Jerk Chicken!

This recipe was taken from the master himself, Levi Roots, so no complaining is allowed. Well, as much of Levi Roots’ recipe that I had with my limited budget/laziness to go back to Sainsbury’s. And might I say, it was pretty damn good. I was definitely jammin as I ate it. There was certainly no guiltiness involved with my oven baked sweet potato chips and the taste meant that I was far from waiting in vain for this meal. Is this love? I think so.

Sunday morning, jerk chicken is sweet. Make you wanna move, your dancing feet.

Time Taken: 35 mins

Ingredients:

• 1 pack chicken thighs
• 1 large sweet potato (I had a really small one so used some small baby potatoes too)
• Handful of peas

Jerk Marinade:

• 4 spring onions, green part only, roughly chopped
• 1 hot red chilli (ideally Scotch Bonnet, but I used a regular chilli),
• seeds left in
• 3cm piece of root ginger, cut into chunks
• 2 tbsps thyme leaves (I substituted for mixed dry herbs)
• 100ml cider vinegar (I used white wine vinegar because that was in my cupboard)
• 3 tbsps honey
• 2 tsps ground allspice
• 1 tsps ground cinnamon (left out)
• 2 tbsps olive oil
• salt and pepper

Method:

Mix all the marinade ingredients together. If you have a blender, blend them, but if not I just mixed in a bowl but grated in the ginger so it would blend better. Cut any excess skin off the chicken and coat in about half of the marinade. If you find that there might not be a lot of marinade to go round, add a bit more oil.

If you have the time/ foresight, cover up your chicken and leave in the fridge to marinate for a few hours. If not, no worries. Turn on your oven on a highish heat, (by the way, our oven only seems to work at the highest temperature, so that’s why I’m always so sketchy with temperatures. It’s also one of those fab ovens where you have to stick your head inside, turn on the gas and then light it up with a lighter to turn it on. Yay for student living.)

Heat up a pan and fry off your chicken (unless you have a dodgy pan you almost definitely wont need more oil.) Fry for about 10 to fifteen minutes. While this is happening, wash, fork and microwave your potatoes for 7 to 8 mins. If your chicken blackens slightly don’t worry, its all part of the jerk chicken vibe. When the chicken seems nearly cooked, take it out of the pan and into an oven proof dish. Pour over the rest of the marinade.

Cut up your potato into chip shapes and spread on a tray. Sprinkle salt, herbs and a drizzle of oil over them, and then pop into the oven with your chicken. I’m aware that I’m starting to sound like Jamie Oliver with all this olive oil, but frankly, he’s a cooking god so that can only be a good thing.

Make your peas, and after ten minutes take out your chicken and chips. Eat up.

 

Nandos!

 

 

It’s been a horrifically long time since I blogged- apparently the blog/work balance isn’t as easy a juggle as I thought it would be. Also it’s Easter, so I went home to be fed by mummy, and as much as I love her, she isn’t a student, so taking photos of her dinners wouldn’t be that appropriate really.

Anyway, I made Nandos!

Looking pretty good right?

WARNING. This recipe is for the slightly more dedicated chef. If you feel you’re ready to undertake a recipe that involves more than three ingredients, then read on, because it’s time to turn the heat up to extra hot. Or lemon and herb. Whatever you prefer.

Who doesn’t love Nandos? From its humble beginnings in the late 1980s, Nandos has slowly but surely wormed its spicy way into our cold hearts. Let’s face it, nothing quite beats going to Nandos, but sometimes forking out a tenner for chicken, chips and a drink just isn’t quite possible for the student budget. So let’s make some at home. The true peri peri sauce finds its base in the African birds eye (or peri peri) chilli, which has a distinct taste to it. I have no idea where you might buy these, so I have substituted with chilli flakes and/or any chilli you can find. The Nandos connoisseur might choose to turn his nose up here and read no further, but there are a few simple solutions to this dilemma. If your bank balance can sustain the loss and you refuse to accept a substitute, just go to Nandos. Failing that, Nandos actually sell bottles of their marinade in the supermarket. Obviously this would be a brilliant cooking decision in itself, but if it was my decision there wouldn’t really be any point in writing an article about it, which brings us to the last option, sucking it up and making a pretty good replica yourself.

Time Taken: 35 mins

Ingredients:

–          1 pack chicken thighs (makes enough for 2 servings)

–          1 large potato

–          Peas

For the marinade (for a medium/ hot flavour)

–          3/4 cloves of garlic

–          1 chilli

–          A big pinch of chilli flakes

–          2 tablespoons white wine/ red wine vinegar

–          4/5 tablespoons olive oil

–          A big pinch of herbs

–          Juice of half a lemon

–          1 tablespoon smoked paprika

–          Salt and pepper

How to make

Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl. Feel free to include/ leave out anything you have or don’t have. There’s many different recipes around for peri peri sauce and this one is a mix and match of most of them. Things like white wine vinegar are a good investment, as it makes a great salad dressing when mixed with a bit of oil. Smoked paprika is also great if you’re ever making anything the slightest bit Spanish.

Cut off any excess fat from the chicken and stick in the marinade. Ideally, you could do this an hour or more before you want to start cooking, but it’s no big deal if you don’t.

Turn on the oven. Wash and prick your potato and stick in the microwave for 6 minutes (or however long it needs to cook.)

In a large pan, heat up the tiniest bit of oil (you won’t really need any because of the oil in the marinade). Put the chicken in the pan, but save any marinade left in the bowl for later.

Cook for about five minutes, then turn over when the underside is looking brown and like Nandos chicken. Leave the other side to cook for another five minutes.

Take out the potato, cut into chip shapes and put on a foiled tray with herbs and oil to stop them sticking and burning. Stick in the oven.

When your chicken is looking cooked, take it out and put it in an ovenproof dish and pour over the rest of the marinade. (This is because despite appearances, it’s probably not actually cooked yet (as I discovered the first time I made this. It will break your heart to plate up, cut open your chicken only to find out it’s not ready.)

Put the chicken in the oven for 15 mins. Your chips might take less time than that so check them regularly.

Heat up your peas in the microwave with water for a minute.

Get yourself a bottomless drink, and you’ve got some Nandos!

Sardine Pasta!

I bought a new pair of shoes and one and a half wireless tickets this month (I paid for half of someone’s ticket for their birthday). I’m pretty poor right now but I thought I’d take this opportunity to showcase all the different things you can do with tinned foods. The first recipe is from this week’s Tab article, a tinned vegetarian chilli. 

Number two is the super easy super quick sardine pasta, made literally with a tin of sardines in tomato sauce, peas, and some quick cook pasta. If you’ve got under ten minutes to make lunch or dinner, but want to eat a filling but ridiculously good for you  meal then this is definitely the right way to go. If you find your sardines didn’t come in enough sauce feel free to add some fresh tomatoes, some pasta sauce or tomato puree.

 

Pancake Day!!!

Happy Pancake Day!!!

Because some of us like to make pancakes all year round, head over to the Recipes page to find the easiest pancake recipe known to man. Or you can go over to the Tab and read the nifty little article I wrote for today, which includes a recipe for fluffy American pancakes, which I’ll be making tonight.

Posting has been a bit sporadic recently; this is because 1) I have two courseworks to write and 2) I’ve gone home for reading week. I love cooking, don’t get me wrong, but I’m still a student, so when the opportunity comes along for me to get good food that I don’t have to pay for, I take it. 

Want to be on my blog?? Take pictures of your pancakes (as artistically as you want, go on, show me up) and tweet me @jessmthornhill! If everyone’s nice to me I’ll make a huge pancake collage later tonight. Or if nobody sends me anything I’ll just blog my own pancakes like a loner. 

Until tonight…

FREE FOOD!!!!!!

If you’re a UCL student, Barclays are giving out FREE WAFFLES in the south quad today to promote Volunteering Week. GO GET ONE.

And if that wasn’t enough, Ernst and Young people are wondering around campus as well handing out free mini cupcakes, stress balls and a thing to get a free hot drink at the George Farha Cafe (the one on the corner of Gower st).

Today is a good day for food.

Burgers!

This is my newest form of procrastination. But it’s great, because you all get to read lovely recipes!!

This is stolen from last week’s article on the Tab, which has to be blogged afterwards due to copyright reasons (fancy right? Not really).

Time Taken: 35 mins

Ingredients:

•           1 pack beef mince (makes about four pretty huge burgers)
•           2 onions (one red one white)
•           Salt and pepper
•          Chilli flakes (if you’re feeling daring)
•           Dried herbs
•          1 egg
•           If you want chips: 1 large potato (How’s about this for a top tip: why not try making chips out of sweet potatoes? They arguably taste better, are better for blood sugar and are weirdly high in vitamin C.)
•          Lettuce/peas/veggies
•         Few slices of cheese
•           Ciabatta roll/sesame bun

Method:

1. Empty out the pack of mince into a bowl, and add one onion finely chopped, the salt and pepper, herbs and chilli. Mix about with your fingers, and add the egg to bring your mince together.
2. Prick and wash the potato and stick in the microwave for 4 minutes. Turn on your oven to a high heat.
3. Make burger shapes with your mixture. Set them down and rub the top side with some oil- this will stop you putting too much/ not enough oil in the pan.
4. Fry each burger. Make sure the heat’s not on too high; this will stop the bottom from burning before it’s cooked all the way through.
5. Cut up your potato into chip shapes, sprinkle over salt, pepper and herbs and oven bake.
6. Turn over your burgers once the underside goes a nice cooked burger colour. They should take roughly twenty minutes over all.
7. Put your roll/ciabatta in the oven for a few minutes to heat up. When your burgers are done, put a few slices of cheese on top and swap them in the oven with your bun so the cheese can melt.
8. Pile up your burger with lettuce, tomatoes and red onions, and take out your burger and squash in.

 

If you’re looking for something inventive to do with your leftover burgers, crumble them up and add to a jar of pasta sauce and a fried onion, and hey presto, you’ve got yourself a jazzy Bolognese-esque pasta sauce!

Tricolore Pasta!

Tricolore pasta IS THE BEST THING EVER. Costs the same as all other pastas, but is sooo much better, as you get normal pasta AND tomato and spinach flavoured pasta. I love it so much I had the same dish in two different ways; broccoli pasta in a tomato sauce and a cheesy pasta broccoli bake. Yumyumyum.

 

 

Recipe for my cheesy broccoli pasta bake! (I say mine, but I didn’t actually make this. I cleaned the kitchen while my wonderful bf cooked it for me.)

Ingredients:

• Tricolore pasta (enough for one or two servings- I wish I could tell you how much that actually is but I’ve yet to make an intended amount of pasta)
• 1 head broccoli, cut into florets
• The ingredients used in the sauce for my IKEA meatballs, MINUS the stock cube and soy sauce. So basically flour, butter and milk.*
• Large handful of any cheese
• Nutmeg, if you have any, to grate into the white sauce.

*If you’re too lazy to do this, feel free to substitute with a soft cheese like Philadelphia. We only opted for this because it took less effort than going out in the cold to buy some philli. 

Method:

Turn your oven on a high temperature. Fill up a kettle and put onto boil. In a pan, make the sauce. EITHER you can heat the flour and butter together until it looks like a dough, and then gradually add the milk, OR you can put the milk in first, then add the milk and butter all at once and keep whisking until you have a white sauce. 

Pour the boiling water into a pan and put in the pasta. Add the cheese and nutmeg into the sauce. Cut up the broccoli and add it to the pasta pan about five minutes before the pasta is done. 

Drain the pasta and broccoli together, and put into a baking dish. Mix in the sauce, grate cheese over the top and put into the oven for about 10 minutes, or until the top is melted and/or you’re too hungry to wait any longer. Eat up. 

Meatballs!

After seeing the picture of Sarah’s meatballs again, I had a huge craving for some of my own, so that’s what I did. Cheated massively though by using some IKEA meatballs, but still made my own tomato sauce with tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, an onion, garlic, herbs, chilli and half a stock cube. Yumyumyum just the sustenance needed to crack on with work. Well, that and the dark chocolate KitKats I bought today.

Moroccan Chicken Casserole!

So I haven’t been blogging much this week, mainly because I have a ton of work to be doing and also because to tell you the truth I only cooked once this week. How does that work, I hear you ask? Well, anticipating my busy week , I made a HUGE casserole on Monday, which I tupperwared and have been eating ever since (minus Wednesday- I’ll blog Wednesday’s fancy meal later). 

But of course my casserole wasn’t just any kind of casserole, oh no. I made a  Moroccan chicken casserole. (The only Moroccan thing about this casserole was the spices I added to the chicken, but bear with.)

Time Taken: 35 mins

Ingredients:

• 1 pack chicken thighs (fillets or with bones)
• 1 pack green beans
• Large handful of mushrooms
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon allspice 
• 1 lemon
• 1 stock cube (I used veggie but any is fine)
• Few tablespoons creme fraiche (optional to thicken up the casserole, I had some in the fridge I needed to get rid of)
• Handful of coriander 

Method

In the pack, sprinkle the allspice, paprika and garlic over the chicken (if there’s fat on it, just cut off the excessive bits). Coat the chicken.

Cut the onion (I cut it into slivers). Fry in a a large pan with some oil, and add the chicken. 

After a few minutes add the mushrooms and stir around until you can see the chicken is pretty much cooked. The add the stock and enough boiling water to fill the pan up about  half way. Chop the beans in half and chuck in. 

Slicing the lemon into rings, add it to the casserole (take out the pips or you’ll get a horrible bitter taste) along with the stalks of the coriander chopped finely.

Leave to bubble away, turning the heat down if it gets too angry. After about 15 mins, turn off the heat, add some creme fraiche and sprinkle over the remaining coriander. Job done!

You can add any veggies you want- on Thursday I rediscovered half an aubergine which i fried and added to the casserole. It hasn’t killed me yet, so I’m guessing it hadn’t gone off.

Kebabs!

Completely forgot to put the recipe up here, silly me.

Time Taken: 20 mins

Ingredients:

•   1 pack turkey mince (makes about  four sizeable kebabs)
•   1 large onion
•   1 clove garlic
•   2 tsp allspice
•   Large handful of coriander (80p)
•   Half a pepper
•   Handful of lettuce
•   A few tablespoons yoghurt (optional)
•   1 tomato
•   Pitta bread/ tortilla wrap

 

Method: 

1. Turn the oven/ grill on high.  Either work fine, although grill will give you a more authentic taste.
2.  In a large bowl, empty out the turkey mince, chop up the onion and garlic finely and add them to the mince with the allspice. Chop up the coriander as well (you can use the stalks as well as the leaves), and add to the mince, but save a few leaves if you want to garnish your kebab.
3. With your hands, squish the mince and everything else together. If you find the mix is really dry, add a whisked egg. If it’s too wet, you can add some breadcrumbs, but you almost definitely won’t need to do either.
4. Take a handfuls of mince and roll into relatively large sausage shapes, making sure they’re all about the same size so that they take the same amount of time to cook. Put them on a foiled tray and pop into the oven
5. Leave to cook for about twenty minutes, turning them over occasionally.
6. Heat up a pitta bread/ tortilla wrap. Cut up some lettuce, a tomato, some pepper, and anything else you fancy in your kebab. When the kebabs are done, add however many you want to your veggies, drizzle over some yoghurt and sprinkle on your coriander. Job done.

The Stu Festival

Went to The Stu festival at the University of London Union on Saturday, and I’ve got to say, I was really impressed! Loads of stalls selling some scrummy looking food and best of all, FREEBIES! A lovely tote bag, orange juice and recipe cards were just some of the items I picked up, and I was so chuffed with all my free goodies that I took a picture to display them all.  Sad? Probably. Love a freebie? Definitely.

The Stu are also running a competition where you can win FREE FOOD for uploading a picture of your latest dish; the picture with the most votes wins. Obviously I’ve taken part, so if you’d like to win my eternal devotion, please vote for me!!!

Lucy, UCL

Tonight’s student showcase is Lucy, a second year history student at UCL. She has introduced me to the wonders of cous cous, with mushrooms, peppers onions and peas (and chicken goujons). This beauty is only 77p a packet, which is enough for heaps of meals so definitely invest in some of this.

A Guide to Burning.

It really pained me when I went into the kitchen today and saw this lying by the sink. 

So I decided that something had to be done, not least because I get sad when my frying pan is maltreated, but also because burning is something that we need to raise awareness about. It’s a serious problem. And it has to stop.

Here’s how. 

1. PUT ENOUGH OIL IN THE FRYING PAN. There is an oh so happy medium between putting so much oil that you die a fatty death, and putting so little that you burn the pan and/or your food. Start with a little to be safe, but if it looks like things are starting to burn, add more and don’t just watch your (my) frying pan get destroyed. 

2. IS YOUR HEAT ON TOO HIGH? It’s a common assumption that the highest heat on your hob is automatically the right one for anything you’re cooking. Usually it is, but if you have a gas cooker and you’re using one of the giant hobs for a small pan, it’s going to heat things up extremely quickly, making things burn before they’re properly cooked. So either change hobs, or turn the heat down. 

3. CLEAN YOUR PAN PROPERLY. If you’re attempting to make a meal in a pan which you have previously used, burned, and not washed properly, all the little black bits are just going to ruin and burn what’s now cooking, even if you’ve taken heed of tips one and two. Pans can be sticky or a non stick, but they’re not deliberately burnable because that would just be bad business savvy, so have a good look at it before you use it. If it has ominous black marks on it, wash it up. I’d suggest using a scourer. If the marks don’t budge, then you might have to get a new one, but while I’m on the subject I’d like to add here that if you wash your frying pan up as soon as you’ve emptied whatever was in it onto a plate, you dramatically reduce the chances of burns drying up and sticking to the pan forevermore. Besides, its actually much easier and quicker to wash up straight away before it’s dried out. Your food knows that it’s being cooked, and it wants to leave your hot frying pan. Take pity on it. Wash up. 

And that my friends, is how you stop burning. 

 

 

 

Carluccio’s

Battled the snow and went to Carluccio’s restaurant up in Nottingham yesterday for my brother’s 21st birthday, and ate the most wonderful dinner! Our waiter was lovely, and the food was incredible. I was so excited to tuck in that I forgot to take a picture of my seafood linguine, but I snuck in a picture of my ice crea- bitter chocolate and vanilla. Yum!

How cute are these wafers!?

And if you’re keen to get in on this, make sure you go to Carluccio’s before the 11th of February, as they’re doing 2 for 1 on main courses!! I’ll definitely be going again to take advantage of this…

SNOW!!

It’s snowing!! Nothing goes better with snow outside than a cosy hot chocolate inside.

That’s right, hot chocolate in bed.