I can hear you thinking . . .  Spam and Beans?   What is that girl doing now!  And I fed it to company no less, as one of a pair of casseroles.   It was delicious.   Absolutely delicious!  One of my guests was a real Spam lover as well, so that was win/win for me.   Delicious and popular!

Somehow my post for this morning actually posted yesterday.   (I hate it when that happens!)  

Combine the bread or cracker crumbs and melted butter.  Sprinkle the remainder of the cheeses over top of the macaroni mixture then top with the buttered crumbs.  Bake in the heated oven for 15 to 20 minutes.   Allow to stand for 10 minutes before serving.  Delicious!

The weather has been a lot cooler these past few days, and not so stifling . . . Todd was so happy, even though he really loved the heat.  He was getting a bit tired of salads though . . . he was craving some meat and potatoes.



So what's a gal to do?   Well, I love my man a lot, and so I cooked him up a real man-pleasing meat and potatoes meal.  He loves bangers and mash most of all . . . so that's what I did . . .



But not just any bangers and mash, no.  Oven Barbequed Bangers and Mash.  This is the best of the best. I do confess to having a certain fondness for it myself.



The sausages are par-boiled on top of the stove in some water, along with some onions to help render out some of that fat.   They you lightly brown them in a nonstick pan.  The softened onions are put into the bottom of a shallow baking dish.   A delicious home made barbeque sauce is poured over top and then you drop in the browned sausages.



The whole thing then gets banged into the oven.  The sauce, which appears quite liquidy when you first put it into the dish, thickens into a glossy rich sauce . . . filled with lovely bits of soft onion, coating and glazing the sausages.



The sausages are meltingly tender and in that sauce . . . wowsa, just heavenly . . . and with a side of mash, you just can't go wrong.   Winner/winner chicken dinner!



Except it's not.  Chicken that is . . . it's Banger's and Mash, but not as you know it.  ☺
Try them for yourself.  I think you'll agree that this dinner is quite scrumptious indeed!   There is nothing that could make this any tastier than it already is.  Guaranteed!



*Oven Barbequed Sausages*

Place half of your marinara sauce into the bottom of the baking dish.  Top with the basil leaves, reserving a few for the top.  Fill your rigatoni noodles with the cheese mixture.  (It works best if your noodles are not quite cooked and the cheese is at room temperature.  Then you don't have blow outs and the cheese goes in quite easily.)  Lay the filled tubes in the dish in a circular pattern, one layer at a time.   Once you have filled them all and they are in the dish.   Pour the remaining sauce over top, spreading  it out to cover.   Scatter on a few torn basil leaves and the grated Parmesan cheese.  Scatter the Mozarella over top of all.  Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the top is golden and the dish is bubbling.   Serve hot!

I wanted to make you something different for pancake day this year.  I try to do something special each year for you.  Last year it was Honey and Raspberry Pancakes . . . a lovely treat.  Mmmm  . . . my mouth is watering just think about them.

 

I had a real longing this year for light and fluffy pancakes, and yet hearty pancakes . . . pancakes that reminded me of my travels during my younger years, when a stay at a hotel meant pancakes for breakfast.   When I was a child my mother never ever made pancakes but for once a year, on pancake day . . . oh how we loved them.   My poor mom was stuck at the stove for hours fulfilling our pancake desires!

 

I can remember traveling through Vermont when I was a young woman and stopping at a restaurant for breakfast in the Northern Part of the State past Burlington and near to the border . . . where it gets really watery and lakey and rivery . . . I know of no other words to describe it.   It was a cool morning and the mist was rising up over the lake, in an almost ethereal way.  The perfect pancake morning.

 

I ordered pancakes for my breakfast and was served these pancakes which had been made with cornmeal, quite unlike any other I had ever eaten, and it was love, love, love at first bite.  I know that things seem to taste better with memory . . . and the memories of those pancakes are no exception.   Every time I think of them my mouth waters . . . and of course they were served with fresh Vermont Maple Syrup.  Scrummo!



And so I wanted a hearty pancake like that, modernized for today by using polenta.   I had also seen photos of pancakes on the web, that had been baked over slices of crisp bacon, the batter flowing  around the crisp bacon . . . all crisp and golden.   Oh my, but they have always looked so tasty, and so I decided to add this aspect to my 2013 pancake as well.

 

The result was a delicious pancake, moist from the use of sour milk, with nice bits of crunch throughout from the polenta . . . and that salty smoked moreish flavour from the Bacon, which goes so very well with the sweetness of the Maple Syrup.

 

And so here you have my pancake day offering for Shrove Tuesday, 2013.   Polenta and Bacon Pancakes.  Enjoy!

 

*Polenta and Bacon Pancakes*
Makes approximately 16 (8 servings)
Printable Recipe

Golden brown, sour milk tender, with a slight crunch.  Deliciously salty sweet and peppery, should you so choose.

170g of coarse polenta (cornmeal, 1 cup)
100g of plain flour (1 cup)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
16 rashers of lightly cooked dry cure rindless streaky bacon
(smoked or not, as you prefer)
393ml of sour milk (1 2/3 cup)
(to sour milk, squeeze the juice of half a lemon into the measuring beaker, and fill with
the milk to 393ml.  Allow to stand for 5 minutes before proceeding.)
2 large free range eggs
60ml of pure maple syrup (1/4 cup)
4 TBS melted unsalted butter, or bacon fat
(How naughty do you feel?)

To serve:
cold butter and maple syrup

 

Preheat the oven to low and place a baking sheet lined with baking paper inside.

Whisk the polenta, flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and pepper (if using) together in a bowl.   In another bowl whisk together the sour milk, eggs, maple syrup and melted butter or bacon fat.  Blend thoroughly.   Add the wet ingredients to the dry all at once and stir together just to combine.  A few lumps are normal and welcome.  Transfer to a pouring beaker. (This will make things so much easier, trust me.)

Lightly grease your skillet and heat over medium heat.   Place a slice of bacon in the skillet, or two depending on the size of your skillet and leaving a goodly amount of space between.   Carefully pour batter over the bacon to cover.  (about 1/4 cup)  Cook, until the undersides of the pancake are golden brown and the surface of the pancake is covered with bubbles.  Carefully flip over and cook until the other sides are golden brown.  Transfer to a warm oven and keep warm while you  cook the remaining pancakes.

 

Serve hot with cold butter for spreading and plenty of Maple Syrup.

Note:  If you are feeling really indulgent you can serve them with more bacon and some cold tinned sliced peaches.  Nom! Nom!

We are terribly fond of chicken here in The English Kitchen. I think it is the one protein that we eat the most of and we probably have it at least twice a week.  We may have a red meat once a week, or even less than that . . . and we always have fish at least once as well . . . but chicken, well, it's a real mainstay in our kitchen.



More often than not, I will serve Chicken Breasts.  Chicken was not something we had very often when I was growing up.  Occasionally my mother would do a Roast Chicken as a treat . . . and every once in a Blue Moon she would cook Maryland Fried Chicken, which we loved.  It was Chicken Breasts, dipped in egg and cracker crumbs and then fried.  When that was on the menu, we knew were in for a real treat!  Chicken used to be a lot more expensive in the olden days.



Nowadays it's fairly affordable, depending on which type you buy.  If you are not bothered as to it's source or the ethics of responsible rearing, well then you could probably eat chicken every night of the week, coz that kind of chicken is cheap as chips.  I am a bit more bothered about these things.  The Toddster worked on a Battery Chicken Egg Farm in Germany when he as younger for a short time and it was more than he could stomach . . . I have a real heart for animal cruelty and so I don't have a stomach for eating any kind of meat that's not raised according to high standards of animal welfare . . . so we eat chicken about twice of three times a week, and it's always free range.



I know if I had a large family to feed it might be different, but for now it's just us two here,  and I can afford to pay a bit more.  I know not everyone has that option. I love chicken breasts because they are like a blank canvas just waiting to be written upon.   They take to so many different flavours and styles of cooking . . . and as long as you don't overcook them, they make a pretty good basis for a delicious supper.



Today I cooked them a la Cordon Bleu.  I know . . . which interestingly enough is not to be confused with the French Cooking School of the same name.  Cordon Bleu actually originated in Switzerland . . . and was done using veal cutlets, stuffed with cheese and ham.  Chicken Cordon Bleu is, I believe . . . an American invention.    Cordon Bleu merely means Blue Ribbon . . . and this is my blue ribbon chicken!



I broke all the rules of course.  But I think I have made it better.  I rolled the ham around the cheese, a good Swiss Emmenthal in this case, and then I cut a pocket into the chicken breast and stuffed it inside.  No risk of the cheese oozing out because it's inside the ham.  I also happen to believe that if you can cut through the fibres of a chicken breast like that . . . you are going to have one very tender chicken breast.  I could be wrong, don't quote me on that . . . I only know for sure that it seems to work.



That was the only rule I broke though.  I then floured, egged and crumbed it as per normal, or pane (pan-aaaa) as it was called in Culinary School.  I added butter to the crumbs ahead of time so that I wouldn't have to fry them, and then I baked them for a few minutes at a high temperature, and then finished them off at a lower temperature.



The end result . . . perfectly cooked Chicken Cordon Bleu . . . crisply crumbed on the outside, moist and tender on the insides and chock full of oozing cheese and ham.



In short.  Fabulous.  But don't take my word for it.  Try them out yourself and see if I'm not telling the truth.  ☺



  *Simple Chicken Cordon Bleu*
Serves 4 to 6
Printable Recipe

A traditionally complicated dish, simplified.  Delicious and quite easy really!

25 buttery round crackers
4 slices of sourdough bread
6 TBS butter, melted
8 thin slices of deli ham
8 ounces of emmenthaler cheese, grated (about 2 cups, Swiss)
4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I like to use free range chicken)
fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 large free range eggs
2 TBS Dijon mustard
100g of plain flour (about 1 cup)

Preheat the oven 225*C/425*F/ gas mark 7.  Have ready a large baking tray with a lip.  Stir together about 1 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of black pepper in a small bowl.

Put the crackers into a food processor and blitz until they are coarsely ground.  Dump into a bowl.  Do the same with the bread, dumping it into the same bowl.  Pour the melted butter over all and toss together.  Spread the crumb mixture out over the baking tray.  Bake them in the hot oven, stirring them from time to time, until golden brown.  This can take anywhere between 3 to 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and place in a shallow bowl.  Set the tray aside.

Wash your chicken breasts, pat dry and then cut a deep pocket in the thickest part of the breast, with a sharp knife, making an opening of about 3 inches, sliding the knife carefully inside to create the cavity without cutting through the meat to the back or the bottom.  Lay your slices of ham out on a board.  Top each slice with 1/8th of the grated cheese (about 1/4 cup), then roll the ham tightly around it to cover the cheese completely.  Stuff two of these ham rolls in each cavity of the chicken.

Beat the eggs, together with the mustard,  in a shallow bowl.  Place the flour in another shallow bowl.  You should have three shallow bowls laid out.  Place them in this order:  Flour, Eggs and then finally bread crumbs.  Season each chicken breast all over with some of the salt and pepper mix.  Roll each in the flour, then dip into the egg to coat, finally rolling each in the toasted crumbs, pressing the crumbs on to help them adhere.  Place them onto a clean baking sheet, when done, leaving a bit of space between each.  (At this point you could refrigerate them until you are ready to bake them  if you wished.)

Place them into the heated oven and bake for 10 minutes at the higher temperature.  Reduce the oven heat to 200*C/400*F/ gas mark 6, and bake for a further 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown and the chicken juices run clear when it is pierced with a fork.  Transfer to a platter and tent with foil.  Allow to rest for five minutes before serving.