Back in the Kitchen...

Currently Listening to "Soul with a Capital S" by Tower of Power

After all of my recent eatting out I got back in the kitchen to cook up a meal for a mate so I went back to my good old friend "Easy Mushroom Pasta" which I featured over a year ago now (with a couple of alterations).

This time I sliced and baked the mushrooms at 200c for 4-mins, and added strips of chicken into the sauce. As I've already shown you how to do the sauce I'll blog about prepairing the chicken as I alway have mates asking me how to do it. Now I learnt this wat whilst working in a gastro pub so I know none of the technical words for bits of the chicken so please bare with me...!

How to butterfly and cook a chicken breast!

• Take your breast and flip it over
• Chop off the flappy bit of meat as shown below


• Slice the breast open (as shown below again) and open up

• Coat in crack pepper (or what ever you want to put on it)
• Cook in a pre-heated oven at 200c for 15-20mins

My knife is a bit blunt so it really hashed up cutting it into strips!

Anyway this was the finished product

Got to get to bed though have a lot of portfolio work to get through in the morning!

P.S - I forgot to mention in my last blog GBK have a buy one get one free offer at the mo (mon to thurs - runs out the end of the month) click here to print the voucher.

Pre-run food: The ugly duckling of the food world!

Currently listening to: "Against all the Odds" - Phil Collins

As mentioned in previous blogs I'm doing a half marathon in October. Well training is in full swing now and I can comfortably run longer distances, all I need to do is bring the pace up to race speed... I'm at my parents this week so I have nothing to do so I'm going to have a go at a 9 mile run. When I was younger I was a member in the GBR Youth Sailing Squads and this taught me all I need to know about pre-event nutrition so I'm applying the same rules to my running, so for my lunch today I made a high slow release carb meal with a bit of saturated fat to help.

The theory is if I have this meal about 90-mins before I go on the run the carbs will start releasing energy shortly after I start and will keep releasing them throughout the run. I'll also take some bananas with me as a source of quick release carb.

Anyway enough of the nutrition babble...

Bacon, Mushroom, Chilli & Tomato Pasta


Now it doesn't take a genius to workout how i made this one!

Fry all together whilst the pasta is cooking!

Anyway, my 90-mins is up. Better go on this run :(

Easy Mushroom Pasta

Currently listening to: "At the River" - Groove Armada

It's Sunday, my cupboards are nearly empty and the corner shop is shut. So I routed around the kitchen to she what I could put together to make a decent lunch.

This dish is really easy and pretty quick to make as it needs nearly no preparation.

Ingredients

100g Pasta
1 can of condensed cream of mushroom soup
A handful of chopped mushroom
A small bit of garlic (any form is ok, paste, roasted flake or fresh cloves)
Two splashes of white wine
Mixed herbs
As much or as little cheese as you want

How to make it

1. Start cooking your pasta which ever way you prefer; I usual cook on the hob with (obviously) boiling water, a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt.

2. Fry the mushrooms and add garlic once they start to brown.

3. Once all the mushrooms are brown lower the heat and stir in the condensed soup. DON’T NOT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE TIN TELLING YOU TO ADD WATER!

4. Add your white wine and herb and continue stirring until the sauce looses all the lumps.

5. Drain pasta, and top with sauce, cheese and another sprinkle of herbs.

6. If you’re lucky enough to have ham or bacon in your fridge you can always add it to give your meal some more flavour.