Catching Up With a Dublin Coddle

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Our Growing Paynes

This a long over due post! I cooked this meal for St Patrick’s Day weekend. So yes, I’m behind in my posts. Tax season is over once more and I’ve been doing a lot of catching up and getting things organised. It was so nice to have time to be outside and see sunlight. My office is windowless and joyless.

Since I last posted we’ve been enjoying hosting our exchange student from Denmark. Who isn’t a fan of Danish food. What are the chances!? She loves Italian food but is willing to have me cook some Danish food here and there. She also fits in at our house very well. Very smart and a great sense of humour. It’s turning out to be a fabulous experience for all of us.

Our student arrived on St Patrick’s Day weekend and I wanted share some of our traditions. But I also needed something that was easy to put together because I was working 6 days a week. The Dublin Coddle fit the bill.

Dublin coddle 1 2017

Of course I changed the way to do it a bit. Mainly to make this even easier and quicker to make. If you are inclined you can cook the bacon prior to assembling but it also works if you don’t.

Preheat the oven to 425F/220C.

In an oven proof dish begin layering potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic, all thinly sliced.

Dublin coddle 2 2107

Then layer thinly sliced sausages and bacon. I chose chorizo sausage for a bit of heat. Sprinkle with fresh parsley.

Dublin coddle 3 2017

Repeat the layers. Add beef or vegetable broth. At this point you can have it more stew like or not. I wanted it to have a more soup consistency so I added about 4 cups/32 oz of vegetable broth.

Dublin coddle 4 2017

Cover and bake until the vegetables soften. Remove from the oven and grate fresh cheddar cheese over the dish. Leave the cover off and bake until the top browns. Dublin coddle 5 2017

Of course I completely forgot to bake the soda bread to go with this. Only remembered as I was serving the meal. That would have been a nice pairing.

Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot of blogs to catch up on. 🙂

Lemon and Garlic Chicken and the Importance of Having a Great Team

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Our Growing Paynes

If you have the bad luck of falling and injuring yourself over the years more than once it is very important you don’t wait years to fix yourself. If I could go back in time I would do so many things differently. Aside from trying to avoid falling in the first place I would get help.

Which means finding a great team and I have been very lucky in that respect. I have Pam, my exercise guru, who is very knowledgeable with body mechanics and takes the time to make sure those of us in her pilates and TRX aren’t doing nutty things with our alignment. I have Christine, who is an amazing massage therapist that battles my knots and tension. And Maria, my physical therapist, spent nearly two years helping me get strong and healed. I just finished my last appointment with her and fingers crossed I don’t do anything stupid and lands me back in PT!

Of course I’m seriously grateful that my husband supported me through all this. I really couldn’t have done it without him. There have been some painful and tough times and he never wavered. He’s my rock.

For Christmas my dad found some really cool cookery books for us. The one for my daughter is called “150 Mediterranean Recipes” by Jacqueline Clark & Joanna Farrow. Loads of delicious recipes in the book and I chose to make the Chicken Thighs with Lemon and Garlic. I mostly followed it so here is my version.

Prep the lemon by peeling it and then thinly slicing it. Set aside.

In a small saucepan bring to a simmer about 14oz of chicken stock. Add 8-10 garlic cloves cut in half. Simmer while you cook the chicken thighs.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet.

Season 4 chicken thighs with sea salt and pepper and begin to brown the chicken. While the chicken is cooking, preheat the oven to 375F/190C.

Once browned, transfer to a baking dish. Spoon out the garlic from the stock and add it to the baking dish along with the lemon slices. Set aside. Add 2 tablespoons of flour or corn flour to the skillet, use a whisk to scrape up the browned bits of the chicken. Cook for a minute or so to cook the flour. Then add 6oz of dry white wine. Keep stirring constantly. Pour in the stock.

Stir until the sauce thickens.

Add the sauce to the baking dish and bake until the chicken is cooked through. Meanwhile cook up some rice pilaf.

Once the chicken is cooked, top the rice with a chicken thigh and pour sauce over the dish. Add some fresh chopped parsley and voila! Dinner is served.

I look forward to trying more recipes from the books we were given. 🙂

Garlic Butter Chicken and Finding Peace

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

A few weeks ago I got to the bank before it opened and was waiting in the foyer with an older gentleman. As we were waiting one of the employees came through and kind of just looked at us without saying anything and closed the door firmly. I get they have to be careful with security but I commented it would have been nice if she was friendly or said hi.

The older gentleman just said it was ok and she may be having a bad day. He chooses to not let the negativity to affect him. And then he just smiled. This is how I’d like to be. Not letting the negativity round me become internalised. He seemed to have found his inner peace and he seemed to be enjoying life. Have to admit I was a bit envious with that.

I hope I can find that balance! I definitely enjoy life but it would be nice to not let myself be affected by outside forces so much. I’m getting there. 🙂

For those of you that have followed my blog for awhile you won’t be surprised when I say one of my favourite ingredients is garlic. We also love breaded pan fried chicken.

To bread the chicken dip it a beaten egg then panko bread crumbs. Brown in a skillet with butter.

I slice the chicken breasts in half lengthwise. One because it keeps the portions sane and two it cooks more evenly. Once cooked remove from the skillet and keep warm.

Melt a few tablespoons of butter and add 4-5 cloves of garlic that are coarsely chopped. Saute for a couple of minutes on medium heat. You don’t want the garlic to get browned or burnt. Add a 1/2 cup or so of chicken stock and a 1/4 cup of dry white wine, bring to a simmer. Add a handful of chopped fresh parsley. Season with sea salt and pepper.

While this part was cooking I cooked up some potatoes and parsnips to mash. Serve with the chicken over the potatoes and spoon the sauce over the top.

This is lovely with a glass of pinot grigio. I don’t know what it is about panko encrusted chicken but I love it.

Greek Orzo Chicken

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

Finally I have a day off! It’s been about 2 1/2 weeks straight out with the first peak of tax season so I’m in my comfy clothes relaxing and recharging my batteries. And doing a long overdue blog post!

I was hoping to do one a few days ago but our silly dog had to be taken to the vet due to an ear infection. The poor thing was shaking his head so much I thought he’d run out of brain cells and he doesn’t have a surplus! He’d look at us with one ear up and one ear deflated. Cute looking but definitely needed to get seen to. I just wish they understood we are trying to help them. He did not like his ear being examined and kept backing away. I felt so bad but the meds are working and the ear is starting to be less deflated.

One of my food memories is eating orzo with chicken and green olives. I loved that dish. But I don’t have that recipe and since my family aren’t huge fans of olives I needed to find something different. In my “The Foods of the Greek Islands” cookery book by Aglaia Kremezi there is a recipe for Baked Chicken with Orzo. I changed it up a bit and did it on the stove top instead of the oven.

Greek orzo chicken 1 2016

This dish has a lot of strong flavours in this dish with the sundried tomatoes and garlic. In a large skillet heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Cube up about 3/4-1 pound of chicken and add to the skillet to start browning the chicken. Season with sea salt and pepper. Finely chop 3-5 cloves of garlic and half a red onion and add it to the skillet.

Greek orzo chicken 2 2016

Once the onion softens add a cup of sliced sundried tomatoes and saute for a few minutes. Then add a 14oz can of diced tomatoes with the juice and 2 cups of chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Toss in a small handful of fresh oregano.

Greek orzo chicken 4 2016

Add a cup of orzo. All I could find was a wheat orzo and that worked well.

Greek orzo chicken 3 2016

Stir well and simmer covered. Keep an eye on this as this can stick to the bottom of skillet. Add more chicken stock as needed until the orzo is tender and cooked. It takes about a 1/2 hour or so.

Greek orzo chicken 5 2016

Serve with parsley and shredded cheese. I had a mixture of Italian cheeses on hand. Of course there are good Greek cheeses to choose from.

This is definitely stick to your ribs dish, perfect for chilly winter nights. This made a lot of food so we have leftovers to use throughout the week.

Red Wine Chorizo

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

The first flurry of the holidays, Thanksgiving, is past and we’re into the flurry of activity getting ready for Christmas. Our son was all excited once the meal of Thanksgiving was over because that meant the Christmas songs could start playing! I swear that kid would play those songs year round, crazy kid. Egg nog is pretty much the only thing that we do Christmas wise before December. Well, that and the cards.

I normally use Shutterfly for the cards and family photo books. This is the last year I’ll do that for the cards. Couldn’t use that site for the book because they took away a lot of features I like to use. So I am trying to learn Blurb. A big feature I like is to use my photos as a faded background. Blurb doesn’t do that either but I can fade them using GIMP. Just a bit of jumping through hoops to get the book done. So that is getting pushed out to the New Year. But I hear Blurb is good for creating books like cookery books so I figure now is a good a time as any to learn. I am curious which software of Blurb to use so I’d be interested in feedback.

The recipe I’m showing here was done for my husband’s birthday to go along with the jerk chicken I made. It came from a book my family found for me at the annual library sale. It is called Tapas by Susanna Tee. I found an easy recipe for chorizo simmered in red wine. Something easily eaten at a party.

I would recommend finding good quality chorizo. We found average chorizo and it didn’t absorb the wine during the marinating stage as well as it should have. No worries, it came out in the end.

To start, always pick a good wine. Never use cooking wine or plonk. If it’s not good enough to drink, it’s not good enough to cook with!

In a saucepan, bring to a boil about a cup of the red wine. Then cover and reduce the heat. Simmer for 15-20 minutes. Remove from the heat and pour into a bowl big enough for the sausages. Prick the sausages and marinate overnight.

When you are ready to cook these, slice the chorizo into pieces. Add them to a skillet. Warm a couple of tablespoons of brandy then pour into the skillet. And, this is the fun part, light it up!

As fun as this is, be careful. Not all flame is visible and you don’t want to get burned. You can see in the picture the sausage didn’t really suck in the wine. I suspect, better chorizo would do that. Once the brandy has cooked off add the wine you used to marinate the sausages. Simmer on medium heat until the wine has reduced quite a bit.

To serve, sprinkle freshly chopped parsley over the chorizo.

This is a great dish for a tapas meal, party, or potluck. And it is very easy to make which is always good. 🙂

Finally French Baked Eggs!

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

There are times where you have to try, try, and try again. Such is life. It gets a bit annoying when that happens with a recipe.

I saw a recipe in a cookery book of Barefoot Contessa’s for easy baked eggs. Ooh, I thought, this looks amazing. Let’s have a go.

To start her method was to broil. I followed it to the letter. Three times and failed each time. I was starting to get annoyed! The flavours were there but the yolk would over cook and the whites would stay runny. Not the way I wanted.

In the meantime I tried Jovina Cooks Italian recipe for Marinara Baked Eggs. I still struggled with getting the yolks runny but it was a better result. My husband and I talked about maybe separating the eggs and cooking the whites for a bit. Darya on Tortore mentioned in the comments the same idea so that settled it. I was going to give it another try.

This recipe is for one serving. Finely chop a handful of parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Then finely mince a clove of garlic. Grate about a 1/4 cup of fresh parmesan. Set all this aside.

Preheat the oven to 400F/205C. In a shallow bake safe dish heat up 1 1/2 tablespoons of cream and a tablespoon of butter.

Separate three eggs and add the whites and half the cheese and herb mixture to the dish. Season with sea salt and pepper. Bake until the whites are almost set, fluffing a few times as it cooks. Add the three yolks.

Add the rest of the herb and cheese mixture. Bake a few minutes more until the yolks are warm but still runny. I was feeling really positive by this point! Once the eggs are cooked, remove from the heat. Grate a bit more parmesan over the eggs. Toast up crusty bread to serve with.

Look at that, runny yolks! This was easy. 🙂 And oh so good. I am so happy I figured this out. There is an extra step but it means I get the result I’m supposed to.

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

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