I'll cook if you do the washing up
I've tried a couple of new recipes in the past week so here I am to make you all incredibly jealous of my mad cooking skills yo and wish you lived in my house. I hope you're not too hungry...
Creamy Meatballs and Potatoes
I wanted something different to do with meatballs rather than just tomato sauce so I had a look online and found this recipe on the Betty Crocker website. Annoyingly, despite broccoli being pretty much a staple in the kitchen, we had none so I substituted peas instead. Cream of onion soup is not a thing here so I had to make my own onion sauce for that. Despite that, it wasn't too bad. It would have been better with broccoli though. I'm going to have to find something else for the cream of onion soup because having to make the sauce was a pain in the arse and it wasn't quite right.
Butternut Squash, Bacon and Parmesan Galette
This sight greeted me when I went into the kitchen to start baking, I call it 'Still life with squash' ;) It looks very much like the setting for an old Master's painting!
I found this recipe in the Aldi leaflet and for some reason it doesn't appear on their website at all. It was very definitely a test of my skills, mainly because the first line in the recipe said "Combine flour, butter, milk and paprika to make a dough". No further instructions on that at all! Thankfully I know how to make pastry, otherwise I would have been rather stuck. I substituted the bacon for some pieces of chargrilled chicken and just used regular grated cheese because I wasn't buying Parmesan just to use 20g of it! The timing of the recipe lied because it said it took 25 minutes prep and 20 minutes to cook the filling and then another 40 minutes to cook the completed galette. It took me TWO HOURS and that didn't include the final cooking time. 25 minutes prep, my arse. I was a little concerned because I've never had squash before, butternut or otherwise, so I had no idea if I would like it. Also it wanted 40ml of soy sauce which sounded like a lot. It probably could have done with only 30ml but actually it was incredibly good so that was a relief.
Fiesta Chicken and Rice Bake
I actually saw this recipe mentioned on tjoel2's journal the other day and thought it sounded really nice so I had a go at making it. Because I apparently can't make anything without changing part of it, I used fajiti spice rather than chilli powder, and added a chopped onion and pepper. I had bought a tin of condensed cream of tomato soup because it was the closest I could get. (The only Campbell's varieties available in the UK are cream of tomato, cream of chicken, cream of mushroom and cream of celery - although I've never seen the last one in the supermarket.) It came out really nice too and it was really quick and easy to make. It definitely needed the onion and pepper in it though, I think it would have been a bit lacking something otherwise. I would certainly make that one again, although not with the Campbell's soup as I found out afterwards that it wasn't gluten-free. Oops. Also wtf? Why does cream of tomato soup have wheat flour in it?!
Creamy Meatballs and Potatoes
I wanted something different to do with meatballs rather than just tomato sauce so I had a look online and found this recipe on the Betty Crocker website. Annoyingly, despite broccoli being pretty much a staple in the kitchen, we had none so I substituted peas instead. Cream of onion soup is not a thing here so I had to make my own onion sauce for that. Despite that, it wasn't too bad. It would have been better with broccoli though. I'm going to have to find something else for the cream of onion soup because having to make the sauce was a pain in the arse and it wasn't quite right.
Butternut Squash, Bacon and Parmesan Galette
This sight greeted me when I went into the kitchen to start baking, I call it 'Still life with squash' ;) It looks very much like the setting for an old Master's painting!
I found this recipe in the Aldi leaflet and for some reason it doesn't appear on their website at all. It was very definitely a test of my skills, mainly because the first line in the recipe said "Combine flour, butter, milk and paprika to make a dough". No further instructions on that at all! Thankfully I know how to make pastry, otherwise I would have been rather stuck. I substituted the bacon for some pieces of chargrilled chicken and just used regular grated cheese because I wasn't buying Parmesan just to use 20g of it! The timing of the recipe lied because it said it took 25 minutes prep and 20 minutes to cook the filling and then another 40 minutes to cook the completed galette. It took me TWO HOURS and that didn't include the final cooking time. 25 minutes prep, my arse. I was a little concerned because I've never had squash before, butternut or otherwise, so I had no idea if I would like it. Also it wanted 40ml of soy sauce which sounded like a lot. It probably could have done with only 30ml but actually it was incredibly good so that was a relief.
Fiesta Chicken and Rice Bake
I actually saw this recipe mentioned on tjoel2's journal the other day and thought it sounded really nice so I had a go at making it. Because I apparently can't make anything without changing part of it, I used fajiti spice rather than chilli powder, and added a chopped onion and pepper. I had bought a tin of condensed cream of tomato soup because it was the closest I could get. (The only Campbell's varieties available in the UK are cream of tomato, cream of chicken, cream of mushroom and cream of celery - although I've never seen the last one in the supermarket.) It came out really nice too and it was really quick and easy to make. It definitely needed the onion and pepper in it though, I think it would have been a bit lacking something otherwise. I would certainly make that one again, although not with the Campbell's soup as I found out afterwards that it wasn't gluten-free. Oops. Also wtf? Why does cream of tomato soup have wheat flour in it?!