Not So Slack

Home-style Chicken and Vegetable Pie
Adapted from a recipe in the Ugly Binder

White Sauce
30g butter
1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard
2 tablespoons flour
300 ml milk
½ cup grated cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Filling
1 tablespoon oil
1 onion, finely chopped
3 rashers bacon, chopped
500g chicken breasts, cubed
200g pumpkin, cubed
1 cup frozen peas and corn
1 zucchini, sliced
150g broccoli, cut into florets
150g cauliflower, cut into florets
1 teaspoon fresh chopped thyme
2 sheets puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, lightly beaten
3 tablespoons sesame seeds

1. Preheat oven to 220˚C. For the white sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the mustard and flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until golden. Remove from the heat and gradually stir in the milk. Return to the heat and cook, stirring, until the sauce boils and thickens. Stir in the cheese and season with salt and pepper.
2. To make the filling, heat the oil in a large frying pan, Add the onion and bacon and cook for 5 minutes or until the onion is soft. Add the chicken and pumpkin, Cook for 10 minutes or until browned. Add the vegetables and thyme and cook for 5 minutes or until tender.
3. Combine the chicken mixture and the white sauce. Set aside to cool. Line the base of a lightly greased 23cm pie dish with a sheet of puff pastry, allowing the excess to hang over the sides. Brush the rim with lightly beaten egg. Spoon the cooled filling into the pastry and top with the other sheet of pastry. Seal the pastry using a lightly floured fork. Trim off any excess and cut a steam hole in the top.
4. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the pastry is crisp and golden.

Serves 6

I took chicken out of the freezer for yesterday's dinner then went with leftovers instead so needed to use the chicken breasts for tonight's meal. After my very slack attempts in the kitchen lately I purposely went looking for a chicken recipe that I hadn't made before that also had ingredients readily available in my fridge/pantry. I did pretty well, only had to ask Hubby to stop and pick up a zucchini for me. I did make a few changes to the original version of this recipe, mostly because of what I had, or rather did not have, in my fridge tonight. The end result was delicious. With a bit more seasoning (and maybe a splash of wine!) it would be a really lovely 'grown-up' dinner but as it stands, it was a very tasty and enjoyable family dinner. Offspring #2 scoffed the lot, and then tucked into some gorgeously juicy watermelon. I'm hoping this 'must eat everything in sight' will lead to a developmental spurt that includes walking! Meanwhile, Offspring #1 declared it "a bery nice dinner". I know, I really have to correct him when he mispronounces his v's as b's but it is so darn cute!

Mmmm, Leftovers

Vegetable Patties (with a little bit of diced roast lamb!)

No recipe today, well not a real recipe anyway! I cooked lots of extra vegies with last nights roast so that we could have vegetable patties for dinner tonight. I used some of the leftover lamb in there too (a way of tricking my non-meat loving Offspring 1 into eating some meat). Basically I mashed up all the leftovers, chucked in some diced lamb, swirled a fork through to mix it all up and then rolled heaped tablespoons of mix in breadcrumbs before cooking it over a medium heat in a fry-pan. YUM! That, along with the leftover Cauliflower/Brocolli Cheese, made a delicious, nutritious and easy dinner. Everyone enjoyed it and the ice-cream cone for dessert finished it off nicely. Aaaahhh, I do enjoy being slack on the odd occasion.

Post Number 50!

Wow! I know lots of other bloggers have been going for so much longer than I have but I'm pretty chuffed to have hit my 50th post.

We had a yummy lamb roast, with all the extras, for dinner tonight. I was going to take a pic, just for fun, but the temptation to dig in was too great. I made an Apple Sponge Pudding for dessert but it didn't quite work out so I'm planning to do a bit of tweaking and see if I can't make it as good as it looked in the recipe book. When I read the recipe it seemed to have an awful lot of "wet" ingedients and a very small amount of flour and my suspicions proved to be correct upon cooking. The sponge topping just wouldn't cook/set and I ended up having to cook it for an hour to get it to an edible point. So less butter, a bit more flour and we should end up with something light, fluffy and apple-ey. I can almost convince myself it's good for me because it has fruit!

Welcome, baby Samuel

My friend, Maria, had a baby boy on Thursday night and I got to see him this morning. He is so tiny and so very lovely to cuddle.

Baby Samuel, 2 days old

Maria's husband has been travelling lots with work in the past few weeks and I was the back-up labour partner if he was too far away to get back in time. If he's not here he is generally in a town 6 hours away and her first labour was three weeks early and only lasted 3 hours so she was a little concerned. Luckily her hubby arrived home Wednesday night, she went into labour Thursday morning and baby Samuel arrived Thursday night. The kid's already got his timing organised!

In updates from Red Dirt Central:

Still hot, just getting hotter! No rain yet, although it has looked promising a couple of times this week.

Offspring #1 is doing well with the war on thumb-sucking. His thumb does still creep in from time to time but that taste reminds him and he comes rushing into the kitchen begging for a drink to wash the yukkiness away.

Offspring #2 has more teeth. Last week she got 3 teeth over 4 days and yesterday another one popped through. That makes 4 teeth in 10 days and two of them were molars - OUCH!! She's also had a cold the past few days so has been a right little monster! Thursday night I got 3 hours sleep - but not all at once! Can you say, "Mummy's a wreck"? Hubby didn't do much better then he had meetings all day, poor thing. He came home absolutely destroyed.

Have booked the dog into the kennel for our trip to Perth over Christmas (WOOOHOOOO!!! , yeah I'm kinda excited) Have also bought car DVD players to keep the kids amused for at least some of the very long drive. I wasn't totally for this but after speaking to a few of the other mums up here I changed my mind, somewhat, and gave Hubby the go-ahead. Also got #1 a cheap version of the old 'stable table' so he has something to lean on and he can play cars, draw, etc, a little more easily while travelling.

Now I'm off to watch a DVD with hubby, and I might just have to eat some popcorn and pretend it's a date!

A Vegetable Delight

Vegetable quiche

from Family Circle's Delicious Quiches and Flans, © 1993

Preparation time: 40 minutes + 20 minutes refrigeration
Total Cooking time: 40 minutes
Serves 4-6

I used pre-made sheets of shortcrust pastry for the base of the quiche. Last time I made it I used regular sized pastry sheets and needed 1½ sheets to cover the dish I was using but yesterday I found jumbo sized sheets and they fitted perfectly.

Filling
100g broccoli, cut into small florets I added another 100g of cauliflower too
2 small zucchini, cut into 2cm slices
150g pumpkin, cut into 2cm cubes
2 teaspoons oil
1 small red capsicum (red bell pepper) cut into 2cm squares
1 medium onion chopped
50g butter
3 tablespoons plain flour
1 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1 cup finely grated cheddar cheese
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
130g can corn kernels

Preheat oven to 180˚C / 350˚F.Grease a 20cm fluted flan tin with melted butter or oil then line base and sides with pastry. Trim to fit. Cut a sheet of greaseproof paper large enough to cover pastry lined dish. Cover the pastry with the paper and spread a layer of dried beans or rice evenly over the paper. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and discard paper and beans. Return to oven for 10 minutes or until lightly golden.

To make filling:
Steam or microwave broccoli, zucchini and pumpkin (and cauliflower) until just tender. Drain. Heat oil in a heavy-based frying pan and cook capsicum (red bell pepper) and onion over a medium heat until soft. Set aside. Heat butter in a small pan then add flour and stir over a low heat until flour mixture is just golden. Add milk gradually to the pan, stirring until mixture is smooth. Stir constantly over medium heat until mixture boils and thickens. Boil 1 minute. Remove from heat. Beat in egg yolks until mixture is smooth, stir in cheddar cheese.

Place the cooked vegetables in a large bowl. Drain corn and add to vegetables along with pepper is required. Pour hot sauce over and stir to combine. Pour vegetable mixture into pastry shell and bake for 20 minutes, until top is golden. Serve hot.

I have made this before and was pleased with how it turned out. Hubby had put in a request for me to cook it again to I thought I'd see if it turned out as well second time round. It did!

I made two of these last night, one for the pregnant couple from Hubby's work and the other for us. As it turned out we went to a work colleagues of Hubby for dinner so I took it along as our contribution and it was warmly welcomed and heartily enjoyed. It's always nice to have something you cook so appreciated.