Chicken Pot Pie

From Jamie Oliver “5 Ingredients”

Difficulty: Easy

Serves: 4

Prep time: 25 min

Cooking time: 35 min

Ingredients

  • 4x chicken breasts ( approx. 600g)
  • 3x onions
  • 350g of mixed mushrooms
  • 500g block of puff pastry
  • 2x bunch of fresh thyme

Special Equipment

  • 30cm diameter ovenproof frying pan
  • Smaller non-stick frying pan
  • Rolling pin
  • Oil brush

Preparation

  • Step 1 – Onions
  • Peel and roughly chop the onions
  • Step 2 – Oven
  • Preheat the oven to 220oC / 425oF / gas 7
  • Step 3 – Mushrooms
  • Wash the mushrooms
  • Cut in medium slices
  • Step 4 – Chicken breasts
  • Roughly chop 2/3 of the chicken
  • Finely chop 1/3 of the chicken

Cooking

  • Step 1 – Mushrooms
  • Put both pans on medium heat
  • Place the mushrooms in the non-stick frying pan
  • Let them toast and get nutty for 4 minutes
  • Step 2 – Chicken part 1
  • Pour one table spoon of olive oil into the oven-proof pan
  • Fry the onions for a few minutes and then add the chicken
  • Cook for 4 minutes and add the mushrooms and strip-in half the thyme leaves
  • Cook for a further 2 minutes or until golden, stirring occasionally
  • Remove the oven-proof pan from the heat
  • Add sea salt and black pepper
  • Stir-in one table spoon of red wine vinegar and 150ml of water
  • Step 2 – Pastry
  • Working quickly, lay the pastry block on a flat surface coated with flour
  • Roll out the pastry in both directions and on both sides (making it evenly thinner), keeping it in flour so it does not stick to the flat surface. Continue until the thin pastry square obtained can cover the pan diameter with 2 cm to spare
  • Remove the pastry square by half-rolling it over the roller
  • Place the pastry over the whole content of the pan, tucking in the corner and pressing on the sides to make a seal
  • Very lightly criss-cross the pastry with a knife, then brush with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil, making sure no puddles are formed
  • Create a hole in the middle and poke in the remaining thyme sprigs
  • Step 2 – Chicken part 2
  • Put to bake on the bottom shelf of the oven
  • Bake until pastry is puffed up and golden brown
  • You may need to pierce a few more holes to let air escape if the pastry is puffing up too much in certain locations

First attempt at puff pastry but gives a lovely crisp and light crust to this pie

Might try to add more ingredients next time to give it a more exciting taste

Herb Chicken Traybake

Variation on Jamie Oliver from “5 Ingredients”

Difficulty: Easy

Serves: 2

Prep time: 20 min

Cooking time: 50 min

Ingredients

  • 2x 200g chicken legs
  • 400g of potatoes
  • 200g of button mushrooms
  • 2x shallots
  • 2x sprigs of fresh rosemary
  • 1/2 lemon

Special Equipment

  • Roasting tray
  • Small grill to sit on top

Preparation

  • Step 1 – Oven
  • Preheat the oven to 180oC / 350oF / gas 4
  • Step 2 – Potatoes
  • Wash and scrub the potatoes
  • Slice them into 0.5cm thick slices
  • Place them to evenly cover the bottom of a roasting tray
  • Step 3 – Shallots
  • Peel the shallots
  • Cut length-wise and then slice and dice
  • Add the shallots to the potato slices
  • Add 1/2 a tablespoon of olive oil and season to taste
  • Step 4 – Mushrooms
  • Wash the mushrooms
  • Cut in medium slices

Cooking

  • Step 1 – Chicken part 1
  • Arrange the chicken legs on the grill
  • Sit the grill on top of the roasting tray
  • Place both in the oven and bake for 40 minutes
  • Step 2 – Chicken part 2
  • Strip the rosemary leaves off the sprigs
  • Peel strips of lemon zest
  • Add both evenly into the roasting tray
  • Add the cut mushrooms to the tray
  • Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon into the tray
  • Return to the oven for a final 10 minutes or until the chicken is tender and golden

Provides a lovely moist, soft and tender chicken

Nice pairing with a bottle of Cotes de Bordeaux red whine

Chicken with chorizo, butter beans and new potatoes

By Stephen Jeffers from “Belfast cookery school”

Difficulty: Easy

Serves: 4

Prep time: 15 min

Cooking time: 35 min

Ingredients

  • 4 skinless chicken breasts
  • 100g chorizo sausage (sliced)
  • 200g butter beans (can)(drained, from a can in water)
  • 12 small new potatoes
  • 36 Brussels sprouts (approx 400g)
  • 2 shallots
  • 150ml chicken stock
  • 150ml double cream
  • Basil

Special Equipment

  • Large frying pan
  • 2x small cooking pan

Preparation

  • Step 1 – Potatoes
  • Leave skins on new potatoes
  • Put potatoes to boil
  • Cook until soft inside (approx 10 minutes)
  • Cut them in halves
  • Put them aside
  • Step 2 – Stock
  • Prepare the chicken stock
  • Step 3 – Sprouts & Chorizo
  • Prepare the Brussels sprouts
  • Slice the chorizo into medium slices
  • Step 4 – Shallots
  • Peel the shallots
  • Cut length wise and then slice and dice

Cooking

  • Step 1 – Chicken
  • Put oil in bottom of frying pan
  • Fry the chicken breast on both sides until golden brown on the outside, cooking sufficiently long on medium heat to make sure it is cooked through,
  • Remove from pan and put on a plate covered with aluminium foil to keep warm
  • Step 2 – Brussels sprouts
  • Put Brussels sprouts to boil in small pan
  • Cook for approx 8 minutes
  • K’s tip
  • If the breasts are too thick, slice them in two to make them easier to cook
  • Do not use the same cutting board after having cut raw chicken meat
  • Step 3 – Chorizo
  • Put oil, shallots and chorizo in a small cooking pan
  • cook until chorizo changes colour and onions are brown
  • Step 4 – Sauce
  • Remove chorizo and shallots from the pan and set aside in bowl
  • Add chicken stock and double cream
  • Reduce on slow boil
  • Step 5 – Cooking
  • Put potatoes and beans in the large frying pan
  • Add the chorizo and shallots
  • Add the stock/cream reduction
  • Cook on slow boil until sauce becomes slightly sticky (approx. 10 minutes)
  • Add the chicken to the pan to warm it up
  • Add basil and season to taste
  • Cook for a further few minutes

Presentation

  • Use heated plates
  • Serve the chicken with the beans, chorizo and Brussels spouts displayed around it

The perfect dish for people allergic to vegetables and anything green (if you dispense of the Brussels sprouts) !

Goes down well with a nice bottle of Rioja Reserva red wine

Serrano Ham Crisps

Tired of regular plain crisps, and even of the new fancy flavoured ones, full of chemicals ?

Karen found these Serrano ham crisps “made using 100% Spanish pork”. The package describes them as “oven baked sliced dry cured Serrano ham” and they are definitely like very thin crispy ham slices.

They are certainly very moreish ! and available from your local M&S!

Stuffed Tarragon Chicken

from “Mary Berry cooks”

Difficulty: Easy

Serves: 6

Prep time: 20 min

Cooking time: 35 min

Ingredients

  • 6x skinless boneless chicken breasts
  • 12x slices of Parma ham
  • 150g of firm black-pepper full-fat cream cheese (e.g. “Boursin”)
  • 200g of full-fat creme fraiche
  • 1x large egg yolk
  • 0.5x lemon
  • 3x table spoons of chopped tarragon + extra tarragon leaves
  • 1x table spoon of clear honey

Special Equipment

  • Small roasting tin

Preparation

  • Step 1 – Cream cheese
  • In a bowl, mix the cream cheese with the egg yolk and two table spoons of tarragon. Season well.
  • Step 2 – Miscellaneous
  • Preheat oven to 200oC / 180oC fan / Gas 6
  • Squeeze juice of 1/2 lemon
  • Step 2 – Chicken breasts
  • Grease the roasting tin with butter (or oil)
  • Put the chicken breasts onto a board.
  • Using a sharp knife, cut a pocket in the side of each breast, halfway up, making sure no to cut through to the other side
  • Push the cream cheese mixture into each chicken breast pocket, dividing between each breast
  • Wrap each breast in two slices of Parma ham, so that they are completely covered and the cream cheese cannot escape from the pocket
  • Arrange each breast in the roasting tin

Cooking

  • Step 1 – Chicken Breasts
  • Drizzle a little honey over each breast laying in the roasting tin
  • Put roasting tin in oven for about 30-35 minutes (chicken should no longer be pink in the centre)
  • Remove the chicken breasts from the tin and leave to rest for 5 minutes in service dish while you make the sauce (covered in foil to keep warm)
  • Step 2 – Sauce
  • Add the creme fraiche and the lemon juice to the roasting tin
  • Put the tin onto the hob and bring to boil, scraping the tin with a wooden spoon to release all of the chicken juices
  • Add the remaining table spoon of chopped tarragon and season

Presentation

  • Serve the chicken breasts in a dish with the sauce around them.
  • Sprinkled a few tarragon leaves over the chicken

Deliciously moist chicken breasts

Serve with fluffy potatoes and green beans

Elegant Italian

Using Sangiovese grapes from the rolling hills of Tuscany, this is a nice Chianti from Italy. It is a Chianti “Classico” meaning that it comes from the original region (17,800 acres out of 38,000) between Florence and Sienna where some of the fullest richest wines are made, with more complex structure.

On top of that, this is a Chianti Classico “Riserva” meaning that it requires a minimum ageing of 2 years in barrel and an additional 3 months in bottle before it can be sold. Being a 2015, the additional bottle ageing produces this elegant wine where the cherry savory notes are not overbearing.

Not only is it a pleasure to drink but it can be sourced in the UK for only £7.49 at Lidl. Enjoy it with my pesto fettuccine or chicken dish. It makes a nice change from the usual suspects we drink regularly !

Pesto fettuccine with shrimps

from “Mary Berry cooks”

Difficulty: Easy

Serves: 2

Prep time: 0 minute

Cooking time: 15 min

Ingredients

  • 8x fettuccine balls (approx. 160g)
  • 180g of uncooked peeled king prawns
  • 140g fresh Green Pesto mixture
  • 100ml of pouring double cream
  • Parmesan cheese for grating
  • Some fresh basil leaves

Special Equipment

  • Medium frying pan
  • Large pan

Preparation

  • None required

Cooking

  • Step 1 – Shrimps
  • Put a bit of oil in a frying pan on medium heat
  • Gently fry the shrimps until they turn from grey to pink, starting on one side and then flipping them over on the other side
  • Step 2 – Fettuccine
  • Cook the pasta in a pan with boiling salted water for the time indicated on the packet (approx. 4-5 minutes)
  • When draining the pasta, keep 100ml of the cooking water
  • Step 3 – Combine
  • Put the pesto mixture and the cream together into the pasta pan and bring to the boil
  • Add the pasta, most of the chopped basil leaves and the saved pasta water
  • Toss together and season

Presentation

  • Use heated plates
  • Serve the fettuccine with grated Parmesan cheese
  • Garnish with the remaining basil leaves

Very easy and a welcomed change from the traditional bolognese

Savour it with a nice bottle of Chianti from Italy

#4b – Topspin forehand (2/2)

Welcome to my new “Teach yourself tennis” series, using the best YouTube videos

I’ll be your video curator / instructor ! selecting the best free coaches out there…

Following my Forehand part-1 post, here is part-2 where we go into a lot more details on how to hit a “modern” forehand…

This first video explains quite well the difference between the “old” and the “new” forehand:

Now let’s get cracking! This first video talks about you through the 5 key steps of a topspin forehand:

  • Step 0 – The grip – except he talks at first about the semi-western grip and really you should use the eastern forehand grip (which he recommends at the end) – refer to post#1 on the ”grip”
  • Step 1 – The ready position with a high racquet head, holding the throat
  • Step 2 – Turn the left shoulder in a unit turn
  • Step 3 – The power back position, away from body 
  • Step 4 – The turn initiation, with racket lag and racket but pointing forward
  • Step 5 – Nice forward contact point with follow through with no slowing down

This next video goes into even more details on how to hit the “Federer forehand”. The coach is a bit serious but it is interesting the way he teaches his student and all the small elements he focuses on:

  1. Racket back with elbow up and out
  2. Elbow extension and tap the dog
  3. The racket flip and follow through

To make the swing shorter and the racket speed higher and therefore deliver more consistently a shot that has more power and more top spin.

https://youtu.be/5MHugAF2DiQ

This next video explains how to generate more top spin when needed. Pay special attention to the first few seconds where you see people practicing with a tape band high above the net to make sure the top spin shots go high above it…

  • Correct swing path
  • Brushing from under the ball
  • Racket speed through the ball
  • Using your legs

Finally, this video is a coaching lesson to improve this woman’s forehand (that was already quite good I thought!). They show what to improve and give drills on how to practice the correct movements:

Hope you found this 2-part forehand video selection useful and join me for further shot specific videos soon.

Dealing with Monkeys… before you go nuts!

While having coffee after lunch at my daughter’s, I found this book she recommended as a quick fun read: “The one minute manager meets the monkey” by Ken Blanchard, William Oncken Jr and Hal Burrows. It did not take long to read and I enjoyed it and it’s managerial lessons which I will try and summarise here. I strongly recommend getting the book as it’s full of Illustrative examples yet is still an easy, quick and enjoyable read.

The book’s central theme is that if, as a Manager, you feel overloaded, you lack time for your staff, your staff can’t work because they are waiting for your decision and you have lots of projects you have not even started to work on…

… it’s simply because you have too many monkeys on your back !

Monkeys (like problems) are four-legged animals that have a tendency to jump from one person’s shoulders to someone else’s. For every monkey (or assignment), there are always two parties: one that works it and one that supervises it. Often employees come to see you with their problems. As a manager, what you must avoid at all cost is to end the discussion with “ let me think about it and I’ll get back to you”. If you act this way, then the monkey has squarely jumped from the employee’s back onto yours! Willingly or unconsciously, when people see that you are keen to attract monkeys, they channel even more your way…

As a Manager, what you don’t want to do is to swap role with your staff. The more monkeys you have on your back, the more you become overworked with no free time. You end up spending more time at work, becoming anxious and keeping your door closed to concentrate on your workload. And when you have not done what you said you would do, you become a bottle neck to your staff who patiently await your decision/action to move the problem further!

It also sends the message to your staff member that because he/she is not capable of handling this problem, you have to take care of it yourself. The more you take care of things, the more dependent they become. In the process, their self esteem and confidence is eroded.

So put the monkeys back on your people’s shoulders and suddenly you will have more time for them and more time for you to work on your own legitimate monkeys.

The authors suggests the following rules to make sure the monkeys stay where they belong: The dialog between boss and one of their people should not end until all monkeys have:

(1) Descriptions – A monkey is whatever the next move is on a project or a problem

Every subordinate should come with a thoughtful suggestion for the next move. Replace “let me think about it and I’ll get back to you” by “Think about it some more and let’s review your ideas in a couple of days”

(2) Owners – the monkey is clearly assigned to a person

Monkeys should be handled at the lowest organisational level consistent with the monkey’s welfare (so they don’t get sick and escalate to an emergency)

(3) Insurance policies – the risk should be covered

Ask staff to, most of the time, act and then advise of their action later. Only in certain dangerous/tricky situations should they ask approval before acting

(4) Monkey feeding and checkup appointments – the time and place for follow up

Proper follow-up leads to a healthier monkey. Every monkey should have a regular checkup. And always ask yourself: “Why are we doing this?” If there is no viable answer, shoot the monkey, so you are not wasting time!

The book gives you a final interesting definition: “Assigning” involves a single monkey, “delegation” involves a family of monkeys”…

I hope you enjoyed this quick and dirty summary of this book about Monkeys. It reminded me of another more recent leadership book where the Captain never gave orders or instructions but always asked his XO what he was going to do next and either agreed or asked why he was taking that decision. In this way he not only had no Monkey transfers but he built Leaders. I recommend this book, it’s a great story.

#4a – Topspin Forehand (1/2)

Welcome to my new “Teach yourself tennis” series, using the best YouTube videos

I’ll be your video curator / instructor ! selecting the best free coaches out there…

If, like me, you learned your tennis a while back, you probably have nice “old school” strokes and all these top-spin shots seem a bit ”alien”. However topspin shots provide more margin for error and make the shots harder to return for your opponent.

This first post on the Forehand (part 1 of 2) focuses on the basic understanding of what is required to make the transition from a “classic” to a “modern” forehand  and is also what you would explain to a beginner tennis player learning to hit a modern forehand!

This initial video talks about the 4 basic key points of a topspin forehand:

  1. The grip – except he talks at first about the semi-western grip and really you should use the eastern forehand grip (which he recommends at the end) – refer to my post#1 on the ”grip” for more details on suitable grips
  2. The ready position and racquet back
  3. The “pat the big dog” position 
  4. The follow through, finishing high over your shoulder

This next video decomposes the forehand movement more precisely. And since the celebrity coach is of my “vintage”, I felt comfortable listening to her 🙂

  1. Footwork
  2. Early shoulder turn
  3. Contact point
  4. Grip

She then gives more details and answers a few good questions

This next video emphasises 3 key points required to make a topspin forehand:

  • Have the proper swing path – not just “low to high” but lower than the ball contact point to higher than it
  • Don’t use muscle power but use the correct “kinetic chain” (proper movement)
  • Work on getting the required ball flight/shape over the net

Finally, this video is a coaching lesson to transform a rather “ugly” traditional looking forehand into something much better… You might associate with the guy’s problems:

  • Bad grip
  • not turning your body
  • not going from low to high

and may benefit from the drills demonstrated:

I hope you found this video selection useful and join me for part 2 of the Forehand soon.