Chicken and Apple Cheesebake

Happy New Year to you all! I suppose I'm a bit late but things have been very hectic so I haven't been able to blog for ages. Thank you too for all your good wishes for Christmas and your comments about the flooding in the Lake District. We've had quite a bit of flooding here in Northern Ireland recently as well. The rain seems to continue almost non-stop and, at times, is torrential.

Anyway, before Christmas, I did a post about frying apples.  When mine were cooled, I put them in the freezer so that I could use them for a chicken and apple cheesebake. So this is how I make it.

First of all cook the chicken. Normally I use roast chicken but this time I fried it. I used five chicken breast fillets cut into cubes. I used my new purple silicon slotted spoon stir it about! This was one of the few things I bought when we were on our wee pre-Christmas holiday.

When the chicken was cooked I put it in an oven proof dish. Although you can't see it in the picture, the dish is also purple!

Toast about 250g of breadcrumbs.

For my cheesebake I made a pint of white sauce - using the all in one method ...

... and then added about 270g of grated mature cheddar and stirred until it was completely melted into the sauce.

While I was cooking I remembered my little embroidery that hangs above the Aga. It's very true.

It takes five or six apples for a cheesebake. Here I topped the cooked chicken with roughly half of the fried apple slices. Keep the best looking slices for the top.

Then I poured the cheese sauce over the chicken and apples.

 Use the remainder of the fried apple slices on top of the cheese sauce.

Next I sprinkled about 90g of grated mature cheddar over the apples ...

... and topped the lot with the breadcrumbs.

I cooked my cheesebake for about thirty minutes in the Aga roasting oven. That's a hot oven; about 250°C or 490°F. The chicken is already cooked so it's just heating everything up and browning the top.

Of course I forgot to take a picture when it was cooked! It tasted delicious though. You could make it with turkey instead of chicken and you could do without adding any cheese (or use less cheese) if you prefer.

Not exactly a recipe but close. Let me know if you try it.

All the best for now. I hope to get back to reading and commenting on your blogs too.

Christmas Pudding Recipe

This is the recipe for Christmas pudding that my mother-in-law gave me a few years ago. As you can see, there is no suet in it.

The recipe didn't have any method or cooking instructions with it so I checked other recipes and came up with this way of making the puddings. This recipe is enough to make two two-pound puddings.

Start by preparing the pudding bowls. I greased mine liberally with butter. Now take a piece of baking parchment and fold a pleat in it; about an inch wide. Do the same with a piece of tin foil. You'll need baking parchment and foil for each pudding bowl.

Some more preparation is helpful at this stage. Measure the flour, add in the bicarbonate of soda and spices and sift into a bowl. Leave to one side. Get two pots, each big enough to hold one of the pudding bowls and with room enough to allow you to set the bowl down into the pot (rather than just dropping in). Put an upturned saucer in the bottom of each pot.

To make the pudding you will need a really big baking bowl; the biggest you can find. Cream the margarine (actually I used butter) and sugar together. I then  added the eggs, one at a time, with a heaped spoonful of the flour and spice mixture. Beat this in each time until the egg and flour is fully incorporated.

Add the remainder of the flour (if there is any left), the breadcrumbs and the dried fruit. Give it all a bit of a stir to mix it in. Wash, peel and core the apples and then grate them into the mixture. Give it all a really good stir.

It's quite a moist mixture at this stage.

Now divide the mixture between the two pudding bowls. Smooth the top nicely; it doesn't really rise when it's cooked. I would say this is a good time to fill the kettle and put it on to boil; a full kettle.

Here it is, ready to be covered and steamed.

This is the important part! Cover the bowl with the pleated baking parchment.

Now cover over the baking parchment with the tin foil. Bring the baking parchment and foil down over the sides of the pudding bowl and secure them tightly with some string. You can also make a string handle if you wish, for lifting the pudding out when it is cooked.

Unfortunately, at this stage I must have stopped taking photos! Anyway, carefully lower each pudding bowl into its pot. Fill the pot with boiling water until it comes about half way up the bowl. Since I have an Aga, steaming the puddings is really easy. First bring the water back to the boil on the boiling plate. Then transfer the pots to the simmering plate and keep them there for thirty minutes. Now the pots can go into the simmering oven where they can be left undisturbed for at least five hours and anything up to eight or nine hours. The longer you steam the pudding, the darker it gets.

For a normal cooker you bring the water to the boil on a high heat. Then you have to keep the pots on a low heat so that the water is just simmering. Unlike the Aga cooking method, you have to keep checking the water level and top it up when necessary with more boiling water. Again, you need to steam the puddings for at least five hours; anything up to eight or nine hours.

When the steaming time is finished, very carefully lift the pudding bowls out of the pots.

Here is one of my finished puddings. See how dark it has become?

You might need to run a knife round the inside of the pudding bowl in order to release each pudding. It should then slide out easily. Leave the puddings until they are completely cold and then wrap them twice in cling film and twice in tin foil. Christmas pudding can actually be frozen at this stage though it keeps for ages anyway. There's a lot of debate about just how long it keeps so I'm not going to give a definite time. If your family is anything like mine then it won't last too long and there'll be no need to worry if it's still alright the following Christmas!

So there you have it. Please let me know if you make some puddings. Also contact me if you have any questions and I'll try to answer them. Thanks for your great comments about my apples. And yes, I used some of them in my Christmas puddings. Bye for now.

Blackcurrant Cordial

Hello and welcome back again. Christmas has been and gone and we're more or less back to normal. The husband has taken the Christmas trees to use in the garden; the pine needles are especially good for spreading over beds with fruit bushes.

Talking of fruit bushes, we had a big blackcurrant harvest last summer. Rather than use the fruit there and then, I washed it, bagged it and put it in the freezer. This makes it very handy for making jam or cordial later on. I recently made some blackcurrant cordial so I thought I'd let you see the process. I got the recipe on the internet years ago and can't remember where. But it's just a basic recipe that you could find anywhere.

So, this is what you need:

450g blackcurrants
250g caster sugar
260ml water
whole lemon

De-stalk and wash the blackcurrants. You don't need to be too fussy with the de-stalking as none of the fruit ends up in the cordial. Just make sure there aren't anything creatures still there!

Place the blackcurrants, sugar and water into a saucepan. Melt the sugar over low heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.


 
Once the sugar has dissolved, bring the syrup to a gentle simmer. Simmer the fruits for 5 minutes.

 
Now add the juice and skin of the lemon. You can see I'm using two lemons because I made double the quantity.

Bring the syrup back to simmer for a further 5 minutes.


 

 
Let the cordial cool for 10 minutes. Meanwhile sterilise a glass bottle.

Pass the cordial through a fine sieve (or muslin).

 
This is what was left behind after the juice had dripped through. The wild birds eat it once it has gone cold.

 
Pour the cordial into the sterilised bottle, cool and keep refrigerated until needed. I like to strain it through my funnel to make sure there are no wee bits still left in the cordial.

 
There it is! You only need a small amount of cordial diluted with plenty of water.

 

This same method can be used for other fruits such as grapes. There are some grapes in my freezer that I must use to make cordial. The grape cordial is very mild and I really like it. Sometimes I mix blackcurrants and grapes too.

 

Back in the summer I made some pink elderflower cordial which I froze in plastic bottles. We had it at Christmas, diluted with sparkling water. Very tasty!

 

There are some crochet projects that have been finished and progress with knitting that I hope to show you very soon. Just need to get the camera into action again.

 

All the very best for now. Thanks for all your lovely comments; I'm looking forward to getting lots more this year.

 



Beeswax and Not Quite a Recipe for Dinner

A by-product of the honey harvest we've recently had is beeswax. Now beeswax can be put to many good uses, one of which is making beeswax candles. We have planned to make beeswax candles after each of our honey harvests (we've been keeping bees for about four years) but so far have never got round to it. In fact, we still had the beeswax from last year still waiting to be used. This year we were determined to make the candles.

As it turned out, the husband was off on Bank Holiday Monday (25th August) but I had to work. So the husband made the beeswax candles all on his own. They turned out really well. The colour is natural and when they burn they have a beautiful honey scent.

As well as the candles, some of the beeswax was used to make a few beeswax polish bars. Look, it even says BEESWAX on the bar! Isn't that rather nifty?

Here they are together - candles and polish. He did a good job.

Not to be outdone, I also made something nice for dinner. This isn't really a recipe but more a method for making a tasty meal.

First I cut up a selection of vegetables, mostly from the garden. On this occasion I used two onions, five cloves of garlic (we love garlic but you don't have to use any if you don't want to), three small courgettes, a red pepper, an orange pepper and 250g of chestnut mushrooms. A small pineapple was also cut into chunks and added to the mix. Not everyone likes fruit with meat but it isn't necessary to add any if you don't like it. Sometimes I use a mango instead of pineapple.

The whole lot was fried gently in olive oil until well softened but not completely cooked. Then I added five chicken breast fillets that had been cubed. That was cooked until the outside of the chicken cubes were done and had turned white instead of pink. For vegetarians you can leave out the chicken and it is still really yummy; I've tried it this way too.

Now two tubs of soft cheese were added. Mine were 250g tubs but you don't have to be too exact. Mine were also Extra Light but you can use Full Fat just as well. Sometimes I use crème fraiche, soured cream or even quark. At this stage I also added a jar of mango chutney. Any sort of chutney will do; just use your favourite. I should have used pineapple chutney, I suppose, but I only had mango. Anyway, a really good stir and the juices from the vegetables and chicken combine with the soft cheese and chutney to make a lovely, creamy sauce. Simmer the whole lot until the vegetables and chicken are completely cooked through. To hurry things along I did mine for about 20 minutes in the Aga roasting oven but it could be done for a bit longer at a lower temperature, say in the simmering oven. If you don't have an Aga then just simmer it in your usual way.

Serve with rice, pasta, quinoa or whatever you fancy. Simple but tasty. This amount would serve at least ten people, by the way!

Welcome to my new followers and commenters. It's lovely to have you join in.

Best wishes to you all until the next time.