Chicken and Mushroom Gnocchi Bake/Mushroom stock

Gosh the weather in Sydney has been dismal. Honestly I think we've had about two years' worth of rain in as many weeks.

It leaves you wanting to eat warm comfort food.

Last night my daughter requested pasta. I couldn't face a bolognese or a spaghetti and meatballs meal. I had some gnocchi in the freezer so I decided on a gnocchi bake with chicken, bacon and mushrooms.

Once I got started I realised I probably didn't have quite enough mushrooms....what to do?

Then I remembered that on one of my favourite cooking TV shows The Cook and the Chef Simon would use ground dried mushrooms to add flavour( though he might have used the word depth) to vegetarian cooking and stock. Well I had some dried mushrooms so I threw them in the spice/coffee grinder and ground them up, added them to some boiling water and made some rich mushroom stock which I added to the sauce. Perfect!

Chicken and Mushroom Gnocchi bake
1 500g pack of potato gnocchi (or make your own)
1 chicken breast diced
1 onion diced
3 slices of bacon sliced
1 cup of mushrooms sliced
Italian herbs (your combo of garlic, basil, rosemary, oregano etc)
1/4 cup of dried mushrooms (ground)
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup of cream
1 cup of grated cheese (we used  a Parmesan and tasty/cheddar combo)

1. In a pan soften onion in oil. Add chicken and brown.
2. Add mushrooms and bacon and herbs and cook till bacon cooked but not browned.
3. Combine dried mushrooms and boiling water and stir. Add to the pan and let simmer about 10 minutes till it reduces and chicken cooked.
4. Meanwhile prepare gnocchi as per directions on pack.
5. Add cream to sauce and stir through gnocchi.
6. Pour into casserole dish and top with cheese.

7. Bake in moderate oven about 30 minutes till browned.
Enjoy!
(I added some chopped parsley because it wasn't photographing well at all!)

Chicken pies

A couple of weeks ago I did a big freezer cook-up. Sadly we've eaten most of the contents now and I need to start fresh.

Anyway one of the things I made was chicken pies. I made a chicken and mushroom and a chicken and asparagus. These were very cheaty pies because I bought frozen pie shells and used pre-made puff pastry.

I cooked the basic mix - chicken, onion, herbs and separated it adding mushrooms to half and asparagus to the other. Then I sprinkled in flour, a dash of wine and cream.

The filling for two pies took about 20 minutes. I filled the pre-made pastry cases. topped with pastry, brushed with egg and sprinkled with poppy seeds. Each pie cost about $3-4. The local chicken shop sells the same size chicken pies at $12 each.

Chicken and asparagus pie

Chicken and mushroom pie

It's a simple method rather than a recipe that anyone can follow.

And when dinner time rolls around a couple of weeks later it's a very quick and easy job to throw the pie in the oven and add some sides.

Are we going on a picnic?

Well I wish I knew the answer to that question. Last night I asked my family what they wanted to do on Sunday. Shall we go on the boat? Shall we go to town? Shall we go to a National Park? Anyone got a different idea?

When we went to bed last night no one had really given me an answer. Helpful, right? So today my husband is working which makes planning impossible. (It's a very annoying aspect of his job actually that he often seems to work on sunny Saturdays).

So what do I do about the possible need for a picnic lunch tomorrow? Chicken wraps are the answer.

Today while my daughter and I were having lunch I tossed some chicken tenders in with the contents of a pack of southern fried coating mix and baked in the oven for 25 minutes. I like this coating because it doesn't use oil or anything else to coat the chicken, so it's actually low in fat but gives you that fried chicken taste. It also works really well on chicken legs.

Now we have crumbed chicken tenders ready to go. If we end up going on a picnic I'll use the above ingredients to make chicken wraps not unlike those from a famous fast food chain - good mayo, lettuce, tomato and tortillas and we're good to go.. Should we decide to do something else the chicken will be great for school and work lunches this week.

We can fill out the picnic with fruit, crackers and some dip. Simple. Inexpensive. Tasty.

What's your favourite picnic stand-by?

Poached Chicken Breasts.

I used to belong to a web community where one of the women insisted it was super ecomonical to poach chicken breasts on the weekend to use during the week in salads, sandwiches etc.

At the time I couldn't find chicken under $12-13 a kilo so it didn't seem to be ver economical to me. Recently however chicken breasts have regulary been on sale at fruit markets and butchers near me for between $6-7 and I have started doing this myself.

Usually on Sunday I poach a couple of chicken breasts.

Poaching just involves cooking the chicken in water and vinegar with some herbs. I usually use white vinegar, peppercorns and bayleaves. Simple! (Though sadly not overly attractive!)

So how do we use the chicken?

Sunday night I make chicken pasta salad for my daughter's lunchbox (or I have her do it). We usually make enough for a couple of lunches. The rest I turn into simple chicken salad - my version has celery and dill through it and we use that on sandwiches through to Wednesday. For about $4 we get the protein for 9 lunches which is pretty good value ie 3 days worth for 3 people.

Other ways we've used it:
Chicken bruchetta sandwich

Vietnamese spring rolls
Chicken and corn soup
Chicken and mushroom pasta

Anyway, it's an idea you might like to try for yourself.

Florentine Stuffed Mushrooms

I really love mushrooms and stuffed mushrooms are the bomb! At my local shopping mall I saw some interesting stuffed mushrooms lately and decided to do my own version.

These combine several things we love in our house; chicken, spinach, cheese and mushrooms

This isn't a recipe as much as a concept I suppose because you could use lamb mince or beef or pork mince and it would be just as yummy. I used Swiss cheese to top my husband and my mushroom but tasty cheese on my daughter's. I think this is a yummy adaptable recipe that is full of flavour and low in carbs.

Florentine Stuffed Mushrooms

I combined chicken mince and herbs and pressed into the field mushrooms - obviously I removed their stems first.

I added the stems to my version of creamed spinach - spinach, chopped tomato, chopped mushroom, nutmeg, Parmesan - but I used cream cheese instead of cream. I did that so the mix would be thicker and not runny. I popped it on top of the chicken, added some Swiss cheese and baked for about 25 minutes.

Super yummy and inexpensive dinner.

Take one chicken...

One of my goals this year is to reduce waste in mysydneykitchen. This of course makes good economic sense but I also read some incredibly alarming statistic recently about the amount of food Australians throw away as scraps and rubbish, mainly due to mismanagement. I am going to say it was 20%, off the top of my head, but I suspect it was a higher figure than that read.

So my lovely husband was making paella for dinner. This is one of his specialities and we gave him a new paella pan for Christmas to encourage him to make it often.

He needed some bone in chicken pieces so we took a chicken and he removed the wings, thigh and lefts to put in the paella. I must say it came out very well. He used mussels this time which I am not a huge fan of generally but they were very nice in this dish.

We then removed the breasts from the chicken and I poached those with some dill and bay leaves. We will  use the chicken in sandwiches over the next day or so.

Finally I took the frame and popped it in the slow cooker with some herbs, carrot, celery and water to make some chicken stock.

Now we have a fresh batch of stock to use next time we have paella or perhaps in our next risotto. We could use it in soup of course but we're not really having soup weather right now in Sydney, still we'll be ready if we need to be.