Week Twelve - Paprika Pork and Peppers

Sometime last year I’d been in Waitrose, and happened to have a look at their recipe cards. One stood out – for Paprika Pork and Peppers – so I took the card home with me, put it in the cupboard and forgot about it, until last week when I had some pork to use up and didn’t know what to do for my recipe of the week!

The recipe was very straightforward: pork, garlic, casserole veg, peppers, paprika and chicken stock, all put in a pot together and cooked for 2 hours. At the end the card said to add some sour cream, but I left this out to make the recipe a bit healthier.

The end result was very good. Pork isn’t something I cook with very often, because I don’t know what to do with it. This recipe was easy to do, and really tasty, so definitely something I want to make again. When I originally read the recipe I thought about doing it in my slow cooker, to ensure the meat was tender, and although I achieved this anyway, I’d still like to try the slow cooker method just to see if I could get it tasting even better.

Week Eleven - Chicken Schnitzel with Bacon and White Wine

I’m a bit late updating this but I tried last week’s new recipe on Monday night. It was back to my Nigella Express recipe book, and a Chicken Schnitzel with White Wine and Bacon.

The recipe had appealed to me because it was something that sounded simple and fast – something that I like on a Monday for dinner after my dance class. All it involved was frying some bacon until crisp, frying some chicken and garlic until cooked through, then adding in the bacon and white wine. I planned to serve it with some mashed potato and spring onions.

However, things didn’t go quite as easily as planned! The book had assured me that my chicken would be cooked with just 2 minutes on each side, and whilst I was sceptical I accepted the timings and had my potatoes ready accordingly. The chicken was no where near cooked, and took a lot longer so the potatoes ended up a bit cold. When it was eventually all served up, it was nice enough, but absolutely nothing special, and not something I’m desperate to try again!

Week Ten – Chocolate and Sweet Potato Torte

It was baking group time again on Friday evening, and our host for the evening, Sarah, taught us all how to make a Chocolate and Sweet Potato Torte. The idea of having sweet potato in a chocolate cake intrigued me and I really wasn’t sure how the cake would turn out but I was happy to give it a go.

The recipe was easy enough to make, but it did take a while. We started with the icing – melted dark chocolate mixed with sugar and crème fraiche, which was delicious enough just to eat on its own! Then we made our sponges – including adding in the mashed sweet potato. Once cooked and cooled, the cake was iced with the icing from earlier, and I decorated it with a few mini eggs.

I absolutely loved this cake, as it was really moist and really chocolatey. Definitely what I’ll be making next time I need a chocolate cake!

Week Nine - Minestrone Soup

I'd been struggling to decide what to make this week, mostly because I've had very little time to do much cooking, so had to come up with something I could make quickly and that didn't require shopping for lots of new ingredients. Eventually I decided to try out a recipe in my Nigella Express book - Minestrone in Minutes.

This was an incredibly simple recipe - stock, a tomato pasta sauce, a can of mixed beans and some pasta, and it was ready in about 15 minutes. However, I wasn't too happy with the results. The soup tasted ok, but was nothing special and isn't something that I want to make again.