Pasta Royale

When there's not much time and/or we're short on supplies there's a 'dish' we all like.  Amongst other things it is very quick to make as well. (Apologies to the easily terrified amongst you - Sous Chef J was making use of his newly found werewolf gloves and thought they added something to the above pic!)

So how did we make this simple dish?  Easy! We gathered together pasta (today we used Salute Gluten free spaghetti), frozen peas, frozen sweetcorn (or you can use drained corn from a tin), grated cheese, a knob of butter and some tomato ketchup.  Cooked the pasta per instructions... and 4 minutes before the boiling time was done, added the peas and sweetcorn (you can add both/one or none of these depending on supplies/likes). Brought the pan back to boil and then cooked for remaining pasta cooking time.


Once we drained the pasta/veg mix (we used a sieve) we added the butter to the cooking pan and swirled it around a bit to melt it before adding the now drained pasta/veg.  Then we mixed the melted butter through, added a handful of grated cheese (we used mature cheddar but parmesan works well too), a dollop of ketchup and some freshly ground black pepper.  Combined it all together and served.

This can be made dairy free by omitting the butter and cheese - in this case, use a little oil and some chopped and sweated garlic in place of them. 

Chicken Zorba

This recipe comes from a pal of ours.  She had a recipe card with it on but I have no idea where it came from originally.  It's basic and tasty and a good summer dish... although can, of course, be eaten throughout the year.

When we found some pitta bread in the Sainsbury's Free From aisle the other week, we decided to give this recipe a go as a gluten free option.  As ever, Sous Chef J gathered the ingredients.

500g chicken fillets (we used thighs) diced
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon coriander powder
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
2 limes, juiced
one small carton houmous


one small carton greek yogurt (we used a few spoons of home made natural yogurt)
Pitta bread parcels (we used Sainsbury's Gluten Free)
Tomato and cucumber salad to serve

We marinaded the diced chicken in the lime juice and spice mixtures for 20-30 minutes. We did this by combining the lime juice and the three spices in an old takeaway container, then adding the chicken pieces, adding the lid and shaking well.

Whilst the chicken marinaded, we prepared the salad and combined the houmous and yogurt to make a dip.

Once the chicken was ready to cook a tablespoon of oil was added to a frying pan and the chicken was fried until cooked thoroughly.

We then warmed and split the pitta bread pockets to serve with the chicken and salad with houmous/yogurt dip.

Sous Chef J couldn't wait to enjoy the fruits of our labours!

Avocado and Egg on toast

Struck by how many of our posts involve chocolate we decided to try to find some of the (many) recipes we have that don't contain the stuff!  Breakfast dishes seemed a good place to start and I was reminded of a lovely, simple dish we used to have a while back.

The ingredients were gathered together - avocado (ripe), slice of Genius gluten free seeded bread and one egg.






Then, whilst the bread was being toasted, the avocado was mashed and the egg was fried.

Once the avocado was mashed, it was spread on the warm slice of toast.

After covering the toast with the avocado, the fried egg was added and our healthy, quick and tasty snack was ready to eat.

If you want to make this a more 'hearty' meal, then adding some fried bacon works very well indeed!