John Torode’s chicken pie – and why I will never be masterchef!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Hubby and I really got into this year’s Masterchef! If you watched it you will know, but in case you didn’t, during the heats John Torode would cook something (and show the viewer at home roughly how) then the contestants had to taste it to work out what was in it, and cook it. One week he made a really lovely creamy chicken pie, and, I love chicken pie but have naver really had a clue how to make a yummy thick creamy one, so we recorded the episode and wrote down the rough recipe from it.

As it was bank holiday weekened and we had a little more time on our hands I decided to have a bash at making it. So we knew all the ingredients and the rough ways to cook them, but had no clue on the amounts or cooking times etc so it was a good bit of fun guestimation!

The ingredients were:

Chicken Thighs
Ham
Potato
Leeks
Carrots (he used celery but we don’t like it so added carrots :))
Garlic
Chicken Stock
Single cream
Nutmeg
Butter and flour
Filo Pastry

So I got all of the ingredients chopped and ready though potentially got a bit carried away, especially considering that I’d only bought one pot of chicken stock. Anyway, then it was add the ingredients to the hot chicken stock and add some single cream, Nutmeg and some pepper. At this point I realised I had way too much meat and veg and not enough sauce. So quick chat to the hubby, decided to make 2 pies, and use an oxo cube in the second pie to make some more stock. So divided the two batches and felt much happier. Strained the liquid off and then it was time to make a roux!

I’ve never actually made a roux before, I know you “should” if you are making béchamel sauce for example in lasagne, but, well I’m lazy and generally just shove all the ingredients in, give a good stir and it usually works out fine! But for this, making a roux seemed like the right thing to do. I used huuuge quantities of butter but it seemed to go quite well, until I noticed a funny smell. Because I now had pie filling in our two big saucepans, I was using a small Le Creuset pot to make the roux, and was holding on to one of the hot handles with an oven glove, but at the same time I was managing to burn the oven glove in the hob flames! D’oh! Hence the horrible smell.

Unfortunately even after I realised this, and though I tried many different positions with the glove, I even managed to set it alight at one point! Honestly I am hazardous in the kitchen sometimes! Nevertheless, I made one roux for the first pie and as I mixed it with the sauce it thickened up amazingly and was lovely and gloopy, so it looked perfect. With the roux for the next pie, I don’t think I had enough roux for the liquid as it barely thickened at all. But anyway, we shall see how they turn out! Actually had to use some of the first pie mixture in the second pie in the end anyway as there was too much for the dish I was using. (As you can see I don’t actually have pie dishes, which might have been useful, but found a couple of almost suitable dishes!)

Next job, pastry! Nope, not making my own, good old jus’roll is perfect for me! Now according to the lovely Mr Torode, the filling should not touch the pastry otherwise it’ll be undercooked underneath and he describes it as being cheesy. I personally like the soggy pastry in pies but maybe I am weird so I tried desperately to follow his instructions. But I failed, miserably. Not sure if it is because the dishes I am using are too big but the pastry just kept flopping into the pie and onto the filling. Is it possible for this not to happen? There is no lip around either of the dishes either so trying to seal the pastry was interesting.

Anyway it happened with both dishes so after a bit of stress I just egg washed the pastry and shoved them in the oven, they will have to do!! After about half an hour they were looking nice and brown so we got them out. The first pie went in the pyrex dish, the second in the white dish.

Now I thought that the first pie would have been better as the sauce had thickened more and had the proper stock in it, but actually it was a bit too thick after cooking and almost bland – I think I must have used too much of the roux. The second pie, which had a combination of the thick and thin sauce was definitely the taster of the two. There are definitely improvements to make, I think personally I would leave the potato out of the pie and have more of the ham, chicken and veg in there. Or at least have the potato bits smaller, but then I’m not the biggest potato lover anyway really! Def one to try again though as not bad for a first attempt!

Easter Nests fun and crochet chicks

Posted by Caroline Elliott

Who can believe that it is Easter but it has been snowing?! Miserable and so so fed up of the cold but hey ho, what can you do? Have lots of fun indoors, that’s what! We’ve also taken the opportunity to do lots of the niggly little DIY jobs around the house that we haven’t got round to so far, but I won’t bore you with those! This post is about making some lovely Easter chocolate nests with a bit of help from the Monkey, and my attempts at making some cute crochet chicks.

After making the lovely blue bunny I decided that it couldn’t be that hard to crochet a little chick for Easter. I looked at lots of patterns online but couldn’t find any that matched up to the image I had in my head so I decided to just go for it, using the bunny pattern as a starting point and then going from there. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to make the head and body separate and then sew them together, or whether to try and make it so that it went in, and then out again, kind of like a skittle pin. I tried this first and the body looked ok, very much like a skittle pin, or maybe a yellow penguin! It was ok but where I really went wrong was with the eyes!! I am not very good at this bit and the end result is here – now known in our house as Evil Chick! hehe

You see the problem is the knots in the yarn, clearly the eyes need to be a lot smaller if they are to look cute but as I am sewing them on after stuffing them, I don’t know how to hide the knots at each end without them ending up huge, and, well, evil looking! hehe

So I decided to try again and as I wasn’t 100% happy with the shape of Evil Chick I thought I would have a bash at making a separate head and body. I also decided this time that I would sew the eyes into the head before I stuffed it, so that the knots could be inside and therefore the eyes much smaller. This ended up looking much better! Much cuter and just a nicer shape all round I think too so yay me 🙂

Loving the long weekend with hubby off and wanted to do a few cooking things, including making some chocolate Easter nests, because they are delicious and it’s really the only time of year you can make them! Monkey has dropped his morning nap this week (it’s been fun) and so is awake much more and I am having to find ways of entertaining him more, whilst also getting my jobs done, more on that in another blog, but it also means I have less time to do baking and chores when he sleeps.

I thought making the nests would be a nice thing for our little family to do together, and have this week bought a little sand and water table for him for crafty time and in readiness for the summer, so decided to involve monkey in the crushing of the shredded wheat. He was much more interested in eating it, but as it’s 100% wheat I don’t think there’s too much wrong with that! It was a bit chaotic and it went all over the floor but it was lots of fun too!

Daddy then melted the chocolate over a pan of boiling water while Monkey and I played. He also did the serious business of mixing up the shredded wheat and chocolate.

Monkey has never really eaten chocolate before now but we thought we can’t keep it from him forever, and as it’s Easter it’s a bit mean not to share. So we gave him a little bit of the much cooled but still soft chocolate and wheat mixture, and he loved it. He loved eating it, smushing it around his tray and generally waving it around and spreading it throughout the living room hehe. All good fun.

Meanwhile Daddy finished making the nests and filling them with yummy mini eggs.

Then we ran out of mini eggs and made some more with minstrels hehe. Slightly less elegant but still good.

Yum, yum, yummers 🙂 we have eaten far too many but I have also been handing them out to all the family we have seen to make sure that we don’t eat them all! haha Had a lovely quiche for dinner, another of my mum’s recipes, but this one is a slight adaptation from a Mary Berry recipe, and much easier to follow and tastes delicious. Monkey loves it too which is great so some has gone in the freezer for him later in the week 🙂

Yummy baby biscuits and weaning in general

Posted by Caroline Elliott

When the time came to start to wean monkey on to solids I have to say I had no clue where to start. I felt pressure that I should make all of his purees so they are all fresh and full of goodness, but really didn’t have the first idea how to puree anything, or at least how to cook things until they were ready to puree, steam? Boil? Bake? There are of course many wonderful jars and pots and pouches out there but as a stay at home mummy I felt that I should be able to prepare most of his food myself. So after a bit of online research I bought a book by Annabel Karmel. Her book had lots of good reviews and seemed like a good place to start.

I’m not going to write a detailed review of her book as there any many available online far more eloquent than I would be, but suffice to say this book has been my bible for the past few months. I skimmed some of it, and followed other parts to the letter. Great as a starting off point for how to make apple puree and others and her recipes really are amazing. We are yet to find one of her recipes that monkey doesn’t like and of course I haven’t made all of them but we have a made a lot of them now and each one seems better than the last. Monkey now seems in a phase where he hates to be spoon fed and only wants to eat finger food, and although they are a little fiddly, Annabel’s mini meatballs are delicious and the rice balls so easy to make.

I have of course used jars, pots and pouches too, mainly to give monkey plenty of variety without spending my life in the kitchen, and there’s only so much space in our freezer! There is no denying that they are also really handy, especially when we go out somewhere , but it’s been nice to know that I have made some of his food, and honestly we love some of the recipes that much that we have adapted them in to adult meals for hubby and I so that sometimes we can all eat the same food together, which is nice.

Our favourite recipe of all time though is for her oaty cookies. They are so good we have even adapted them to an adult version, and everybody who has tried them just absolutely loves them! They are very quick and easy to make, although as with anything baking related with me, it hasn’t always been plain sailing. There have been a few dodgy batches along the way, some where we have cooked them for a couple of minutes too long, or one where I forgot about 3 of the ingredients! They still tasted pretty nice each time though so I don’t think you can go too far wrong with them.

Here is the recipe, almost to the letter of Annabel Karmel’s, although we have adapted things ever so slightly 🙂

75g flour (the recipe is for wholemeal flour, but we have used plain flour too and they are delicious both ways)
55g rolled oats
¼ teaspoon of bicarbonate soda
85g of unsalted butter (soft)
75g caster sugar
1 tbsp maple syrup (15ml)
1 tsp vanilla extract (5ml)
55g chopped dried apricots
Some chopped white chocolate (optional)

Preheat oven to 180C if conventional, (160C for fan oven)

All ingredients (except chocolate) into food processor and whizz until well mixed into a dough – all apricot bits should be tiny and the mix is the same consistency throughout, we’ve found that it should almost be shiny for the perfect cookies.

When making them for monkey I just leave them as they are but if you want to make them for grown ups or older kids with chocolate, now is the time to finely chop some chocolate (we like white chocolate) and stir it in.

Line baking trays with greaseproof paper (use little bit of marge on underside to stick it down if necessary)

For baby sized cookies we roll them into teaspoon sized balls, and for adult sized cookies, roughly tablespoon sized balls. Place on the baking trays – they will spread quite a bit so space them out on the baking tray. With adult ones you can see we use two big trays to make about 12/13 cookies.

adult biscuits

For baby sized biscuits, cook for about 9-10 mins, or for bigger cookies, cook for 12 mins until starting to turn golden at the edges. They can overcook very quickly, and they will still be tasty but less squidgy in the middle.

adult biscuits fresh from the oven

Leave to cool on the baking tray for a few mins then transfer onto a wire cooling rack.

baby biscuits cooling

Store in an airtight container.

We often make a double batch with about 16 baby biscuits for Monkey and 12 adult sized cookies. The apricots went in the food processor as a mistake the first time we made them, and though you can’t really tell that they are there, the cookies were so good that we haven’t dared make them without them in. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” as they say!

Happy baking!

Making a Bakewell tart for Mothers’ Day – don’t forget the jam!

Posted by Caroline Elliott

When I conjure up an image in my head of a stay at home mum, they can almost always bake (maybe they don’t all bake in real life but this is how I imagine them). So in my quest to be a good stay at home mum I would like to be a better baker. As mentioned in my intro I am not the best baker in the world, I have improved since my first attempt but I rely on my husband’s help a lot as he is much more experience than me. I can’t remember why but for some reason a couple of weeks ago I decided I wanted to make a Bakewell tart, something I have never attempted before. We had invited my mum and brother round for a roast dinner on Mother’s day so decided this would be the perfect occasion to try and make one.

My mum makes a lovely Bakewell tart, so I thought I’d ask her for the recipe, seemed a good idea, but, well it turns out she has lost her recipe book with the Bakewell tart recipe in (I only found this out afterwards) so I got a very vague description, that you use the recipe for a Victoria sponge but halve the flour and use the rest of ground almonds. Ummmm how do you make a Victoria sponge? 4444 apparently. I’m sure that means a lot to some people but to me it was like telling me in Russian. According to mum this is 4oz caster sugar, 4oz butter, 4 eggs and 4oz self-raising flour – which for a bakewell tart you halve and then use 2oz ground almonds.

This sounds simple but I am a bit of a planner and wanted more detail, so I turned to my trusty friend Google to find a recipe that backed mum up (none of our cookbooks at home seem to have a bakewell tart recipe in randomly). But none did, although I did find an article on Waitrose that said there doesn’t seem to be much consensus on what the correct ingredients are. Great! Helpful! I relooked through our cookbooks and a Mary Berry one did have one for Bakewell slices, which did seem to slightly correspond to mum’s version of the recipe, with the addition of baking powder so I though ah well let’s just give it a go!

It is worth mentioning at this point that Monkey is poorly (yes, again!) with a terrible tummy bug, won’t go into too many details but he really hasn’t been well so the routine has been a bit shot and both Daddy and I have been covered in output from one end or the other. Yesterday (Saturday) we popped to my lovely in-laws for lunch to see Granny for mothers’ day, but well I ended up eating lunch in Granny’s dressing gown and socks as my clothes were a bit vomit covered.

So it was that Saturday afternoon with Monkey asleep earlier than usual, hubby and I decided to have a bash at the Bakewell tart. I measured the ingredients and we mixed it up, though it definitely seemed a bit sloppy. Hubby then asked “Is there no sugar in this recipe” my reply, “err yes, oops”. Yep great start, I had forgotten to add sugar to the recipe. I blame the fact that my mind was on the monkey at the time. Seemed a bit thicker but still quite gloopy but what do I know, maybe it is meant to look like that?

I very nearly handed over the reins to hubby at this point to roll the pastry (No, we didn’t make our own, Hubby’s business partner went on a pastry course a while ago and the master chefs there advised that for all the effort it takes to make good pastry, it won’t be better than bought, so just buy it. Good enough for me!) mainly because I have had disastrous attempts at rolling icing and pastry in the past and it has ended up stuck to the worktop etc. But no, this is my tart, I am going to do it. To avoid previous mistakes I put quite a bit of flour on the worktop, ok, well, loads, which hubby found very amusing, but voila the pastry came out alright 🙂

We added the mixture to the pastry, very proud of ourselves, but d’oh! We didn’t put the jam in. What kind of Bakewell tart is it without Jam??? A rubbish one. We discussed putting the jam on top of the sponge, before we ice it, but that feels wrong. I suggested tipping out the mixture so we can put the jam where it should be and my husband found this hilarious, what a silly idea. Then all of a sudden he was on board. He had come up with a plan, it’s all about the tool, we need a flexible tool. So with a flexible plastic spatula we tipped/gently scraped out the mixture. We then put the jam in and the mixture back on top. What a palaver!

It seemed to cook ok (thanks to mum’s vague directions we guestimated temperature and cooking time, not recommended when baking!) and looked pretty good when it came out of the oven. By this point monkey was awake so daddy fed him while I iced it. In hindsight I think the icing was a bit too runny as it drifted off to the sides, but that’s all appearance right? It needs the taste test but that had to wait until today.

We had a terrible night with our poorly monkey, have been up since about 4/430 with a fever and horribleness and spoke to the GP out of hours at one point but thankfully by about 7am he managed a little bit of food and started to feel much better. Phew! Had a lovely roast lunch planned, with Cider braised ham (one of our faves) with my mum and older brother coming round. We briefly debated calling it off but decided what’s the point in that? These things happen and we are knackered but more people means more hands to help entertain the little one so while he was down for a very early nap we cracked on with the days plans.

To cut a long story short we had a lovely yummy Mothers’ Day lunch and the Bakewell tart, while it wouldn’t win any beauty contests, did taste pretty darn lovely 🙂 I may be being hard on myself but I thought it tasted a bit soggy and maybe too spongy so maybe 4 large eggs was too many? Anyway everyone else was full of praise (hopefully not just being polite!) and one of brother in laws came round later in the afternoon to help entertain the monkey (mummy & daddy are definitely flagging now!) and it definitely got his seal of approval.

Definitely room for improvement but not bad for a first try!

Becoming a Stay at Home Mum

Can I really do this?

Food

John Torode’s chicken pie – and why I will never be masterchef!

Easter Nests fun and crochet chicks

Yummy baby biscuits and weaning in general

Making a Bakewell tart for Mothers’ Day – don’t forget the jam!