansprouts

4 small boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into small chunks

1 sirloin steak, fat removed and sliced lengthways (against the grain) into thin strips

4 tsp sesame oil

300ml peanut oil (sometimes called groundnut oil)

3½ tbsp potato flour

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar

3 tsp dark soy sauce

5 tsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine

1 tbsp double-concentrate tomato puree

5 tbsp water

1 tsp salt

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp Chinese five spice

2 tsp dried chilli flakes

4 whole dried chillies, cut into thick slices with a scissors

Method

1. First, make your sauce for General Tso’s chicken. Mix the tomato puree, 4 tbsp water, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, ½ tsp potato flour, ½ tsp dark soy sauce and 1½ tsp light soy sauce and set aside.

2. Next, the marinade for your beef: mix 1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine, 1 tsp each of the light and dark soy sauces, 1 tbsp water, ½ tsp salt and 1 tbsp potato flour in a small bowl. Mix in the beef slices and set aside.

3. Place the chicken chunks in a large bowl; add an egg yolk (keep the white!), ½ tsp dark soy sauce and 2 tsp light soy sauce and mix well. Add 2 tbsp potato flour and 2 tsp peanut oil, mix well and set aside.

4. Beat the remaining egg white with the other two eggs, a pinch of salt and a splash of sesame oil; set aside.

5. In a small bowl, mix half of your ginger and garlic, the finely chopped (de-seeded) red chilli, dried chill flakes and cumin and set aside.

6. It’s time to start cooking! Heat 2 tbsp peanut oil in a wok over a high heat, add the pak choi and beansprouts and stir fry for a minute or so. Add the Chinese black vinegar, 1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine, 1 tsp dark soy sauce and the Chinese five spice and taste; add more of any of the above ingredients if you fancy. Remove to a warm plate, cover with tin foil and set aside. Wipe your wok clean.

7. Pour in all but 1 tbsp of your remaining peanut oil into the wok; it should come up to about 1-1½ inch depth in your wok pan, and heat over a high heat until it just starts to smoke. Add the marinated beef; it will start to come apart as it cooks. Use a chopstick or wooden spoon to make sure all of the pieces get cooked, then use a slotted spoon to remove to a plate with a piece of kitchen paper on it to soak up the oil.

8. Bring the oil back up to a high heat, then add the chicken, making sure all the pieces are submerged in the oil. Allow to cook for a few minutes, until they turn a golden brown colour (you may need to take one out to test it). Remove with a slotted spoon onto a plate with a piece of kitchen paper on it to soak up the oil.

9. Transfer three tablespoons of the oil to a small pan or pot (for the beef), and two tablespoons into another, slightly larger, pan (for the chicken). Carefully pour the rest of the oil into a bowl for disposing later when it cools down. Clean and dry the wok.

10. Heat your remaining 1 tbsp peanut oil in the clean wok over a high heat. Put the two pans you have transferred oil to for your beef and chicken over a medium heat.

11. Add the chopped white onion to your wok. Drop everything from the small bowl of ingredients you prepared at step 5 into your beef pan. Add the snipped dried whole chillies  and remaining ginger and garlic to your chicken pan. Stir-fry all briefly, until the onion has become translucent, the ingredients in the chicken and beef pans have become fragrant.

12. Push the onions into the centre of the wok to form a thick line. Put the rice on one side of the onions and the beaten egg on the other. Leave for about 30 seconds (while you crack on with the next two steps).

13. Add the beef to your beef pan and stir well. Remove from the heat.

14. Add the sauce to the chicken pan, stirring as it thickens. Add the chicken, stir to make sure it is well-covered with the sauce, and remove from the heat.

15. Mix the egg, onion, and rice in the wok so that the egg and onion are evenly distributed amongst the rice. Add a handful of chopped scallions and mix again. Remove the wok from the heat.

16. Stir 1 tsp of sesame oil and half the remaining scallions into the beef; do the same with the chicken. Scatter the diagonally-sliced scallions and red chilli over the chicken to serve.  I served the egg-fried rice in small bowls and the other three dishes along a long serving platter, allowing us to fight over the last piece of chicken just tuck in!

Biang Biang Noodles

I keep getting massive food envy from Instagram, especially when I see people’s pictures from a restaurant in London called Xi’an Impression. These thick, unctuous noodles – Biang Biang Noodles, my fellow Instagrammers’ helpful hash tags informed me – looked like nothing I’d seen before. It seemed unlikely that such deliciousness would be available in any of Bangor’s fine eateries, so I set out to making my own!

I found this video on YouTube and the guy made it look surprisingly easy! I started by making the dough – converting his recipe from imperial measurements (140g for a cup of flour; 225ml for a cup of liquid) and… it was an unmitigated disaster! I had to throw the first batch of dough in the bin, it was gloopy and disgusting. I got lazy with the second batch and, instead of using the mixing with chopsticks method preferred by the video, I pulled out my trusty Kenwood chef with a dough hook (adding the water in splashes until it had the springy, doughy, texture I was after) and it was perfect.

The very best thing about this recipe is the sizzle and the amazing smell of the garlic, chilli and onions as you pour the hot oil over them in the dish – it will be hard to go back to Pot Noodles after you’ve tried these!

Ingredients

280g strong white bread flour

1 tsp salt

180ml hand-hot water (have a little extra in your jug, in case you need to add another splash to the dough as it’s mixing)

30ml sesame oil

5 spring onions, finely sliced

3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

4 tsp crushed dried chilli flakes (this makes it quite spicy – use less if you prefer a milder dish, or more if you like it really hot)

2 baby pak choi, leaves picked

Handful of bean sprouts

60ml groundnut oil (sometimes called peanut oil in recipes)

1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp bouillon powder

Method

1. Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the salt. Tip into an electric mixer with a dough hook.

2. With the mixer on its lowest setting, add the warm water to the flour in splashes, waiting until one splash has combined before adding the next one. You may not need all the water – when the mixture has formed into a springy dough ball, that’s enough. Leave the mixer to knead the dough for ten minutes. Place the dough in a bowl, cover, and set aside for 30 minutes.

3. Remove your dough from the bowl and place on a lightly-floured surface. Roll it out slightly so that it takes a loaf shape, then divide into four even-sized pieces. Roll each piece into a thick sausage shape, about 3 inches long. Dip each piece into sesame oil so that it is fully coated, place on a plate, then cover the plate with clingfilm and leave in the fridge for an hour. You can use this time to crack on with prepping the rest of your vegetables as everything comes together quite quickly when the noodles are ready.

4. Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin, and roll each piece of dough into a thin rectangle. Lightly press a chopstick into the rectangle at two evenly-spaced junctures (so that your strip has got three even demarcated sections). Now the fun begins!

5. Take a side of one of your rectangles of dough in each hand and gently shake it up and down, smashing it against the board as you go (apparently the ‘biang’ noise it makes as it hits the board is where biang biang noodles get their name!). The best way I can describe this motion is that it’s a bit like playing the wobble board! The dough will stretch as you shake it, and will start to come apart in three long noodles where you indented the dough. Pull the three noodles apart and set aside when you repeat with your three other pieces of dough. When you are half-way through making your noodles, place a large and a medium sized saucepan of boiling water and keep them both on a rolling boil. Put your groundnut oil into a wok but don’t put the heat under it yet.

6. When your noodles are made, quickly pop them into the large pot of boiling water and cook for three minutes. Put the pak choi leaves and beansprouts into the medium pot of boiling water and blanch for a minute and a half; drain and set aside. Mix the soy sauces, vinegar, and bouillon powder in a bowl, then mix with your pak choi and beansprouts and keep warm over a gentle heat. Drain the noodles, and divide them between two warmed bowls.

7. Heat the groundnut oil in the wok until it starts to smoke. Divide the spring onions, then the garlic, then the chilli flakes between the two bowls of noodles. Try to keep the garlic and chilli towards the middle of the bowl.

8. Using a ladle, pour some of the hot oil over the chilli and garlic in each bowl. Listen to that sizzle!! Breathe in that delicious smell! Add a little more hot oil to each plate – you probably won’t use all that you’ve heated up. Add the pak choi and beansprouts in sauce to each plate and eat immediately!

I really need a new scarf; this one has made an appearance almost every day this week!

 

Sage and Parmesan Polenta with Herby Mushrooms and Bacon

Dydd Santes Dwynwen Hapus! 

It was Saint Dwynwen’s Day (the Welsh equivalent of Valentine’s Day) yesterday so I rustled up a romantic supper! I had some sage left from Sunday’s roast pork dish that I wanted to use up, and it goes well with polenta, with a bit of parmesan mixed in for added creaminess.

The other herbs are growing in our garden – you could use just thyme or rosemary, or oregano, if you prefer. We’re doing Dry January this year, so this was served with an alcohol-free Muscat from Asda – not quite Champagne, but it was as close as we could get!

Ingredients (serves 2)

150g dried polenta (I used Polenta Valsugana)

600ml boiling water

16 sage leaves, 10 chopped finely and 6 reserved for serving

8 chestnut mushrooms

90g smoked bacon lardons

A few sprigs of thyme and rosemary

50g  butter

Squeeze of lemon juice

30g parmesan, grated

Method

1. Place the boiling water in a pan over a high heat with a teaspoon of salt.

2. Fry the bacon lardons until crispy; reserve on some kitchen paper and set aside. Wipe the pan with kitchen paper, if you like.

3. Peel and de-stem the mushrooms. Fill the cavity of each mushroom with a small knob of butter (see the picture below for illustration). Place them in the pan you used for the bacon over a low heat.

4. Pour the polenta into your pan of boiling water, reduce the heat and stir constantly with a wooden spoon for 7 minutes.

5. While you are stirring your polenta, gently move your mushrooms around the pan to make sure they don’t stick, being careful not to knock the butter from their cavities.

6. When the butter in the mushroom cavities has fully melted, flip them quickly and add the thyme, rosemary, lemon juice, and whole sage leaves to the pan.

7. Add any remaining butter to the polenta, together with the chopped sage leaves and almost all of the parmesan (reserving a little to sprinkle over the top just before serving).

8. Divide the polenta between two plates, topped with the bacon, mushrooms, and crispy sage leaves from the pan. Spoon a little bit of the melted butter from the mushroom pan onto the polenta, if you like, before sprinkling your remaining parmesan over the top.

“Waiting for my human to finish cooking is so boring!”