Chicken and Chorizo Filo Parcels

Isn't it always the case that when you use ready-made pastry, you have some left over that find its way into the fridge or even the freezer? Not long ago I decided I needed to use up some filo pastry and had a look on the Jus-Rol (the pastry brand) website for inspiration. I thought these chicken, manchego and chorizo briouats.

 

I made them a little differently, as I always do; I left out the lentils as I don't like them, and rather than sun-dried tomato paste or even tomato puree (which would have been a good alternative) I used some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and added some sweet potato puree I had previously made, and a little plain yogurt to create some moisture. I'm also not quite sure why the recipe on the link above mentions puff pastry and think this might be a mistake!

Making the parcels very small and tight isn't that easy and mine were rather bigger than expected; we ate them as a main course with potato wedges but I think they would be brilliant as part of a buffet. The chicken and chorizo are a great flavour combination and the sweet potato puree really adds something slightly sweet and creamy, though if you don't want to go to the effort of making this specifically, just use the cheese and the yogurt. Manchego is a Spanish's sheep's cheese which I couldn't get hold of for this recipe so I used cheddar which I thought worked fine. I also took the opportunity to use up some left over roast chicken, which I shredded.

Here's what I did:

Serves 6
6 Filo pastry sheets
2 tbsp. oil for brushing
50g chorizo, diced
1 onion, diced
dash of oil or low-fat cooking spray
25g sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
4 tbsp. plain yogurt
either 4 cooked chicken breast fillets or about 400g cooked shredded chicken
salt, pepper
75g grated cheese
4 tbsp. sweet potato puree (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Heat the oil or cooking spray in a frying pan and fry the onion and chorizo over a low to medium heat for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer to a bowl and mix with the shredded chicken, cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Season. Stir in the yogurt and sweet potato puree.

Lay out a sheet of filo pastry and cut into three long thin strips. Brush with oil then add a spoonful of chicken mixture at one end.

Fold over the pastry to form a triangle, then flip the triangle up and to the right and then to the left and repeat until you have folded the filling all the way along the strip of pastry. Brush with more oil and place on a baking sheet.

Repeat until you have used up all the filling and the pastry.

Bake the parcels in the oven for 10-12 minutes. You may need to do this in a couple of batches. Serve warm with salad, couscous or potato wedges or as part of a buffet offering.

I'm sharing this with the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary - it's a good way of using up filo pastry and cooked chicken.

I'm also sending it to Cook Once, Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice, as you can cook some chicken one day (eg a roast) and use it in this recipe another day.

WeightWatchers Chicken Basque

This a great one-pot meal which can feed a whole family. It's actually a WeightWatchers recipe as it's fairly low in fat if you use skinless boneless chicken breasts or thighs - I used thighs for this recipe so it's good value as well. If you left the chorizo out it would be lower in fat but wouldn't taste as good!

According to the recipe which I found in an old WeightWatchers magazine, this has 9 and a half points per person. It involved scattering olives and orange slices over the top at the end which I didn't do, so I have left these out of the recipe.

To serve 4, you need:
8 skinless boneless chicken thighs
low fat cooking spray
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, cut into thin wedges
2 red peppers, de-seeded and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
75g chorizo sausage, skinned and sliced
50g semi-dried tomatoes (I used sun-dried, drained of oil on kitchen paper)
175g brown basmati rice
1 chicken stock cube, mixed with 225ml water
125ml dry white wine
1 tbsp. tomato puree
1/2 tsp paprika
2 tsp chopped fresh parsley

 

Season the chicken. Use an oven proof dish that can also go on the hob if you have one, and spray with low fat cooking spray. Brown the chicken on both sides - alternatively you can do this in a frying pan. Heat the olive oil in the casserole dish or frying pan and brown the onion and peppers, then after about 5 minutes add the garlic, chorizo and tomatoes.

Preheat the oven to 180C. If you're using a frying pan, at this point transfer the ingredients into the casserole dish. Stir in the rice until it's coated in oil then add the stock, wine, tomato puree and paprika. Put the chicken on top, making sure the rice is still covered by liquid, and put the lid on top.

Bake in the oven for about an hour until the rice has cooked and the liquid absorbed and the chicken is cooked through. Sprinkle with parsley to serve.

Spanish Roasted Fish with Patatas Bravas

I love fish, but usually find white fish - even cod - too plain and uninteresting. This recipe from Tesco, in one of their recent free magazines, is a great way to enjoy cod with some new flavours, and with the potatoes it makes a really substantial meal - and one that is really easy to cook.

You can find the recipe on the Tesco website. Don't be afraid of using fennel even if like me you don't really like it - it works really well in this dish and once it's roasted with the other ingredients the aniseed flavour is much less pronounced.

I didn't use the cherry tomatoes as I don't like them though I did use the tinned tomatoes in the patatas bravas sauce. I made this on a weekend as it does take quite a while to cook but is pretty easy - you just bung most things into a roasting tin - and it really was delicious.

 

Here's the fish (salmon, cod and prawns) plus potato, chorizo and onion in a foil-lined roasting tin.

It doesn't look much different after it's cooked, does it?!

Here's the patatas bravas - I cheated slightly and used Aunt Bessie's mini roast potatoes but then followed the recipe for the sauce, which worked really nicely.

The finished dish - really tasty!

Leon Poached Egg Pots

I love the breakfast egg pots at Leon. Have you come across Leon before? They are largely based around London with branches at airports as well as a couple of other cities and their motto is 'naturally fast food'. I first went to a Leon at Heathrow airport but now there are several around where I work.

I still remember how good the egg pot was that I had at the airport three years ago - it was simple but a combination I hadn't come across before, with a poached egg, cheese sauce and chopped ham served in a little pot. I decided to make it for my husband and me for brunch last weekend and found this recipe on Lovefood, written by Leon founder Henry Dimbleby.

I didn't follow the recipe that closely as I didn't have any truffle oil to put in the cheese sauce and to poach the eggs I cheated and used 'poachies' - little bags that you crack the eggs into and put them in a pan of boiling water. I have an egg poaching pan, and a microwave egg poacher that I use sometimes at work, and have tried various ways to poach eggs and have found these to be the best by far, so I recommend them if you have trouble getting perfectly poached eggs!

So all I did was whip up a quick cheese sauce from a roux of flour and butter and then milk and melted cheese, poach the eggs and fry some chorizo. I served them in ramekins with the egg on the bottom, some salt and pepper, then the cheese then the chorizo on top - I can't begin to tell you how good these are!

Cowboy Pie

This pie is based on an idea I saw in a Slimming World book or magazine a while ago but isn't actually particularly Slimming - I wanted an excuse to use my cow print rolling pin again! It came from Etsy and was a Christmas gift last year I think but I've only used it a few times. The rolling pin leaves an imprint of a cow pattern on anything you roll out!

I decided to theme a pie around it and use it to roll out the pastry to go on the top. The cow theme would work for cottage pie (which uses minced beef) but I decided to make what I call a cowboy pie - based on sausage and beans which have associations with cowboys sitting around a camp fire!

Preheat the oven to 180C. First fry or grill a couple of sausages per person until they are just cooked and cut into chunks. You can also add some diced chorizo or pancetta to the pan and fry. Put into a pie dish (either an individual dish or a large one - I did an individual one for my husband) and pour over half a tin of baked beans and mix together.

You can see how the rolling pin leaves the cow pattern on the pastry. I used ready-made shortcrust pastry though you can make your own.

Top the pie with the pastry and trim the edges; make a small hole for any steam to escape

When baked the pastry should turn golden brown (though it doesn't look very brown in this picture)

You also can't see the cow pattern very well any more in this photo, but it was there!

This is what the pie looks like inside - my husband said it was good. It's a nice change to the way you might normally serve sausage and beans, anyway!

Carrot Rice 'Risotto' with Chorizo

Did you know that you can do more with your spiralizer than just make vegetable spaghetti? You can also make rice - or a vegetable rice anyway!

After spiralizing vegetables into spaghetti-like strands you can give it a quick whizz in the food processor and turn it into little grains like rice. I don't think you could put the raw veg straight into a blender - that is, you couldn't as easily turn a raw carrot into carrot rice without spiralizing it first, and a cooked carrot would just turn it to mush. You could of course grate it rather than spiralize like I did with this cauliflower rice.

I've got the Inspiralized recipe book by Ali Maffucci and also get a lot of recipes from her blog, www.inspiralized.com. I found a recipe for a spicy seafood and chorizo paella using carrot 'rice' and diced bacon (I used chorizo);  It tasted absolutely delicious - I was really impressed, and since it's now Sugar Free September (for some people at least) I thought I'd share my adaptation of this recipe if anyone is looking for meal ideas.

To serve two, you need:
1 tbsp. oil or a few sprays of Fry Light
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
half an onion, diced
1 chorizo sausage, sliced
200g tin chopped tomatoes
2 carrots, peeled and spiralized then processed in  blender to turn them into rice
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 cod fillets, chopped into chunky pieces
12 large prawns
1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley

Fry the chorizo, garlic and onion in the oil

Spiralizing the carrot, then pulse in a blender until it turns into 'rice'

Add to the pan with the tinned tomatoes, chilli, paprika, and turmeric, the cod and the prawns

Then add the lemon juice and sprinkle with the parsley. The finished dish:

Huevos Rancheros - Mexican breakast eggs

Translating as "rancher's eggs" this is a popular Mexican breakfast dish, though not one that I actually managed to eat while we were in Mexico! Because of that I decided to make it as a light lunch/brunch after we came back. I found this Food Network Jamie Oliver recipe but adapted it to make it quicker - rather than make my own tomato sauce I used passata from a box. I'm also not a fan of fried eggs so I decided to make this with poached eggs instead and it was really nice. I also forgot the cheese on top!

Here's how to make my speedy version. To serve 2:
1/4 onion, diced
100g diced chorizo
oil for frying
2 flour tortillas
2 eggs
8 tbsp. passata
fresh coriander to serve

Fry the onion and chorizo in a large frying pan until cooked through then add the passata and heat. Meanwhile poach the eggs.

In another frying pan, heat a little oil and fry the tortillas for a minute each on each side. Place an egg on each tortilla on a plate and top with the chorizo and passata mixture. Top with a little chopped coriander.

 

I'm sending this to Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen; this month he's asking 'how do you like your eggs in the morning?'

Spanish Paella

 I was given some Spanish chorizo recently by a relative of my boyfriend's who came over from Gibraltar, and decided to use it in an authentic paella. You can adjust the flavourings however you like, but this is what I used, to serve two:

2 chicken drumsticks

2 chicken thighs

150g chorizo, sliced

150g prawns

1 onion, diced

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/2 red pepper, diced

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1/4 tsp dried red chilli flakes

250g rice

1 pint chicken stock

1 tsp paprika

125ml dry white wine

1/4 tsp saffron strands

oil for frying

To begin, fry the chicken drumsticks and thighs in a large frying pan, or if you have one a paella pan - I brought one back from a Spanish holiday a few years ago.

Add the onion, garlic and red pepper and fry.

Here's the chorizo I was given - for a real Spanish flavour

Add the sliced chorizo to the pan and fry. Add the paprika and chilli flakes to the pan and mix.

Spoon the rice into the pan and fry for a minute to allow it to absorb the flavours. Meanwhile mix the saffron strands with a little of the chicken stock and add to the pan. Keep adding the rest of the stock gradually until it has all been absorbed and the rice is tender.

When the paella is almost cooked, add the prawns and fresh thyme

Serve and enjoy

Chorizo sausage rolls

I made these chorizo sausage rolls when my parents came to stay over Easter as I wanted something I could prepare in advance for lunch on the day they arrived, that I knew both of them would eat. I got the recipe from the Fabulous Baker Brothers' website, but it is also in their latest book Glorious British Grub, which I just received for my birthday.

I did adapt the recipe slightly as I couldn't actually get hold of the main ingredient (typical!) and also decided to make one large sausage roll, almost a bit like a pasty, instead of the bite-sized rolls the Baker brothers make.

to serve three people (or four - I had half of mine the next day as it was too much!) you need:

olive oil or Fry Light spray or similar

1 red onion

1 red chilli (I used half as I didn't want it too spicy)

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp sherry vinegar (I used white wine vinegar as it was all I had)

6 raw chorizo sausages, skinned and crumbled. I couldn't get hold of these so I used pork and chorizo sausage, but as it was sausage meat and therefore more wet than chorizo (which is more like salami in texture) I cut it into chunks rather than crumbled it. So my sausage rolls turned out rather different but they were still really good!

200g jar roasted red peppers or piquillo peppers. I didn't want mine too spicy and I had a jar of sweet peppardew peppers in the fridge so I used three peppers from that.

bunch of parsley

1 lime

1 lemon

1 egg yolk plus 1 egg to glaze

500g shop-bought puff pastry

Pinch of smoked paprika

Preheat oven to 200C/ 180C fan. Finely chop the red onion and chilli and fry in the oil or Fry-Light. Then finely chop the garlic and add it with the vinegar; cook for a couple of minutes.

This was the closest I could get to chorizo...

I chopped the sausages, added to the pan and browned them

Chop the pepperdew peppers, grate the zest of the lemon and lime and place in a large mixing bowl. Add the chopped parsley and squeeze in the juice of the lemon.

Add the chorizo or sausage pieces to the bowl along with the onion, garlic and chilli from the pan. Add the egg yolk and season.

Separate the block of pastry into three and roll each one out into a long strip.

Place a third of the filling on one half of the pastry, leaving some space around the sides.

Fold up the pastry and crimp the edges with a fork.

Place on a lined baking sheet and brush the sausage rolls with beaten egg.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

These tasted delicious - just the right amount of spice and a bit more interesting than a standard sausage roll. They are really versatile too - you could eat them cold on a picnic, or serve with baked beans...

... or salad. I also made a potato salad to go with this. It was a really good, filling lunch!

I am sending this to Four Seasons Food, a new blogging challenge hosted by Delicieux and Chezfoti as their theme for the start of the summer is picnic food and outdoor nibbles. These sausage rolls would be great served cold on a picnic, though it might be a good idea to make them a little smaller to make them more manageable to eat!