Tag Archives: chorizo

Chorizo and kale cheesy gnocchi

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I adapted this from a Delicious magazine recipe. There is 200g of kale packed into this recipe. And you could substitute spinach if you wanted to.

This is really tasty, wonderful  autumnal dish that’s easy and fast. And if you have a cast iron frying pan that can go in the oven, you can cut down on the pots and pans needed.

Serves four.

You need

200g curly kale or spinach. If using kale take the time to shred it into smallish pieces and cut out the bigger stems.

500g potato gnocchi

1 medium onion, finely chopped

Olive oil for frying

125g approx of chorizo – a bit more if you really like it. Slice in half length ways then finely slice so you end up with half moon shapes.

200g passata

a handful of basil leaves

100g grated or sliced mozzarella

Method

Oven to 200C. Bring a very large pan of water to the boil with a dash of salt in it and drop the gnocchi and kale in, together. Cook for just 30 seconds, drain into a colander and rinse through with  cold water.

Gently heat the olive oil in a frying pan (if it can go in the oven make sure it is quite a large one that can hold the whole dish), now gently cook the onion until it’s soft. Add the chorizo for a few minutes, until the onion takes on the colour of the chorizo. Now add the passata and the basil and cook for three minutes.

Add the gnocchi and kale into the frying pan if it will fit, and mix to combine everything; if not transfer everything to an oven proof dish of about 1.5litres. Mix everything through well. Add some ground pepper (I think the chorizo has enough salt but add a bit more if you like). Sprinkle over the mozzarella or place the slices on top and put in the oven (uncovered) for a scant 15 minutes until golden and bubbly.

 

A simple paella

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Spanish folk: don’t judge me too harshly. I know this isn’t authentic. But it’s still delicious.

I first ate paella when I went to Spain with my homegirls, aged 18. What a holiday we had. Insane. Six girls in a non-tourist region of Spain…there was this little restaurant which made absolutely fantastic paella. And chips. The best chips and the best paella. I absolutely adore dishes that you can eat with just a folk, and not have to worry about gristle or bones or fat or nasty bits. Okay so we did have to shell the huge prawns that sat atop their rice deathbed, but stuff like that doesn’t scare me. This recipe doesn’t use shell on prawns so you can sit, cross-legged on the sofa and eat this with one hand, preferably with a fork in it.

Before this, I had never attempted to make paella at home. It seemed so scary, and it involved paella pans that you had to treat with love and care, lest they rust. Then I saw this recipe in Donna Hay’s Simple Dinners and we made it and we loved it. My children aren’t so mad on it, but the beauty of this dish (and oh there are so many beauties to it) is that you can pick out the bits you don’t like and eat those you do.

This is the perfect dish for when you don’t really know what to eat (meat? fish?) and don’t have much time, but still want something relatively healthy and comforting. If you ate everything in it you could get those ‘seafood pie’ mixes from the frozen compartments.  We don’t because my partner can’t eat bi-valves and those things usually have tons of mussels in them. But we did, as sharp eyed readers may note, add squid rings into this one.

Don’t be tempted to use chicken breast meat, it’s all about the tasty thigh meat here.

What you need for four good portions:

1 red onion which you have sliced

1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes (leave out for those that don’t like it)

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

Half or so of a chorizo, it really depends how much you like it and what you’ve got

4-6 chicken thighs, de-boned, skin off, made all nice so you can just eat them without fear of scary stuff and cut into bite-sized chunks

250g short grain rice (no expensive paella rice, you don’t need it, but it must be short grain not wild or basmati or anything healthy, save that for another time)

1 litre of chicken stock

A quantity of raw prawns, again depends how much you like them. We use about 150g

A handful of coriander leaves, chopped up

200g or so of cherry tomatoes, halved

Lemon wedges

What you do:

Heat a large, deep non-stick frying pan over a good strong heat. add the onion, chilli if using, paprika and chorizo and cook for 3-5 minutes until it’s all golden looking. Now add the chicken and cook for five minutes, turning it so that all sides get lightly browned. Add the rice and stir until all coated, now add the stock and bring to the boil and cook for ten minutes. Add the prawns and cook for a further five minutes until they are pink and the rice is tender. Serve with the coriander sprinkled on top and the cherry tomatoes and a lemon wedge each.

Chorizo, courgette gnocchi

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Gnocchi – aka potato dumplings – are big in northern Italy. My paternal grandmother, from Parma, used to make them and I would help her by swooshing them along the prongs of a fork, which is how you get the pattern on them if you make them at home. She made it look so easy so of course I thought it was easy.

It isn’t. I don’t try to make them now as it’s so dependent on things like ambient temperature, how much water the potatoes take up. Well that’s how I’ve found it anyway. Hard and with unpredictable results. So gnocchi is not something I try to make.

I originally got this from the now defunct Easy Living and, as time has gone on, I’ve adapted it and made sure it has more veg. My children love this.

 

This dish is so easy but so delicious. I thoroughly recommend it. It serves four.

This is what you need:

Olive oil

120g chorizo – but I never weigh it and just use what I have/fancy

1 clove of garlic, crushed

3-4 courgettes, julienned (I use a peeler from Lakeland), easy as.

350-500g gnocchi

Basil leaves to serve (not essential)

grated Parmesan.

This is what you do:

Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a large frying pan, everything in the ingredients list will end up in this pan so make sure it’s big enough. Add the chorizo and throw it around the pan for about 2 mins.

Have a pan of boiling, salted water on the go.

Now to the frying pan, add the garlic and courgettes and cook, stirring, for about 3 mins. Meanwhile cook the gnocchi according to the instructions (1-2 mins usually), drain when ready and then mix into the frying pan with the courgettes, chorizo etc. Mix and serve with sprinkled Parmesan and basil.

Chorizo and red lentil soup, just what you need for a cold winter’s day

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Beautiful, delicious, simple.

This soup recipe is adapted from one in the excellent Donna Hay’s Fresh, Fast, Simple. It doesn’t look like much and the first time I made it I thought “oh dear” when I saw it but then I tasted it and belies its meagre ingredients. I eat it with a poached egg in it, which I poach separately and pop into the soup just before serving, just for a little extra protein sustenance.

  1. 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
  2. One finely chopped onion
  3. Some chorizo, up to you how much, I use about so much (6″ of a small circumference chorizo) and I slice it and then half the slices so you end up with half moons.
  4. A few sprigs of thyme leaves
  5. 150g red lentils
  6. 1.25L of chicken of vegetable stock, stock cubes are fine. I use Kallo Organic
  7. Sea salt and pepper

Heat  the oil in the saucepan and add the onion and chorizo. Fry gently until the onion is soft. Now add the thyme (I add the whole stalk and the leaves come off and then I fish out the stalks at the end, do pick off the leaves if you want to), lentils and stock. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

That’s it. The lentils should have started to break down. Taste it and see if it needs salt and pepper, it may do depending on how salty your stock was.

This serves about four people.

With poached egg in. It sounds weird but I promise it works. Unless of course you don’t like eggs.