Ingredients (serves 2)

2 boneless chicken breasts, each cut into small pieces

Fettuccine for 2 (we actually used tagliatelle – follow the instructions on the packet for serving amounts)

A good slosh of Marsala wine

125g mascarpone cheese

A handful of baby portobello mushrooms, sliced (we had ‘normal’ mushrooms to use up, and these worked fine)

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 handful chives, chopped

A knob of butter

2 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method

1. In a large non-stick pan over medium high heat add olive oil and sauté chicken for a few minutes until browned. It is okay if it doesn’t cook all the way through, as it will be finished off in the sauce with pasta later.

2. Whilst the chicken is cooking, place a large pot of salted water on high and bring to a boil. Add the pasta. Once browned, remove chicken to a plate and cover to keep warm.

3. Using the same pan over medium heat add chopped onions, two-pinches of salt and sauté for four minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for two-minutes. Add the butter, mushrooms and sauté for three-to-four-minutes. Increase heat to medium high adding Marsala wine and cook until reduced by half.

4. In a small bowl combine mascarpone and mustard and mix well, then add to pan. Reduce heat to medium and fold until dissolved into a creamy sauce. Add chicken back to sauce and stir to coat chicken with sauce and cook for a few minutes more. Drain the pasta once cooked and then add it to the pan, along with the chives.

5. Serve and enjoy!

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Ingredients

Olive oil, for cooking

2 large red onions, finely chopped

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped

400g red lentils

800ml vegetable stock – plus extra boiling water to avoid sticking

6 skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces

2-3 tablespoons madras curry paste (or use a milder one if you prefer)

300g baby spinach leaves

Sea salt and black pepper to taste (we don’t usually add additional salt)

Thick live probiotic yoghurt, to serve (optional)

Method

1. Heat a little olive oil in a pan, add the onions and garlic and cook for 4-5 minutes until softened.

2. Add the lentils and a little of the stock and simmer. Keep adding small amounts of stock bit by bit as the lentils cook and soften, as if you were cooking a risotto.

3. Once the lentils are starting to soften and break down, add the chicken and curry paste and stir well. Continue simmering and adding the stock until the chicken has cooked through. If the lentils start to stick to the pan at this point, just add a little extra boiling water to loosen it. We have found that we usually add at least 300ml extra boiling water as they do tend to stick quite a bit.

4. Add the baby spinach at the last minute, season with salt and pepper and stir until the spinach has wilted.

5. Serve immediately, with a dollop of yoghurt on top, if you like. Enjoy!

Edit: Want to make your own curry paste?

Little One absolutely loves this curry! We’ve been doing Baby Led Weaning with her since she was almost 6 months, and we must have tried this with her a couple of months in. We didn’t want to use a jar of curry paste with her because of the salt levels, so we made our own curry paste using a recipe from The Baby Led Weaning Cookbook. It’s so delicious! She loves naan bread too so we always serve this with naan and a little bit of rice, which helps to make this go further too.

This curry paste will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks. You can either use ready ground spices or grind your own in a grinder (or use a pestle and mortar). We usually leave out the chilli at the moment, but you can make this as hot as you like!

1 fresh mild/medium chilli pepper, deseeded (optional)

5-6 garlic cloves, finely chopped or grated

2cm (3/4″) piece of fresh ginger, grated

4 tbsp ground coriander seeds

4 tbsp ground cumin seeds

2 tbsp mustard seeds, crushed

1 tbsp chilli powder (optional)

1 tbsp turmeric

1 tbsp paprika (we use sweet smoked paprika)

Olive oil

Put all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Add as much oil as you need to get the desired consistency.

Post updated 6th May 2017.

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Finding really tasty but healthy meals can often be tricky. I found ‘The Diet for Food Lovers’ in a bargain bin in TKMaxx, and it’s a fantastic book full of delicious recipes that don’t make you feel like you’re scrimping on flavour! This recipe is fast becoming one of our favourites – if you’re not home too late then you can easily make it on a weeknight, which is always useful. If you don’t use all of the pesto it keeps in the fridge for up to 5 days, so it’s good for another meal too!

Ingredients (serves 4)

500g baby new potatoes, halved
2 red peppers, deseeded and cut into bite-size chunks
200g cherry tomatoes
3 courgettes, trimmed and cut into bite-size chunks
4 garlic cloves
Small handful rosemary leaves, finely chopped
Small handful thyme leaves, finely chopped
4 skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
Olive oil (or groundnut oil)

For the pesto
Large handful basil leaves
1 tablespoon pine nuts
30g Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon olive oil

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6. Place the potatoes in a large, shallow, non-stick ovenproof dish and cover with foil. Cook for 20 minutes.

2. Remove the potatoes from the oven and add the red peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, garlic, rosemary and thyme. Stir, then return to the oven and roast (uncovered) for a further 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Stir occasionally while roasting to prevent sticking.

3. While the vegetables are roasting, make the pesto. Place the basil, pine nuts, Parmesan and olive oil in a food processor and blitz to a stiff paste.

4. Heat a little olive or groundnut oil in a pan over a medium heat. Add the chicken and stir-fry for 4-6 minutes or until it is cooked through. At the last minute, add the fresh pesto, stir and cover until you are ready to serve. Turn off the heat.

5. Peel the roasted garlic cloves, squash or roughly chop and mix back into the vegetables.

6. Mix the pesto chicken in with the vegetables before serving. Enjoy!

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This recipe started out as squash, ricotta and sage pasta bake – a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website. I thought this sounded really tasty, but the comments at the bottom of the page were pretty mixed and many people had added their own ingredients! So I’ve done that, but a bit more radically I suppose! You could leave out the chicken for a veggie dish. This serves 4 people.

Ingredients

1 squash, weighing about 1kg, chopped into chunks
2 tbsp olive oil
200ml tub crème fraîche
50g parmesan, finely grated
250g tub ricotta
Small bunch of sage leaves, chopped
2 chicken breasts, diced
Nutmeg
Chilli flakes (as generous as you want to be with these!)
A handful of mushrooms
A handful of pine nuts
1 red onion, finely chopped
Ground black pepper
Pasta (shape of your choice – allow 50g per person)

Method

1. Heat the oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Toss the squash together with the olive oil in a roasting tin. Roast the squash for 30 mins until soft and golden. While the squash is roasting, mix the crème fraîche and ricotta with half the Parmesan, then add the sage and the chilli flakes.Mix well and set aside.

2. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the chicken. Chop the onion and add to the pan, cooking until softened. Add the mushrooms and season.

3. Put the pasta on to boil. Remove the squash from the oven and add to the pan along with the pine nuts, mixing well.

4. Just before the pasta has cooked, add the ricotta mixture to the chicken and add a good grating of nutmeg. Mix well. Drain the pasta and combine all the ingredients. Put it in a dish and cover with the rest of the parmesan.

5. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until the parmesan is crisp and golden. Serve with some salad and enjoy!

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Another of the new recipes that we have tried out this week is Nigella Lawson’s Chicken with Tomatoes and Peppers. This is a super easy recipe to make and it’s really tasty, and you could cook it on a school night which is always great! I also think that leftovers would make an excellent lunch too, or just pop it in the freezer for another day. We served this with orzo pasta, but it would go well with green veg or some crusty bread.

The original recipe states that you should use chicken thigh fillets – we couldn’t find any but bought thighs with the bones. Tom spent ages (and I mean ages!) removing the meat from the bones before cooking, and he has told me to say ‘Do not do this!’ Either cook the chicken with the bone, or use breast fillets – but trying to remove the meat from the bone is really more hassle than it is worth! We couldn’t find a jar of flame-roasted peppers in our local supermarket, so roasted a couple of red pointed sweet peppers instead.

Ingredients (serves 3-4)

1 x 15ml tablespoon garlic oil
1 small brown onion, finely chopped
500g chicken thigh fillets, cut into bitesize pieces
1 tsp dried oregano
2 x 15ml tablespoons marsala
1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes, plus water to rinse out can
1 tsp sea salt flakes, or 1/2 tsp pouring salt
1 x 290g jar (190g drained weight) flame roasted red peppers (or use 2 peppers and roast yourself)

Method

1. If you are roasting peppers, heat the oven and chop the peppers into medium sized pieces. Place on a tray and cover with olive oil before roasting.

2. Pour the garlic oil into a pan and cook the onion until soft, stirring frequently. Add the chicken along with the oregano and turn in the hot pan. Add the marsala and watch it bubble up, before promptly adding the tomatoes and the salt.

3. Half-fill the empty can with water and pour it into the pan, swilling out as much of the tomato as you can.

4. Drain the peppers and snip with scissors into bitesize pieces (or remove your roasted peppers from the over). Add to the pan and then bring to the boil before turning down the heat and leaving to cook at a steady simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes until the sauce has thickened.

5. As the pan is simmering, cook the orzo pasta. When the pasta is done and the chicken cooked through, serve in bowls or serve straight from the pan at the table. Enjoy!

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As many of you know, I’m always on the look-out for new recipes to try – especially if they are healthy and low-cost! We went to Edinburgh for my birthday earlier in the month and I spotted this recipe in the Observer Food Monthly magazine (click the link for the online version). Tom made it for dinner one night last week and it was so easy and really delicious! When he got home he realised that he had forgotten to buy yoghurt for the cobbler, so we improvised by using a splash of semi-skimmed milk and some grated cheddar cheese and they tasted really good. As I’m not a huge fan of mustard, we grated a little nutmeg into the cobbler mix.

The author of this recipe, Miss South, used leftover cooked chicken for this recipe – we just used 3 chicken breasts as we didn’t have any pre-cooked chicken. This recipe is so easy that it can be made on a weeknight, which is always a bonus! We had some leftover too so that was boxed up and packed away in the freezer for another day.

Ingredients

1 leek, chopped
1/2 brown onion, chopped
1 punnet mushrooms, sliced
25g butter (plus 10g for sweating the vegetables)
25g plain flour
285ml milk
285ml stock
2 tsp oil
Cooked chicken (or 3-4 chicken breasts, cut into medium sized pieces)
Worcestershire sauce (or our alternative, Henderson’s Relish)
Salt and pepper
Tarragon (we used mixed herbs because the supermarket was all out of tarragon!)

For the cobbler

200g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mustard powder
2 tsp oil
150ml plain, unsweetened yoghurt

Method

1. Sweat the chopped vegetables in about 10g of the butter until softened (this takes around 10 minutes).

2. Heat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6. While the vegetables are sweating, make your white sauce. Melt the butter in a pan, add in the flour and combine, cooking for 1-2 minutes until the roux looks glossy. Remove from the heat, whisking in the liquid gently to make sure there are no lumps. Return to the heat and bring just to the boil to help it thicken. Cook out on a low heat for about 8-10 minutes.

3. Heat a little oil in a pan and cook the chicken (if using pre-cooked chicken, flake and toss in the pan with the vegetables). Once browned, add the chicken and juices to the vegetables, adding Worcestershire sauce and seasoning. Add the white sauce and herbs, stir well and leave to simmer.

4. Make the cobbler dough by sifting plain flour, baking powder and mustard powder into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and yoghurt, bringing it all together to make a soft, but not sticky dough. Turn out onto a floured surface and cut into rounds.

5. Put the chicken and vegetables into an oven-proof dish and place the cobbler rounds on top. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with some steamed green vegetables and enjoy!

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This does make an excellent mid-week meal and you could also use pasta instead of pastry to make a yummy, creamy pasta bake. And it won’t break the bank either! The recipe below is my adapted version of Jamie’s recipe.

Ingredients

4 x 180g skinless chicken breasts

A knob of butter (leave this out if using bacon or chorizo – see optional ingredients)

Olive oil

A bunch of spring onions

150g button mushrooms

1 heaped tbsp plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 heaped tbsp low fat creme fraiche

300ml chicken stock (I use a stock cube)

A few sprigs of fresh thyme (or a tsp of dried mixed herbs works well too)

1/3 a nutmeg, grated

1 sheet pre-rolled puff pastry

1 egg

Optional ingredients: 2 rashers smoked bacon/100g chorizo, chopped into small pieces/1 leek instead of spring onions

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°c/400°F/Gas mark 6. Cut the chicken into chunks (I use my kitchen scissors for this – so much easier!). Put a lug of olive oil and butter into a hot, large pan. Add the chicken and cook for a few minutes until sealed. If adding bacon or chorizo, wait until the chicken is sealed before adding to pan.

2. Meanwhile, make the stock and then wash and trim the spring onions (or leek) and slice. Cut the button mushrooms in half before adding to the pan with the onions. Leave for 2 minutes before adding 1 heaped tbsps of plain flour and creme fraiche. Stir well.

3. Add the chicken stock and stir again. Add the herbs and the nutmeg, and season. Leave to simmer for 5-10 minutes or so.

4. Pour the mixture into an oven proof dish. Roll out the pastry (luckily, my dish is just the right size for the pastry so I don’t need to do any rolling out) and place on top, tidying up the edges. Add a little decoration if you like! Beat the egg and brush a little over the pastry.

5. Place in the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden. Serve with some steamed vegetables and enjoy!

Post updated 24th June 2016.

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