Flash dinner on the go

Have you ever found yourself having to cook dinner for guests at the end of a long day? If you have, you know how much of a pain it can be to faff around in the kitchen when all you really want to do is mong on the sofa (preferably with a nice glass of wine, but we don't even want to go there, do we?)...

So here's my guilt-free solution to dealing with dinner for four. It's a versatile dish of pot-roast chicken and veg that's based on a traditional French recipe. You can use a whole range of vegetables – I used squash, peppers and leeks, but you could also use celery, courgettes or onions (and that's just off the top of my head – I suggest you experiment for yourself if you like the basic dish). Don't worry about the quantity of garlic; you can leave it out if you want, but it adds a wonderful mellow perfume to the dish and doesn't dominate the flavours at all.

Pot-roast chicken with vegetables for four

4 chicken thighs and 4 chicken legs, skin removed
a drizzle of olive oil
1 butternut squash, deseeded and cut into large chunks
3 peppers (of whatever colour), deseeded and cut into large chunks
2 leeks, cleaned and cut into large chunks
1 head of garlic, separated into cloves
300ml chicken stock
150ml dry white wine
a couple of sprigs of thyme, stalks removed
2 bay leaves
a good handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Brown the chicken, a few pieces at a time, in the hot oil in a heavy oven-proof casserole.

Pile the chicken back into the casserole dish, along with the veg, the garlic, the stock, the wine and the thyme and bay leaves. Season well.

Put the lid on the casserole (it must fit fairly tightly) and place the casserole in the oven.

Cook for about an hour (you can check after 45 minutes).

Serve (with mashed potatoes for those who can eat them – you should leave well alone, of course) and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Things get steamy

A few months ago, I was walking past my local cookshop and, in the window, I saw a marvellous, shiny piece of kit that I just had to have... It was a big stainless-steel wok, with a huge steamer and a see-through lid. The reason it caught my eye was that I'd recently tried to cook a dish that had worked perfectly well in the past when I'd been cooking for one, before Mark and I moved in together, but which had proved logistically impossible as dinner for two. The dish in question was steamed chicken with mushrooms. A small plate for one person fitted neatly into my bamboo steamer, but when I tried to make enough for both of us the bamboo steamer just wasn't up to the job. So the big wok, with its vast steamer, was just what I needed.

So far, I'd just used it as a wok, but the other night I decided to cook the dish that had inspired the purchase. Fate was clearly working against me. I wanted to use shitake mushrooms, because I like their meaty texture and full flavour, but there weren't any in the shops, so I had to use other mushrooms instead. No matter. The finished meal was pretty tasty anyway, in a soothing kind of way.

Steamed chicken and mushrooms for two

2 skinned chicken breasts, cut into thin slices
1 punnet mushrooms, preferably shitake, but oyster mushrooms or other 'exotic' Asian mushrooms will do, sliced
1 can straw mushrooms, drained (if you can't find straw mushrooms, either in your local supermarket or in an Asian supermarket, you can use another punnet of mushrooms – I'd suggest using a different type from the first punnet, just to add texture and flavour)
1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and sliced
a thumb of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks
100mls chicken stock
1-2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 bunch fresh coriander, chopped

Place the chicken, mushrooms, spring onions and ginger in a shallow heatproof dish, then mix everything together.

Pour the liquids into the dish and give it all another stir.

Meanwhile, get some water boiling in the bottom bit of your steamer, then reduce heat so that the water is boiling steadily but not too fiercely.

Place the dish with the chicken and mushrooms in the top part of the steamer and place it all on the steamer base. Cover with a lid.

Steaming is a remarkably quick, efficient way of cooking, so depending on how much steam there is, the thickness of your heatproof dish and a number of other variables, start checking on the dish about 10 minutes after you've put it on to steam. It's done when the chicken is cooked through, which shouldn't take more than quarter of an hour.

Sprinkle with coriander and serve with a small helping of brown rice or stir-fried egg noodles.

Steaming cooks

Out for a duck

I love duck: I love Peking duck, with its crisp skin and melting flesh; I love the pink meat of a medium-rare magret de canard, especially when it's served with a little cake of creamy Dauphinoise potatoes and I love the way my mum cooks roast duck, with its skin rubbed in a mixture of honey and soy sauce. I even love my low-fat duck (left), which I marinated in a dry spice rub for a few hours before cooking it on a scorching-hot griddle and serving it with a couscous-based salad.



Spice-rubbed duck for two

2 duck breasts
2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
a small piece of ginger, peeled and grated

Remove the skin from the duck breasts (sorry about this – yes, I know the skin crisps up wonderfully and tastes delicious, but it's also pretty fatty) and score the flesh several times, both on the top and bottom of each breast.

Mix the spices together and smear all over the meat. Leave to marinate for anywhere between two hours and most of the day.

Smear the griddle with the barest minimum of olive oil and heat until it's smoking, then cook the duck breasts until they're done as you like them. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper as you cook them. Serve with the salad, below.

Couscous salad for two

1/2 small butternut squash, cut into chunks
olive oil
a large double handful of couscous (I used barley couscous but wheat couscous is just fine)
1/2 a red onion, sliced thinly
lots of chopped fresh coriander and mint
up to one small glass of orange juice
juice of a lime

Heat the oven to 200ºC, then roast the squash with a drizzle of olive oil until its cooked through and has caramelised a bit round the edges. The time this will take rather depends on how big your chunks are, but start looking in the oven at around 25 minutes. Place in a bowl and allow to cool.

Follow the instructions on the couscous packet about cooking – this usually involves placing the dry grains in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them, covering with a lid, and allowing the couscous to plump up. Season thoroughly with salt and freshly ground black pepper as couscous can be very bland, and allow to cool.

When both the couscous and the squash are at room temperature, mix in the red onion and the herbs.

Make a simple dressing with a little bit of olive oil, the orange juice and the lime juice and pour over the couscous. Mix thoroughly and serve.

Variation on a theme

Ras-el-Hanout, a Moroccan spice mixture, has been my discovery of the summer. I started using it in a marinade for quail, but I've quickly become addicted to its finger-lickingly exotic blend of rose petals, cumin, chilli and who knows what else (defining it isn't helped by the fact that everyone's Ras blend is different from everyone else's).

Anyway, just to ring the changes, I mixed some Ras with another Middle Eastern spice, sumac, which has a lemony kind of twang to it, and used a smidgen of olive oil to work it into a paste, along with a bit of squashed garlic and an extra teaspoonful of cumin.

I skinned some chicken quarters and made some deep slashes into the meat, then rubbed the spice paste all over the chicken. I did this late morning, so that by the time I cooked the meat that evening the spices had had a chance to really flavour it.

I served it with a salad of boiled beetroot, cut into chunks. I then stirred in some 0% fat Greek yoghurt, a squeeze of lemon juice, some thinly sliced red onion and a good handful of chopped dill.

The other salad is something I'm working on but haven't fine-tuned enough to post a recipe on this blog, so watch this space...

Chicken with an Australian accent

It often feels like chicken dinner is what happens when you're stuck for inspiration while trawling the supermarket aisles, but the very fact that chicken tends to be a bit bland also makes it a great blank canvas upon which you can experiment with all kinds of flavours.

Last night's dinner (left) was inspired by a meal at what used to be one of my favourite restaurants when I lived in Sydney, the Bayswater Brasserie, as well as a jar of chilli jam from the South Devon Chilli Farm that Mark and I bought while we were getting rained on in Devon the other weekend. The other inspiration was the fact that I didn't have time to go out to the shops, so dinner was cobbled together from bits and pieces I had in the store cupboard and fridge.

For all that it was a scrape-together job, it tasted so good that I had to stop myself from licking the plate clean (a really disgusting habit you can only indulge in when in the presence of those who love you – and, more to the point, can't get rid of you when you do something totally gross).

Chicken with chilli jam for two

2 chicken hindquarters (legs and thighs) or 4 chicken thighs
100g bulghur wheat
a pinch of saffron
1 onion, cut in half and sliced into thin rings
olive oil
1/2 jar of piquillo peppers, cut into thick strips (if you can't find these, you can make do with a couple of grilled red peppers, but there's a wonderful sweetness to the piquillo variety)
a handful of pine nuts
a bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
50mls chicken stock (optional, but it adds something to the finished dish)
2 dstsp chilli jam
2 tsp chipotle chillies in adobo (from the Cool Chile Company)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Place the chicken in a roasting dish and season liberally. Roast for about 40 minutes, or until done.

Meanwhile, place the bulghur wheat in a saucepan with about half a litre of salted water and the saffron. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until cooked, about 15 minutes.

Fry the onion slowly in the merest smear of olive oil until soft and translucent. Put to one side.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan and remove from the heat when they start to turn golden (they carry on cooking for a while once you've taken them off the heat, so be careful not to overdo them). Put to one side.

Heat the stock through.

Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the oven and allow it to rest while you pull everything else together.

Stir the onions, peppers, pine nuts and coriander through the bulghur wheat. Put a pile on each plate (as ever, Mark got the large helping – you should go easy on it too, you need it for bulk but you don't want to overdo it).

Add the chicken and spoon over the warm stock. Put a dollop of chilli jam and another of chipotle in adobo on the side of the plate and enjoy.

Turning Japanese

Mark and I were pretty tired the other night, so I wanted to cook something quick and uncomplicated. I had a pouch of white miso that had been sitting on the top shelf of the fridge for a while, so I took that as my starting point for a Japanese-inspired meal.

We slashed a couple of chicken breasts and marinaded them in a mixture of soy sauce and sherry (I'd have used sake if I'd had any to hand, but all I found was a bottle of Manzanilla sherry – for cooking purposes, Manzanilla or Fino make pretty good substitutes for sake. For what it's worth, if you're not dieting, a glass of dry sherry usually makes a good match for many Chinese and Japanese dishes). I added a dash of sesame oil, a couple of pieces of star anise and some grated ginger and left the chicken in the marinade for a couple of hours before I cooked it under the grill. I also stir-fried some mustard greens with some julienned ginger. But, as far as I was concerned, the centre of the meal was the miso-grilled aubergine – I just love aubergine for its depth of flavour and its versatility. It's a much under-appreciated vegetable and if it's not on your shopping list I urge you to buy (and try) some soon – you'll soon be as hooked on these beautiful, sleek purple vegetables as I am.

Aubergines and miso for two

2 small- to medium-sized aubergines
3 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp dry sherry or sake
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp sesame seeds

Heat the oven to 200ºC. Cut the aubergines in half lengthwise, then score the flesh in a criss-cross pattern. Push a metal skewer through each aubergine half (to help conduct the heat through the vegetable) and place in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until cooked through.

Meanwhile, stir the miso paste, the sherry and the sugar together in a small saucepan over a low heat until silky smooth and put aside.

Toast the sesame seeds in a small frying pan until golden and put aside.

Pre-heat the grill.

Once the aubergines are cooked through, remove them from the oven and brush with the fleshy side with the miso mixture. Place under the grill and cook until brown. Sprinkle the aubergines with the toasted sesame seeds and serve.

Outdoor eating (part one)

I have to admit, I love a barbie. I'm a real sucker for eating outdoors (and so's Mark), so the minute the sun comes out, so does the Weber.

I often think dieting is easier when the weather's hot, too. For starters, I find I don't get terribly hungry once the thermometer hits the mid-20s C, but even when I am feeling peckish, simply cooked meat or fish and loads of veg and fruit tends to be the order of the day. All very healthy.

One of the first barbecues we had this year involved marinating some chicken in a spicy semi-liquid rub, then serving it up with some roast veg and a bean and tomato salad. Recipes below.

Marinade for spicy chicken:

20ml olive oil
1 tbsp chipotle in adobo (from www.coolchile.co.uk)
1 tsp ground cumin
juice from 1/2 lime
1 clove garlic, mashed
salt

Mix all the marinade ingredients together.

Skin two portions of chicken (I think a small leg and thigh is the best option rather than breast), then score the flesh almost through to the bone.

Rub the marinade into the chicken and leave for at least a couple of hours (and up to a whole day).

You can barbecue or grill the chicken. I served ours with a roast tomato, garlic and green bean salad; roast butternut squash and barbecued sweetcorn (the last is an indulgence, I admit).


Roast tomato, garlic and green bean salad:

250g cherry tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, skins left on
1 tbsp olive oil
150-200g green beans, topped and tailed
50g pine nuts
a small amount of dressing made from extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar and a dollop of Dijon mustard, plus salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 100C, then place the tomatoes and garlic in a roasting dish and sprinkle with olive oil.

Roast gently for up to four hours, by which time the tomatoes should have shrivelled and blackened a bit, and their taste will have intensified. The garlic should be soft and creamy. Allow to cool.

In the interim, blanch the beans and refresh them under cold water. Leave to one side until cooled.

Toast the pine nuts in a frying pan. Watch them carefully as they go from raw to burned very quickly.

Place the tomatoes, pine nuts and beans in a salad bowl. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and toss them into the veg. Dress with a small amount of dressing.

Jen, Coz, Leo and some wonderful wines

Mark and I spent Sunday with our friends Coz and Jen, and their new baby, Leo. We hadn't met Leo before – he was born less than a month ago – so I took a bottle of Champagne with us to celebrate.

It was 'just' basic Bolly – one of my favourite of the big brand non-vintage Champagnes. I like its richness – I've never been a big fan of over-priced battery acid, which (to my mind) some Champagnes seem to taste like. I'd decided in advance to allow myself to have a glass (maybe even a glass and a half) of wine. After all, we were celebrating and even though I'm on a diet, there are certain occasions (like celebrating the birth of a baby) when it would just be wrong to stick to the rules too closely (the knack lies in recognising these occasions while not making excuses to indulge too often on some spurious pretext).

We arrived, wielding our bottle of Champagne, and I'd no sooner handed it over than Coz (who is incredibly generous with his wines) said: 'That'll keep – I was planning on opening a bottle I brought back from Champagne last year,' and popped the cork on a truly delicious bottle of Pierre Gimmonet Oenophile vintage fizz. Gimmonet, for anyone who hasn't heard of him, is a talented producer who makes his own wines in the Champagne region rather than selling his grapes to a big company like Moet, Bollinger or Mumm (which is what most growers do). These 'growers' Champagnes' are increasingly trendy in hard-core wine circles, and I think they're often really good wines sold at (relatively) reasonable prices.

So I sipped delicately at my half flute of Gimmonet, then had a mouthful or two of the Bolly. But I'd been quite cunning. Knowing how persuasive Coz can be when he starts opening interesting bottles of wine (and how I have a professional weakness for tasting them), I'd set myself up as the designated driver for our return journey. This certainly curbed my enthusiasm, and much as I'd have loved to hoe into the Champagnes (or any of the other wines that followed), I knew I couldn't – and so did everyone else.

I'd told Coz and Jen that I was going to cook them lunch – they hadn't had the time or energy to cook properly since Leo was born – and I'd come prepared. Or rather, my quails had been prepared, and all I needed to do was to shove them in the oven. They'd been marinating since the previous evening in a mixture of Ras el Hanout (a blend of Moroccan spices that includes cumin, coriander, cinnamon and rose petals) and some olive oil. I'd stirred about three tablespoons of spice into a couple of tablespoons of oil, then rubbed all that yummy spiciness into eight quail, crammed them into a tupperware container and put them in the fridge overnight. When I got to Coz and Jen's, I put them in a pre-heated oven at about 200C for around 40 minutes, then served them with a simple salad enhanced with a few chopped walnuts.

I happened to mention to Coz that I was thinking of using the recipe for a tasting I'm planning to do at the end of the month: an investigation into which kinds of dishes work best with German Riesling. Inevitably, Coz insisted on opening a bottle of Josmeyer's Les Pierrets Riesling from the 2001 vintage – a wine he'd bought on a trip we all took to Alsace two or three years ago. It was lovely with the quail – but I'm still interested to see how a slightly lighter, slightly sweeter German Riesling will work with the dish.

Dessert was even simpler than the main course: a salad of peeled, sliced blood oranges with some chopped dates, all sprinkled with a teaspoon of rosewater (go easy on the stuff – it's very fragrant). Coz opened another bottle to go with this, a Beaume de Venise from a co-operative in the Rhône. It was just right with the pudding: light, fresh and not too sweet.

Then, to round things off, he brought out another bottle of wine, a Schloss Gobelsberg Gruner Veltliner – just because we happened to be talking about Austria. If you've never tasted Gruner Veltliner before, I urge you to track down a bottle of this marvellous grape – it's one of the most food-friendly white wines in the world, and the hallmark grape of the Austrian vineyards, in the same way that Malbec has come to be associated with Argentina or Shiraz with South Australia.

The Schloss Gobelsberg wine was outstanding – but, as I did with the Riesling and the dessert wine, I did no more than sip at it to taste it. The same can't be said for Mark, who snored loudly all the way home...