Tuna salad and coleslaw

What to cook when you don't feel like really cooking and more just 'throwing things together'. A nice, cool dinner for the warmer nights of heading into summer :)

Chicken Noodle Soup

I know I know, it doesn't look like much! I was lazy and used instant noodles rather than pasta -- I felt insanely guilty because I managed to eat so -little- of the feast. My goodness. So much! But, spaghetti does just as well as a replacement for the instant noodles (and the recipe I was following actually -called- for that so...) but either way, it tasted really really nice.

You will need:
2 chicken breasts (around 500g of chicken)
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 a carrot
1/2 brown onion
1/2 red onion
5 spring onions (the one I used was home grown, and goodness me did it produce a lot of disks as you'll see!)
2 full sticks of celery
2L liquid chicken stock
1 tsp of butter
1 tsp of oil
1/2- 1 cup of corn
ditto for peas or any other frozen vegetable you want.



Oooh ingredients! This is for the vegetable part of your soup. What you'll want to do is put your chicken stock in a BIG pot and top it up with water, enough that all the vegetables are covered and able to move freely. Don't turn it on yet though! You don't want to cook these for very long, elsewise -everything- will taste of celery. (I'll recap this later when I actually -did- it in my cooking)

First up you'll want to slice your chicken into strips. This is easiest with a really sharp knife, and slice -along- the body of the breast, against the grain, to make sure that the raw chicken doesn't run away from you! Once you have done that, resulting in pieces around 2-3 cm wide and 5-15cm long (don't stress too much on length, so long as they're all around the same thickness and width) put the raw chicken on a plate.



Now, hygiene! Very important. Raw chicken carries with it a high risk of salmonella. This is bad for you! It'll make your belly very very unhappy with you for daaaaays. So what you need to do, and this is -essential- is after you cut raw chicken, you wash the cuttingboard, -and- knife -and- your hands in hot water and soap. You should do this every time you go from cutting vegetables to meat, or vice versa. It is not -such- a big deal with steak, or lamb, or most things not poultry, but it is very very important for chicken. So! Nice clean cuttingboard and knife and we're good to go!



Now, this is when I chopped up the vegetables. Scroll up if you want the picture! I just basically sliced and diced the onion into smaller pieces because I like my onion more for flavour than to actually -eat-, and I cut this with the thought of 'eating with chopsticks' in mind. Hence, cut your carrot in half, slice one of those halves in half again lengthwise. Put the flat side of the carrot on the cutting board and slice along the carrot to make carrot 'sticks'. Chop off the root of your spring onion, peel off any dead leaves, or 'crispy' layers on the white root of the thing, then using the back edge of your knife and keeping the tip to the cuttingboard, -carefully- slice your spring onion into disks. Your non-cutting hand should be doing the moving of the onion, so that the knife is going straight up and down. Slice two stalks of celery into roughly even pieces, removing the leaves in the process, and the stems of the leaves as well. Slice along the celery length, cutting each section into halves or thirds, depending on how wide they are. You don't -have- to use as much celery as I did, depends on your preference. It is just that celery is 'negative food', it takes you more energy to digest celery, than what you get -out- of it.

Slice and dice and mince your garlic, put the butter and oil in a fryin pan, add your chicken and garlic, stirring regularly to make sure the chicken is nicely seasoned with the garlic. Be careful though, chicken breast -does- dry out rather quickly and sneakily, so keep a closer eye on it the closer you get to serving.



Now that is what you want your vegetable pot to look like. Looots of water. Looots of vegetables! You can now put on water for the pasta -- spaghetti etc -- if you are going with the pasta route. Your chicken should be evenly white by now, about half cooked. Put the vegetables and water on to start heating up, dumping in your frozens at the same time. When this pot boils -- the bubbles are coming large and often and it's doing the bubbling sound -- that is when, ideally, you serve up the whole lot!

What I ended up doing however, is turning off the heat once the vegetables had boiled, putting on the kettle for hot water -- instant noodles, remember? -- pour half of the water into one of the cups of instant noodles, and half in the other cup, topping both up with the hot water, and the seasoning, putting the vegeables in while I left it for the three to four minutes, turned off the heat for the chicken as well.

Once the time was up, chicken went into the top of the cup, and it was served!

Yummy, lazy chicken soup! No seasonings or anything other than the stock and garlic. :)

Deliciousness Delivered. (kinda, I don't really like soup -_-)

Lamb and Stuffed Spuds

Well! Here we are again, a lovely new recipe for everyone to enjoy. I do apologise for not uploading as much, but hey, I have to try things out and get them -right- before subjecting you guys to their deliciousness. This recipe, for instance, is VERY nice. A teensy bit fattening, and bad for you, but, only a small amount. This is lamb chop and vegetable stuffed potatoes.

For this you will need:
1 lamb chop per person
1-1 1/2 potatoes per person (depends on the size of the potato. I was feeding two, so three spuds, two medium-small and one large)
1/2 cup finely diced zuccini
1/2 cup carrot (around half a carrot)
1/2 large brown onion (or 1 whole small brown onion)
1 1/2 tsp sour cream
1 tsp butter
1/4 cup of milk
1 spring onion
1 small tomato
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

First off, because I try to make things as easy as possible, grab yourself a bowl, and your potatoes. Stab your potatoes with a fork, once or twice for each side, working your way around the potato. Put them into the bowl (try to fit them all into one, to save on dishes) and fill it with water so that your potatoes are half-immersed. Put it into the microwave, and cook them on high for ten minutes, pull them out, turn them over so that the -other- half is immersed, and cook them for another ten. When your microwave dings, pull them out, drain off the water, and let the things cool for about five to ten minutes.

While your potatoes are cooking, you get to go mad with the knife! No seriously. I am having a 'millions of chops for teeny fiddly things is FUN' mood lately. So! What you'll need to do is top and tail the onion, shallow slice in the side through the first layer or so, and peel off the skin. Discard. Cut the onion in half, and carefully slice and dice it. Try to make each slice and piece of the onion as small as possible. Don't worry too much if you can't do this in the initial chopping, since you can pile them up into a neat line, rest one hand on the tip of your carving knife, (on the blunt side, not where you get poked and bleed) and chop/rock the knife to completely decimate your onion.

Same thing with the zuccini, you only need a couple thin slices, two to three millimetres thick at the -most-, slice vertically through the two rounds, then horizontally to make them into teeny tiny little cubes. Top and tail and peel your carrot, if you have a full sized one, you only want to use half. Slice the carrot into disks, and then go nuts with the knife on those disks. If you can cut them up the same way you did the zuccini great! If not, don't stress. Just make sure that you have tiny little bits of carrot, not lumps. You are going to be mixing this in with mashed potato, and you don't want to go from soft mashed potato to chewing on a chunk of carrot.



Spray a frying pan, put it on low heat and toss your onion in first. Cook it until it is starting to soften and go from opaque white of raw onion to the more transparent colour of cooked. Then you toss in the zuccini and carrot, and stir occasionally to fry them evenly without burning. Hopefully.

Your potatoes will be ready for their turning over now, so deal with that, and put on the lamb in another frying pan. You want the blood to rise to the surface and puddle slightly before turning over. Yes, I know, it doesn't -sound- particularly appetising but it's a way to tell how well cooked it is. Potatoes back in the microwave, the teeny pieces of vegetable are frying, and it is all wonderful. If you are especially skilled, or y'know, have the attention span of a gnat like me, wander off and do something else for a little while, just don't forget that you -do- have things cooking.

Microwave will ding a second time, take the potatoes out and drain them, as described above. Now they get to cool down! Why? Because you have to handle them! Cut each potato, once it is cool enough to touch (and providing that a testing prod with a fork has the tines sinking easily into soft flesh) cut each potato in half lengthways.



Using a dessert spoon, carefully scoop out the potato from the skins, you want to take as much as possible, without the skins losing their shape. Put the potato in a bowl, all in the same bowl, add in the butter, sour cream, and the fried bits of vegetables. Using a fork, mix and mash the potato and bits in together, adding milk about halfway through. Not too much, you want the mix to be firm, and feel more like dough, than mashed potato.



Once it is mixed through completely, and there is no milk, sour cream, or butter visible as a separate entity, carefully spoon the mash back into the skins and set them on plates.



Grate up your cheese and top and tail the tomato. Slice and dice the tomato, so that you have little tomato cubes. Push the cubes onto the potato, sprinkle the grated cheese and ...leave for a little while. Odds are your meat isn't finished cooking! Make sure the blood has risen to the surface to pool for a second time and then turn it over.



It may rise and have -slight- amounts for a third turning, to sear the juices back in. I know this may seem a little excessive, but I assure you, undercooked lamb is FOUL. Really really bleh. While beef can and apparently is eaten in all stages from raw and chasing the lettuce to old boot leather, lamb needs to be well done. Always. So, while you're waiting for the searing of the final turn to happen, pop your potatoes in the microwave, and zap on high for a minute to a minute and a half.

Peel off dead leaves, or 'crispy' bits of the spring onion, cut off the roots, and slice into round disks. Chop chop chop ding! The first lot are ready, pull them out of the microwave, put the second plate in (if you have a second plate) and do the same thing. This has the added bonus of reheating your potato mix, so you can prepare this earlier, and it doesn't -really- matter what time your potatoes are ready, because you're reheating them just before serving anyway, to melt the cheese!

Once cheese is melted, put the bits of spring onion ontop of your potatoes for garnish (and because it really brings out the onion flavour. So good) and add your lamb to the plate. Ready to serve! Yum.

You can also have some more sour cream ontop of your potatoes and underneath the spring onion, but you have some in the potato already, so it's slight overkill. Less is more, and subtlety is the key! You can, if you desire, eat lamb with mint. It goes rather well, actually. But, not necessary. Thus!

Deliciousness Delivered.