Chicken and Tomato Risotto

I overheard my parents talking the other day...they were wondering what they’re going to do when I leave home for good. Food-wise that is! I’m sure they’d love to have their house back; it would be clean, tidy and quiet. But they can’t deny one thing – they eat much better when I’m around!
We’ve nicknamed Mum’s cooking cordon bleu because it couldn’t be further from the truth! She’s well aware that she only has a few recipes in her repertoire that don’t involve packets of frozen food but having said that what she can cook isn’t half bad. When she's not cooking fish fingers it's probably a Chicken Supreme or a Bolognase!

Dad’s a much better cook and he’s probably where I get my cooking skills from. Every now and then he’ll decide to cook a Chinese feast from scratch, or whip up a curry. He’s also not half bad at puddings! It’s just a shame he’s not in the kitchen more often when I’m not around.

I don’t think my Mum is half as bad as we make her out to be. I think a lot of being a good cook is about having the confidence to try new things and the imagination to create something different when faced with the same old ingredients in the cupboard. A couple of weeks ago I cooked a sausage and asparagus risotto for the first time. It was completely unplanned and was based on what I could find in the fridge, but it worked so well we’ve tried it a few times and it now has pride of place on my blog. This recipe isn’t too dissimilar. Not only is it a risotto recipe, but it uses up all of those ingredients you usually have lurking at the back of the fridge; chicken breasts, tomatoes, stock, tomato puree and rice. Nothing here – bar the basil if you don’t grow your own – is special or fancy, they are every day flavours that when combined together make something really quite special!

Lentil Lasagne

I am not a big fan of meat substitutes such as veggie-'mince.' As a meat eater, I just don't think you can replicate meat, nor do I think you should!

This lentil lasagne, in my opinion, is BETTER than a meaty version! The textures are perfect, there is lots of lovely fresh veg, and the flavours are so vibrant that it makes for a brilliant sharing dish in the centre of the table. At just £1 a portion its a brilliant way to impress family and friends!

Give it a go and let me know what you think of this veggie alternative to an Italian classic!

Lumaconi alla Vodka

The idea of adding Vodka to a tomato and bacon based pasta sauce did not seem strange to me today when I decided to give it a try, but after searching into the history of the dish, I struggled to find where the idea originated from.


Even Wikipedia was no help, giving numerous possibilities of how the dish developed:
According to Pasquale Bruno, Jr., author of The Ultimate Pasta Cookbook, penne alla vodka was invented at Dante, a restaurant in Italy. Other historians of the culinary arts recognize James Doty, a graduate of Columbia University, as the inventor of penne a la vodka. Paula Franzese, an American law professor, has asserted that her father Luigi Franzese, born in Naples, Italy in 1931, devised the first version of penne alla vodka, which he called penne alla Russia because of the addition of the vodka to his tomato and cream sauce base. He first prepared the dish table side for patrons at the New York City restaurant Orsini in the early 1970s. (This seems the more recognised version of events with other websites I stumbled across stating the same!) The Williams Sonoma Essentials of Italian cookbook says that it was invented in the 1980s by a Roman chef for a vodka company that wanted to popularize its product in Italy.

Wherever the dish originated from, this is my version! Do give it a try and let me know what you think!