Bacon, Mushroom and Pea Pasta

Found this rather interesting recipe on a food blog and decided to make it for dinner. Now I'm not going to link to the blog because, firstly I changed the recipe quite a bit, and more importantly, the blogger stated that if you couldn't use field mushrooms, well just don't use any, certainly not plain 'ole Swiss brown mushrooms. They were rather taken with the fact that along with using field mushrooms, farmers market peas ....oh heck the list goes on.
I would just be too embarrassed to be found out that
a) I changed stuff - onion for shallot, the mushies, added more bacon, sno peas etc. and
b) I used ordinary Swiss brown mushies.
These mushies and other ingredients are from our local fruiterers, who has lovely fresh produce, so go ahead, join me and make this scrummy dish. It's filling, healthy, cost effective and easy. And the Darling thought it was Tasty. - High praise indeed.
These are the ingredients that I used.
A generous cup of thickly sliced mushrooms
half a brown onion, diced
1 large clove garlic, minced
200grams 'fresh' packaged fettuccine
4 rashers bacon, diced
1/2 cup fresh peas, these were a bargain at the fruiterers, I wouldn't hesitate to use frozen.
4 sno peas, sliced cross ways
largish stalk of parsley, finely chopped
Parmesan cheese, finely grated, at least a half cup grated, more if you like a lot of cheese.
olive oil- a generous tablespoon
salt and pepper

Firstly, put a large saucepan of salted water on to boil for the pasta. When water reaches a rolling boil, add the pasta and cook according to package directions. When al-dente - that is cooked but still a little firm to the bite, drain the pasta, reserving a 1/4 cup of the pasta water, for possible use later. Keep pasta warm and covered to one side.

This is how generous my cup of mushrooms was, well just think of all that air in there.

Heat the generous tablespoon olive oil in a heavy based fry pan over medium heat, add the thickly sliced mushrooms, diced bacon and diced onion with the minced garlic, allow to cook for approx 7 Min's until the onion has become translucent and the bacon and mushrooms are browning slightly. Stir occasionally. Season with a little salt and pepper. Add the fresh podded peas, if using frozen peas, wait a couple more minutes until mushroom, bacon mix is almost done. Stir peas through and allow to cook for 1 - 2 minutes, or if frozen until just starting to heat through. Next add the parsley and then the sliced sno peas, stir through mushroom bacon mixture. Time to add some of the pasta, stir it through the bacon mixture and then add the remainder of the pasta, I didn't add the entire 200 grams of cooked pasta, more like 180grams. The Darling is more a 'sauce' than a 'pasta' fan, use the amount that suits you, love your pasta? then put it all in, if the sauce is a little dry, add a little of the reserved pasta water, just a teaspoon or so will be all that you need. Stir the pasta through the sauce thoroughly, coating the pasta well with the oil and flavour packed juices of the bacon and vegetables. Toss the pasta into a bowl and put a nice big nest of grated Parmesan on top. Serve immediately with extra grated Parmesan.

Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup.....

..... the only thing better when you are feeling low may be chicken noodle soup, although I have heard of that fall back of all Jewish Mums, Jewish Penicillin, or Chicken Soup that will take a few hours to achieve. Well sometimes you don't have hours, when someone you love says 'I's sick, I got da flu', you immediately think 'Chicken Soup', and so that was the case this afternoon, the youngest is down, not well, got the flu, so Chicken and Sweetcorn was a must.

This is the line up of the vital ingredients, Sweet Corn, of course, some kind of bony chicken, being the end of the day, the butcher only had wings so that is what we are using here, an onion, well half is all that was needed and a small clove of garlic, and lets not forget the salt and pepper.

Oh yeah, and the oil, pour about half a tablespoon into a heavy based fry pan and heat over medium heat.

Oh and yeah, don't forget the carrot, use half a carrot, peel and cut in half length ways, place in pan and allow to start browning

then add the half onion, roughly chopped into fairly largish pieces, here I cut it into wedges, and the clove of garlic, peeled and cut in half. Lastly add the chicken wings.

The idea is to give everything only a little browning, not too much, just enough to bring out the flavours and to add a hint of colour.

Lift everything into a saucepan and de-glaze the fry pan with about 1/2 cup water, stirring around to lift any brown bits off the bottom of the pan.

Pour into the saucepan with the chicken and vegetables. Add enough water to cover the chicken. Stock would be better than water but this was an emergency and stock was not in the freezer.
Add salt and pepper, cover and bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for about half an hour.

Meanwhile, cut the kernels from 2 cobs of corn, these were large cobs and I only used the kernels from 1 1/2 cobs. Don't forget to scrape the juicy bits of the kernels from the cob using the back of a knife.

After the chicken etc has simmered away for 30 - 45 minutes, strain into a large bowl, reserving chicken and stock.

Wash the saucepan and return the strained stock to the pan, check the seasoning, add the corn kernels and return to a simmer, simmer for approx 10 Min's, or until corn is cooked.

Remove the pan from the heat and then blend the corn and stock together, here I used a stick mixer but a blender or food processor would work just fine.

Return the pan to the heat and bring just to the boil, bubbles will start to emerge at the sides of the pan.
While waiting for corn and stock to come to the boil, mix 2 teaspoons cornflour with a scant 1/4 cup water, when bubbles appear, use a whisk to stir corn and stock briskly and gently pour cornflour into corn mixture.

Stir until mixture returns to boil, turn heat down and allow to gently simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, strip the chicken from the bones at the fleshy end of the wings, and if you have pets as we do, you might as well strip all the rest of the flesh and skin from the wings, keep the yummy plump bits for the soup and pop the other into a separate pile, this will be doggie dinners for the evening and greatly appreciated doggie dinners at that.

Now just squish those plump pieces of chicken - yep I used my fingers - you don't want great lumps in your soup.

Add squished chicken to corn mixture and Viola!!

Chicken Sweet Corn Soup! - Just go ahead and pour it into a bowl, maybe even sprinkle a few slivers of green onion on top and serve with some nice bread or even garlic toasts.

And I'm sure you will feel much better. This also freezes well for a couple of months, great to have in the freezer for those winter chills or even when you just can't seem to manage to find the energy to face the kitchen.

What I used for 2 servings

4 chicken wings

1/2 medium sized onion

1 small clove garlic

1/2 medium carrot

approx 1 tablespoon oil - I used olive oil

corn kernels from 2 small or 1 1/2 larger corn cobs

2 teaspoons cornflour

1/4 cup water

approx 1 1/2 - 2 liters water extra.

Salt and Pepper

Breakfast Potatoes

Decided to treat the Darling this a.m. to Breakfast Potatoes, this is a dish that doesn't surface too often in our little home, the reasons will become obvious as this post unfolds.

Firstly put two small potatoes on to boil until just soft. I like these red skinned lovelies with the creamy yellow flesh.


While the potatoes are cooking, trim the rind and fat from 3 rashers of bacon, cut the rinds into 2" bits and pop them into a heavy based fry pan on a medium low heat to render out some of that oh so lovely, but oh so bad for you, bacon fat.
Cut the three bacon rashers into 3 equal lengths, reserving to one side the last 3rd from the end, you know, those skinny little bits that bacon wants to end with, keeping the nice middle and eye for the breakfast plate.


Finely dice the ends of the bacon rashers and keep to one side for a bit, and while you are wielding that knife, chop a small wedge of both red and green capsicum (bell pepper) into medium dice.

And go ahead and chop the half onion into medium dice, keeping diced onion separate from the capsicum.

This cutting mat looks like it has seen much better days but it is only about 5 weeks old, hmmm, perhaps not my finest kitchen purchase, still its better than the lot I bought a few days before that, they curled into unusable lumps of uselessness very first time in the dishwasher. Ugh!

Now that the bacon fat has rendered down, remove the bacon rinds from the pan, and pop them to one side, added to some noodles for a doggie breakfast will buy you instant droolie love. I'm talking seriously wet toes here.

Add a goodish slosh of olive oil to the bacon fat in the pan, probably a little less than 1 tablespoon but this will vary with the size of the potatoes you have used, more potato, more oil.

Add the diced onion to the pan, turning the heat to medium high.

Fry the onion, stirring occasionally until onion is just becoming translucent.

Now add the finely diced bacon to the onion in the pan, keeping heat at medium high.

Continue to stir occasionally while onion and bacon begin to brown.

While the onion and bacon is crisping and browning, finely mince a small clove of garlic.

Add to onion and bacon which is browning nicely, stir through and leave to finish browning.

Scoot the bacon and onion mix to one side of the pan, and move that side furthest from the heat. Add the bacon 1/3rds to the hotter side of the pan.

Turn the browning bacon and scoot it to the top of the fry pan, add the chopped capsicum to the pan and allow to heat, stirring into onion and bacon mixture.

Now take your cooked potatoes and cut them into chunks, not too big, not too small or they will break down.

Stack the cooked bacon rashers on the side of the pan.

Add the chunked potatoes to the capsicum, bacon, onion mix and stir to coat with cooking oil.

Move the pan up on the heat so heat is now under the potatoes and the bacon rashers are resting a little.

Using a spatula or wooden spoon, press down on potatoes slightly, not to crush but to give good contact with the pan to brown and crisp the outside.

Season the potato mix well, 'cause you just know that potatoes are one of the things in life that need to be seasoned well.

Flip the potato mix over a couple of times to crisp everything up nicely, I like the crunchy well browned bits, caught just short of burning.

Stack your little pile of bacon rashers on their edge against the pan side, you will need the room and its an easy way to keep the bacon warm while allowing it to drain.

Now add a thinly sliced small piece of eye fillet steak per serve.

I like eye fillet even though it is rather pricey, there is absolutely no waste, it cooks quickly and is usually tender.

Add your egg to cook along with the steak and with a bit of luck and a fair breeze, the egg will be done with a nice soft yolk, the steak slices will be medium rare, the bacon crispy, the potatoes all nicely browned.

And the best bit of all? Its a one pan dish.

The finished dish, Darling Style,

While I had mine with a poached egg on unbuttered toast, I had a little nest of fresh tomato sauce which was left over from our pasta last night under my soft poached egg. All that yummy yolk flowed down through the tomato sauce into the toast. Heaven.

And now of course you know why we don't have this dish all that often, slimming it ain't, but yum some it is!

And of course it is so filling that lunch is not needed.......a winner all round, low on dishes, low on energy spent cooking, but sadly rather high in the fat levels, oh well, two out of three ain't too bad now is it?.

Not so Chilli for the Chilly weather

Its cold, very cold, well o.k., its not freezing, we do live in the subtropics after all, and yes there are no snowflakes or sleet rushing through the house, but there is a very cold and lazy wind, too lazy to go 'round you, goes straight through.
Today is Rachael day, that is the day Rachael comes to help me clean, and we work together on so called spring cleaning, either a room or area and we tend to use the front veranda to deposit small things, like the rugs over the railings, and what a great place to pop the dinning chairs, etc, you get the picture.Well today I kind of overdid it, so dinner tonight just had to be simple, add to that the youngest DS thought he might join us......well chill, but not so hot, seemed the way to go. So with a cursory glance at Stephanie Alexanders chill recipe in her book 'the cook's companion...p.137, a really great book by the way, this is what I came up with and I have to tell you, it sure was better eating than looking at the pic.
Not as good as Stephanie's real recipe, but not too bad either, and I have to thank one of Stephanie's ingredients for that, polenta, yep, you got it, polenta, it cooks right on in there and gives the dish such a creamy texture. Great.
Of course the whole thing would have gone a lot better with the rather yummy corn muffins that I have managed to discover, but heck, did I mention that energy levels were low......really low?

This is what happened to produce the above:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 really large onion, diced
1 monster glove of garlic, Mexican and pink skinned, so just use 2 cloves of what you have
400 grams diced beef
400 grams minced beef
3/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
3 teaspoons sweet Hungarian paprika
1/2 teaspoon hot smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
2 bay leaves
1 kg diced fresh tomatoes, yeah, well if I had 'em they would have been canned
1 jar passata, (Italian tomato cooking sauce)
2 tablespoons polenta
1 can 400grm approx of red kidney beans

Pour the olive oil into a large saucepan, add the onion and garlic and cook a little until slightly translucent, increase heat and add the minced beef, stir until there are no lumps, and meat is slightly browned. I use a whisk for this, its easier.
Add beef cubes and allow to brown all over, stirring a couple of times.
Add salt, pepper, paprika, hot smoked paprika, cumin and bay leaves, stir until combined.
Add tomatoes, fresh or canned and passata with the polenta, stir until combined, turn heat down low and place a simmer mat under pot and then just forget it........have a nap...I did, or better still a wine.
After about and hour, give it a stir to make sure the polenta isn't sticking, rinse off the can of beans and add to meat. Steam up some rice while the beans heat and then serve.

And if you really want to float your boat, make the real thing, its just so much more of a flavour adventure. But really, for a cold night and no energy, this did o.k.