Tag Archives: cooking

Chicken Liver Pâté

Hey guys! To say the last few weeks of my life have been filled with sport, beach and meeting with friends, so I hadn’t been posting regularly and commenting on your lovely blogs, but I will resume blogging and posting more often. 🙂 And I want to share with you a simple but super delicious recipe – chicken liver pate! The pate is very quick and easy to make, and require only a few ingredients. Another advantage is a low cost of chicken livers. Pureeing the cooked livers along with butter and a little cognac or brandy transforms the plain part of chicken into something magnificent! It’s a great breakfast on a slice of toasted bread or can be a nice appetizer topped with a cornichon or little pickled onion. 🙂

Chicken Liver Pâté

Servings: >6
Time: 30mins
Difficulty: easy
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If cooking for children, omit the cognac.

Ingredients

1 large onion

1 medium carrot

20g butter

500g chicken liver, cleaned

1+1 tbsp cognac (or brandy/whiskey)

1/2 tsp dried thyme or 1-2 tsp fresh leaves

a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

50ml water or chicken stock

100ml cream (12-15%)

50-60g butter, at room temperature

sea salt to taste

freshly grated black and white pepper to taste

Top

40-50g butter

Preparation

Peel onion and cut into small cubes. Wash, peel and grate carrot.
In a deep frying pan or saucepan, heat butter and add vegetables, cook on a medium heat until soft (don’t brown). Add liver and fry for 8-10 minutes. Add one tablespoon of cognac, herbs and season to taste. Simmer on a medium-low heat for 5 minutes. Add water, cream, bring to boil and turn off the heat. Leave to cool at room temperature.
Transfer to a food processor or puree with hand blender. If the consistency is too thick, add more warm water or stock. Adjust the seasoning. Add soft butter, cognac and blend again.
You can make a butter ‘lead’, for that heat the butter in a small bowl and pour over the cooled pate.
Transfer pate to a bowl and keep covered in the fridge up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Coriander Chicken Drumsticks

Today I realized that I haven’t ate chicken for quite a long time. When I was a teenager chicken drumsticks weren’t available as a separate part of a chicken. When my mother wanted to prepare chicken for dinner she used to buy whole chicken thighs and cook it as is or cut into two parts.. I’m not even sure that drumsticks are on sale in Russian stores now, may be except the capital. Anyway, nicely spiced and roasted chicken drumsticks is a good and quick-to-cook midweek meal (with some rice or potatoes on a side) or a very good accompaniment to a beer! For this recipe I grind dried coriander seeds, then add turmeric and mild paprika, stir into the meat along with olive oil and let it marinade. If you’re hungry, skip the marinating and roast it straightaway! 🙂

Coriander Chicken Drumsticks

Servings: 2-3
Time: 1hr
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

500g chicken drumsticks (I used without skin)

2-3 tsp dried coriander seeds

1 tsp turmeric

3/4 tsp mild paprika (or hot if you like)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp lime juice (or lemon)

2-3 garlic clove, unpeeled

freshly ground black and white pepper, to taste

sea salt, to taste

Grind or crush coriander seeds, mix with turmeric and paprika. Combine with olive oil and lime juice. Rub the marinade into chicken drumsticks. Add garlic cloves, season generously with pepper and salt to taste. Cover and leave to marinade in the fridge for 1-3 hours, or skip this step and arrange chicken (with all marinade juices) onto a baking tray or dish.
Bake in the preheated 200C oven for 20 minutes. Then low the heat to 150C, cover with a piece of foil and bake for 10 minutes longer or until the drumsticks have cooked through.
Serve warm, but they are also good cold. The cooked drumsticks will keep in the fridge for 2 days.

Plum cake

It’s a fact that spring came to this year-round sunny city too, and temperature start to creep slowly. During the day the weather is still nice for swimming and sunbathing without uncomfortable sweating like in the summer months. Another pleasure is to take an evening walk in the fresh air, or to sit outsite and enjoy sipping a tea while the weather is till cool. Having a tea without a piece of cake is absolutely wrong thing! 😀 So, you can guess that one of my favourite ‘indoor activities’ is baking! I had mascarpone cheese and ripe plums that used to be a jam, but mascarpone was nearly to expiry date and I had to use it somehow.. It was a ‘mix all what you have’ cake, I also added a splash of cognac for an extra hit. After a half an hour of baking the cake was still uncooked and I was a bit worried. But the final result was a wonderfully divine and delicious cake! It was totally worth the wait: tender, moist and filled with amazing flavour! I will be making this cake again! 🙂

Plum cake with mascarpone and cognac

Servings: 6
Time: 1hr 15mins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients for 18cm baking tin

50g butter, very soft

80g brown sugar

2 eggs, at room temperature

1 tbsp cognac (or brandy)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2-3 tbsp lemon zest, optional

100-120g mascarpone, at room temperature

100-110 g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

4-5 dark plums, sliced

1 tbsp plum jam (or apricot jam), optional

Preparation

In a mixing bowl, beat the butter with sugar. In a separate bowl, beat eggs with cognac, vanilla and lemon zest. Gradually stir into the butter mixture. Fold in mascarpone cheese. Sift flour with baking powder into the batter, mix to combine.
Pour the batter into greased baking tin. Arrange plum slices on top. Bake in preheated 180C oven for 50-60 minutes or until the inserted toothpick comes out clean. Grease the top with jam. Let it cool slightly before serving.

Enjoy!

Spring Asparagus with mushroom sauce

April 8, 2015
milkandbun
16 comments
asparagus, cooking, food, mushroom sauce, recipe, spring recipe

Happy Easter to all who had celebrated it on the 5th April! I know, you’d already eaten a dozen of eggs, so today’s recipe without an egg in it. 🙂

A bunch of asparagus reminds me flowers, the start of spring and a time of new beginnings. Do you know that the name asparagus come from Greek word meaning ‘sprout’ or ‘shoot’. This vegetable is believed to have originated 2000 years ago in eastern Mediterranean region. Asparagus is loaded with antioxidants and nutrients, and has an aphrodisiac qualities! 😉

I’ve been enjoying crunchy asparagus for a breakfast with a poached or scrambled eggs, but I’ve been looking for new recipes.. I also made a quiche with asparagus and roast chicken leftovers, which was tasty as any pie. Finally, I stumbled upon an interesting recipe which called to blanch asparagus and then top it with a mushroom sauce. I love this delicious and full of flavor mushroom sauce, that can be great with other spring vegetables as well or even with eggs! Below recipe can be served as a nice appetizer or a side dish which you can make very quick!

Spring Asparagus with mushroom sauce

Servings: 2
Time: 15-20mins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

300-400g asparagus

1 tbsp olive oil

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped, optional

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or 1/2 tsp dried

2 tbsp water or veg.broth

1 tbsp dry white wine, optional

2 tbsp cream cheese

5-6 medium mushrooms (button or oyster), sliced

1+1 tbsp grated parmesan

sea salt and white pepper to taste

For the sauce, in a frying pan heat oil, add onion, garlic, thyme, season to taste; cook until tender. Stir in water, wine and cream cheese. Bring to boil, then add mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes or until mushrooms ready and sauce is slightly thickened. Stir in 1 tbsp parmesan.
Wash and discard woody bases from asparagus. Cook it in a boiling water for 3-4 minutes or until crispy, drain.
Arrange asparagus on a serving plate, top with mushroom sauce, sprinkle with remaining parmesan.

Enjoy!

recipe adapted from here

Citrusy Scampi with fennel salad

One day my husband brought home these strange-looking shrimps from a local fish market. A fishmonger called it ‘scampi’, wikipedia told it’s a kind of shrimps or langoustines. So, I’d decided to make a citrusy marinade as for shrimps and then fried it. Sliced fennel with cubes of bell pepper and orange segments worked out great with fried scampi. The smell was amazing! It turned out unbelievably delicious! This scampi recipe can be done in minimal time, super tasty and will leave you satisfied!

Now, it’s one of my favorite seafood meals. Moreover, it looks elegant and you can serve it as a top-class dish for your guests or for a romantic dinner under the stars in your garden. 🙂

Citrusy scampi with fennel salad

Servings: 2
Time: 1hr
Difficulty: moderate
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You can substitute scampi with large prawns.

Ingredients

3 large scampi per person as a starter or 6-7 as a main course

Marinade

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp lime juice

1/2-1 tbsp orange juice

2-3 tsp orange zest

2-3 garlic cloves, crushed or chopped, as you like

1 tbsp fresh chopped coriander

S&P to taste

Salad

1/2 red onion

1 small fennel bulb or 1/2 large

1/2-1 bell pepper, red

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp white balsamic vinegar

1 orange

S&P to taste

Serving

fresh chopped coriander

extra virgin olive oil or basil oil

Preparation method

Cut the fennel and onion into julienne (thin slices) and add to the mixing bowl with the balsamic vinegar and oil, toss in. Cut bell pepper into small cubes, add to the bowl. Remove the rind on the orange then cut into segments and add to the mixing bowl (save all orange juices and add it to the salad); gently toss in the bowl with all ingredients. Reserve at room temperature.
Clean scampi, leave tails on if desired. In a bowl mix together olive oil, citrus juices, garlic, chopped coriander and orange zest. Add scampi and leave to marinate for 30 minutes to 1-2 hours. Heat the frying pan on a medium-high heat, add scampi without marinade. Cook for 2-4 minutes on each side, depends on the size of scampi. Season to taste.
Season the salad and gently mix. Divide the salad evenly on plates. Serve salad with scampi placed on top. Sprinkle with finely chopped coriander and drizzle even more oil, if desired.

Enjoy!