CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD

One of the bars in our village changed hands last winter and is now a very popular bistro style restaurant called Brody's, serving excellent pizzas, lasagne, burgers and salads.  My absolute favourite salad is their chicken Caesar salad.  After a few of those I wondered why I never make it at home and thought it was time I did.  My version is similar to the one they serve.

The chicken ready for poaching.

I now make it quite often using leftover roast chicken or a poached chicken breast, although you can of course buy packs of cooked chicken breast which do the job very well.  You can also cook the chicken breast in an air fryer, adding a few spices if you like, which takes about ten minutes at 180°.  

One poached chicken breast makes plenty of salad for the two of us or would make a starter for four.  I doubt this Caesar salad would pass muster with the authentic salad police but it's a formula we enjoy.  You can obviously omit the ingredients you don't fancy or add other things you like, such as a bit of chopped cucumber.  Some recipes suggest adding bits of crispy bacon which sounds very tasty but I haven't strayed that far yet!

You can also poach the chicken from frozen which is very handy.  I frequently freeze chicken breasts individually, bagging them separately from a large pack from the supermarket, to thaw out one at a time for future use but they work perfectly well from frozen here, just taking a few more minutes to cook in the poaching liquid.

The salad ready for the dressing.

The thing that makes it a Caesar salad as opposed to just chicken salad is the dressing.  I have in the past used home made Caesar dressing based on this recipe here which contains no anchovies.  It came in very handy for a guest who was allergic to most kinds of fish.  Mostly though I use shop bought Caesar salad dressing and have found Heinz readily available in France and very good.  Some others are a bit too thin and not creamy enough.

For the croutons I break up into chunks the dried slices of baguette sold in a local supermarket.  Such things are readily available here for people to serve as apéros with patés or numerous other spreads.  You could make your own or buy packets of cubed croutons (or leave them out).

Since first writing this post I have attempted to make my own croutons by simply drying out some thin slices of yesterday's baguette on a baking tray in the oven part of our wood burner.  It seemed to work!  The temperature was about 200°C and they were in for about ten minutes, turning them over once, until a nice golden brown and crisp.

One thing that is worth the effort is making sure you have the right kind of lettuce, such as iceberg or romaine.  It needs to be crispy and somehow it doesn't work with the floppy kind!  

Ingredients

For the poached chicken

1 skinless chicken breast

1 medium carrot, peeled 

1 stick of celery, washed

1 fat clove of garlic, peeled 

a few stalks of fresh parsley or a pinch of dried parsley

For the Caesar dressing 

2 tblsp mayonnaise

a squeeze of lemon juice or  ½ tblsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp mild mustard such as Dijon

a splash of Worcestershire sauce

1 small clove of garlic, grated

1 tbslp grated parmesan (shop bought ready grated is fine)

For the salad

a chunk of crispy lettuce, washed and shredded (not too finely)

a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

a few stoned black olives, halved

½ a red onion, peeled and finely chopped (or use a spring onion)

¼ of a red pepper, de-seeded and finely chopped 

a handful of crisp croutons 

1-2 tblsp grated parmesan

Method 

To poach the chicken breast, roughly chop the carrot and celery and put them with all the other poaching ingredients into a medium saucepan.  Add enough water to cover the meat, season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer immediately and cook for 15 minutes until the chicken is tender and cooked through.

Lift the chicken out of the liquid and set aside to cool.  You can discard the liquid and veg or use them to make homemade soup.  When the chicken is cold cut into chunks.

For the Caesar dressing, put all the ingredients into a small bowl and mix together, adding extra ingredients to taste.

To assemble the salad put everything into a large bowl, add the chicken and enough dressing to just coat the salad - don't drown it.  Mix thoroughly.

Serve with crusty bread or, if feeling indulgent, a bowl of chips.

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as a starter.

A BAKER'S DOZEN thirteen of my favourite recipes of 2024

First up is COCK-A-LEEKIE SOUP

This was the starter at our Burns Night Supper last year.  It was really good so when I was asked to stand in for someone who was unable to make their soup for the "fête de la soupe" event in the village the following month I gladly offered to make it again.  Little did I know that not only would I have to make at least six litres of it, that’s two huge stock pots full, but also I would have to stand at a bench at the front of the hall, alongside all the other soup chefs, to serve it all evening.  To add insult to injury I also had to wear a chef's hat which said "cock-a-leekie" on the front of it.  This amused everyone, especially the French, and I had a lot of explaining to do, but the soup was very popular!

After that I vowed I would make sure I knew exactly what I was letting myself in for before volunteering for anything else!

Number two is PARSNIP, DATE AND CLEMENTINE CAKE

This traybake raised a few eyebrows with the French members of our walking group but it all got eaten!

Number three is the spectacularly good CARAMEL BANANA CAKE

I love a banana cake and this was simply wonderful.

Number four is NOUGAT DE TOURS

A delicious tart based on a recipe local to our region of France.  I made it several times last year.

Number five is SMOKED HADDOCK GRATINS

Tasty little starters that are incredibly simple to make and can be prepared ahead for a dinner party.

Number six is SAUSAGE PATTIES

A very tasty way to use up a bit of leftover sausagemeat and so good it was worth buying extra to make them again!

Number seven is GIFFLAR ROLL PUDDING

A delicious way to prove that you can make a version of bread and butter pudding out of virtually any baked bread!

Number eight is BROCCOLI, CAULIFLOWER AND SPRING ONION SOUP

I made a lot of soup last year and this was one of the best.  Mostly I just use up whatever veg need using up.  Sometimes they turn out better than others, but this one was lovely.

Number nine is SALMON, PEA AND POTATO QUICHE

Another "waste not, want not" recipe using one leftover salmon fillet but worth getting the ingredients to make it again.

Number ten is a revisited COFFEE AND WALNUT CAKE

You can’t beat a good coffee and walnut cake and this is my favourite recipe so far.

Number eleven is PARKIN

A very popular cake, dead easy to make using ordinary porridge oats.

Number twelve is TARTE AU CITRON

A classic dessert that everyone loves.

Last but not least, number thirteen, CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND CAKE

A gluten free and very rich cake that makes a delicious finale to a dinner party and a perfect end to my year in the kitchen on both sides of the English Channel!

BANANA ON TOAST and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

At the start of this brand new year I feel that there is less "new year, new you, a healthy start" and more "comfort food" still around.  One can ponder why this is but personally, let’s just say that I have more or less given up watching the news and listen to my favourite music instead.

Recently I have not baked anything new to post about but have worked my way through old favourites.  I might pinch an idea from one of my favourite blogs, Lavender and Lovage, and do a little post about my own favourite recipes of 2024.

My mum was fond of a banana sandwich.  She would walk home from work every lunchtime, a distance of about a quarter of a mile, for her "dinner".  When my grandmother was alive and we all lived in the same house, this would be something cooked by her.  After she died my mum would have some kind of snack.  I never asked why she preferred to do this rather than eat in the works canteen but suspect that she liked a bit of her own space away from the chatter and clatter of her workmates.  Also, probably, to save a few shillings a week.  My dad went to work with home made sandwiches and a bun every day and she would have a snack and a bun at home.  Except that when she was "on a diet" she would resist the bun!

Her favourite snacks included cheese (cheddar or cheshire) and Jacob's cream crackers, toast and jam, a lettuce and tomato or potted beef sandwich or, if there were still any left in the fruit bowl, a banana sandwich.  This was usually made with white bread, "wonderloaf" type, buttered.  The banana would be sliced thickly onto the bottom slice and sprinkled with ordinary white sugar then the second slice squashed on top.  During the school holidays she would make the same for me.

I now prefer banana on toast, especially for breakfast, but think of my mum every time I take the first delicious bite! The ultimate comfort snack! 

Instructions 

Take a slice of your favourite bread, for me wholemeal or granary.

Toast it lightly and spread it thinly with your favourite spread, for me salted butter, but could be peanut butter, Nutella or even pineapple jam.

Take a banana of your preferred ripeness, for me ripe but not too soft.

Peel the banana and lay it on the toast in two halves.

Squash it onto the toast with the back of a fork and dust it lightly with ground cinnamon.

Eat and enjoy while the toast is still just warm.  

A SLIGHTLY BELATED HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

MERRY CHRISTMAS and the recipe round up for 2024.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Here's the recipe round up for 2024.

Cakes and bakes : 9

Soups : 4

Savouries : 12

Desserts : 4

With just four of us for Christmas lunch this year we decided to roast two small chickens.

That way we all get a leg each!

Also, plenty left over for Christmas dinner pie on Boxing Day!

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND ALL THE BEST FOR 2025!

 

CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND CAKE gluten free

I recently needed a gluten free dessert recipe and none of the ones I had used before seemed to be just right.  So I did a bit of internet research and stumbled across this recipe for a flourless chocolate cake.  It had all the usual ingredients you would expect but also mascarpone cheese and as it happened I had a tub of it in the fridge.  (A random purchase from when I thought "let's have tiramisu this weekend" but never got around to it.)

It was very easy to make but not so easy to get out of the tin!  The instructions suggest it can be served warm or cold and to leave in the tin to cool for 30-40 minutes.  I misinterpreted this and tried to remove it from the tin at this point when the cake was still slightly warm.  It nearly disintegrated but luckily I managed to stick it back together on the cake stand with just an ever so slightly wonky appearance!

 Lesson learned!  If I wanted to serve it warm as a dessert I would bake it in something that it can be served in at the table and slice it straight from the dish.  To get it onto a cake stand I would let it go completely cold before I tried to move it, which is clearly what I was supposed to do!!

It was however, delicious, very brownie-like and extremely rich, which is what you would expect with all that chocolate, butter and cream cheese in it!  I served it in small slices with a poached pear alongside (see recipe here).  It went down very well with our guests and I would definitely make it again. 

Other similar cakes I have written about before include the chocolate amaretti cake, the flourless chocolate torte,  chocolate and chestnut fondant and the gluten free black forest cake .  Take your pick, they are all worth the effort (but not all of them are gluten free, check the recipe).

Update…….

I also noticed that Nigella Lawson made a very similar cake which contains amaretto during the recent repeat of her series "At my Table".  Yum!! The recipe is available online on the BBC Food website.  I shall try it myself and report back!  

Ingredients

200g dark cooking chocolate (It doesn't need to have a high percentage of cocoa.  I used SuperU own brand cooking chocolate.  Cadbury's Bournville would work well.)

200g butter

3 eggs

175g golden caster sugar

100g mascarpone cheese (or soft cheese)

¼ tsp vanilla extract

100g ground almonds

30g cocoa powder

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Line the base of a 20cm springform tin with baking paper.

Chop the chocolate and butter into cubes and melt using a bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Leave to cool slightly.

Put the eggs and sugar into a large bowl and, using an electric hand whisk or stand mixer, whisk for several minutes until thick and creamy.  Whisk in the mascarpone and vanilla until evenly combined.

Fold in the melted chocolate mixture until everything is an even colour.  Fold in the ground almonds then sift in the cocoa powder and a pinch of salt and fold in.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.  Place it on a baking tray and bake for 30-40 minutes.  The top will crack and the cake will puff up, but bake until there is not too much of a wobble in the middle.  (Mine took an extra five minutes.)  It will sink back down but the cracks will remain.

Remove from the oven an allow to cool.  Serve warm as a pudding or cold as a cake (see my notes in text).

You can, if you wish, dust it with more sifted cocoa powder before serving which would hide the cracks a bit.  I found it chocolatey enough without this and nobody seemed to mind the cracks!

Cuts into 10 slices at least as it is very rich.

BRAISED RED CABBAGE

It's years since I cooked a red cabbage.  Nick is not keen because he sometimes finds them too vinegary so I don't bother just for myself.   However, it was by now December, Christmas is not that far around the corner so I thought "why not" and decided to give it a go.  Then I started looking for recipes.

A lot of recipes had apple in the ingredients.  I didn't have any apples so carried on looking and found this recipe which didn't include apple and also looked very straightforward.  You simply put everything into a large saucepan and cook it on the hob for a very long time.  No need for sweating the onions separately.  

The recipe uses cider vinegar which  I didn't have so I used the sweetened vinegar called Melfor which I thought might do instead.  Also, in a nod to all those recipes that do include apple I added a couple of tablespoons of the apple compote that contains chunks of apple for the last few minutes of cooking.  (We have it on our cereals and porridge so get through a lot of it.)  Both added to the sweetness I think and it was very tasty.  Everyone had seconds including Nick so it will definitely be on the menu this Christmas.

Ingredients

1 small or ½ a large red cabbage (roughly 900g)

1 large red onion

70g soft light brown sugar

70m cider vinegar or similar

150ml red wine

1 large knob of butter

1 cinnamon stick

2 tblsp apple compote or apple sauce (optional)

Method

Trim the cabbage, remove the core and shred finely.

Peel and thinly slice the onion.

Put all of the ingredients (except for the apple compote) into a very large saucepan and season with salt and pepper.

Heat gently until simmering, stirring often.  Turn the heat right down, cover and simmer gently for 1 hour and 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick or burn on the bottom of the pan.  Remove the lid and simmer for another 30 minutes or until the cabbage is nice and tender.  

If using the apple, stir in just before serving and leave on the hob for a few minutes to make sure it's warmed through.  Remove the cinnamon stick before serving.  Serve hot.

This can be made one or two days before needed.  Keep in the fridge and reheat either on the hob or in the microwave until piping hot.

Serves 6-8, depending on how much you like red cabbage!

LEMON TART or tarte au citron

Having friends round for dinner in November is a different kettle of fish from earlier in the year.  There is definitely a need for something comforting and warming.  On the actual day the fog never lifted and the temperature outside did not reach double figures.  I was tempted to make a crumble for pudding but with a soup for starters and a casserole for mains settled on lemon tart instead, thinking it would be lighter.

I had made one before but instead of leafing through numerous cook books for the recipe I looked online.  I somehow ended up using this recipe for Classic Lemon Tart on Mary Berry's own website.  It comes from her Complete Cookbook.

The recipe uses nine eggs and six large lemons!  When I looked again I saw that I needed a 28cm tart tin with a loose bottom, which I don't have.  I used my 25cm tin and scaled down the ingredients accordingly.  I also used ready made sweet pastry to save time, draping it over the edge of the tin as per the instructions.  Somehow the side of the tart broke away from the overlap in a couple of places and shrank back a bit.  This meant that the tart couldn't be filled right to the top because it would have overflowed.  I ended up with filling left over so simply poured this into a small dish and baked it separately.  Something to enjoy later!

It was absolutely divine, very sharp and lemony, and would serve probably about twelve people as it's very rich and you really only need a very small slice!  It kept really well in the fridge and was still delicious several days later so I would definitely make it ahead next time.  This would give me time to make my own pastry as I suspect the ready made one I used was a bit too thin and that might be why it split at the edge.

Since then I have found other Mary Berry recipes for lemon tart with more manageable quantities of ingredients!  One is on the BBC Food website here and was a technical challenge in an early series of the Great British Bake Off.  It appears in the book from the series called "How to Bake".   A very similar version of it also appears on the current edition of Mary's Baking Bible (although not the original edition).  I would use either of those next time although they both specify a 23 cm tin and at the current time of writing I only have a 20cm or 25cm!  A reason to pay a visit to our lovely nearby cookware shop perhaps!  (Or maybe I'll wait until our next visit to the UK where our local DIY/ironmonger's shop sells everything like that for much more reasonable prices!)

A tip for zesting lemons: always zest before you cut it in half to squeeze out the juice.  Zesting this many lemons is time consuming but much more fiddly if you try to zest afterwards!  Also: if you use a microplane zester the best way to get all the zest out of the groove is to use the rounded end of a teaspoon handle - not your fingernail as I once saw done in an episode of Celebrity Bake Off.  Someone (I forget who) used her hideously long false nail to scoop out the zest before putting it in the cake and if you have ever noticed how grubby those nails can be underneath..........YUK !!

Ingredients

1 ready made, ready rolled pack of sweet pastry

7 eggs

240ml double cream

280g caster sugar

zest and juice of 5 lemons

Icing sugar to dust before serving.

Method

If your pastry is in the fridge bring it out about 15 minutes before you want to use it otherwise it may crack when you unroll it.

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Butter a 25cm loose based fluted tart tin.

Unroll the pastry and line the tin with it, tucking the pastry into the sides and draping the excess over the edge.  Place on a baking sheet, line with baking paper and fill with baking beans.  

Blind bake the pastry for 15 minutes or until the edges are just golden.  Remove the paper and beans and carefully trim away the excess pastry.  Return to the oven for 10-12 minutes until dry.  Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.  

Reduce the oven temperature to 160° C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.

To make the filling, put all the ingredients into a large bowl and with an electric whisk beat until well combined.  The mixture will still be very liquid.

Pour the mixture carefully into the cool pastry case but do not overfill, only close to the top if there are no gaps where it might leak.

Transfer carefully to the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes.  The filling should be set but with a slight wobble in the middle.

Serve cool or completely cold.  Give a generous dusting of icing sugar just before serving.

Serves 10-12.