Cold Comfort Food
(apologies to Stella Gibbons - there's nothing nasty in this wood shed!)
It’s cold outside, there is snow on the ground and more snow on the way predicted
– bleeeuuurggh – the Le Bretons are not snow fans, so there is only one thing to
be done, as hibernating is not a possibility & that is cook & bake comfort food.
So what’s a cooking & a baking at Chateau Le Breton today?
Well as the obligatory loaf of bread (I bake that almost daily), I have just removed a tray of toffee cake from the oven (recipe in the cakes section of the site), for the boys lunchboxes.
Thanks to some serious bargain buying in Sainsburys I am planning on making a very large pot of chicken & pheasant casserole to have over two days.
The chicken was on special and the pheasant was too good a bargain to miss. Pheasant is a very strong tasting meat, and is ideal to mix with chicken or turkey, as little pheasant (& you don’t get much meat on them) goes a long way in a casserole or pie
filling.
I have the pheasant roasting in the top oven and I have a large chicken, cooking away in the slow cooker.
I am a late convert to slow cookers & I highly recommend them. I shall be adding several slow cooker recipes, mainly puddings and cakes, to the site over the next few weeks.
I’ve also added some veggies, water & seasoning to the chicken in slow cooker so that I will have a delicious stock to form the base of the casserole tomorrow. I will also be adding all the pheasant ‘juices’ that will be in the bottom of the roasting tin. Once the chicken is cooked, I will strip the meat off the chicken and throw the bones back in the slow cooker and another litre of boiling water and cook some more just to make the stock really flavoursome.
I suppose this is a good time to point out that there are no stocks or gravies on sale in the UK that are suitable for the diet. Seriously there aren’t. Almost every new member of Respectrum (www.respectrum.co.uk) thinks they have found one, but gravy/stock & diet friendly cheese substitute are not available, they are the holy grail of the diet!
So whatever stock or gravy you are using, unless it’s been made by you from scratch, I am afraid isn’t suitable for the diet & needs to be binned. That goes for any dairy free cheese too – sorry!
A comfort food day wouldn’t be complete with out a good old fashioned pudding , so this afternoon I will be using my other slow cooler –yes I like slow cookers so much and find them so useful and cheap to use that I have two – to make some delicious rice pudding, which is the ideal cold day comforter.
All that talk of food combined with the smell of pheasant cooking has made me really hungry so I am off to have an early lunch :)
– bleeeuuurggh – the Le Bretons are not snow fans, so there is only one thing to
be done, as hibernating is not a possibility & that is cook & bake comfort food.
So what’s a cooking & a baking at Chateau Le Breton today?
Well as the obligatory loaf of bread (I bake that almost daily), I have just removed a tray of toffee cake from the oven (recipe in the cakes section of the site), for the boys lunchboxes.
Thanks to some serious bargain buying in Sainsburys I am planning on making a very large pot of chicken & pheasant casserole to have over two days.
The chicken was on special and the pheasant was too good a bargain to miss. Pheasant is a very strong tasting meat, and is ideal to mix with chicken or turkey, as little pheasant (& you don’t get much meat on them) goes a long way in a casserole or pie
filling.
I have the pheasant roasting in the top oven and I have a large chicken, cooking away in the slow cooker.
I am a late convert to slow cookers & I highly recommend them. I shall be adding several slow cooker recipes, mainly puddings and cakes, to the site over the next few weeks.
I’ve also added some veggies, water & seasoning to the chicken in slow cooker so that I will have a delicious stock to form the base of the casserole tomorrow. I will also be adding all the pheasant ‘juices’ that will be in the bottom of the roasting tin. Once the chicken is cooked, I will strip the meat off the chicken and throw the bones back in the slow cooker and another litre of boiling water and cook some more just to make the stock really flavoursome.
I suppose this is a good time to point out that there are no stocks or gravies on sale in the UK that are suitable for the diet. Seriously there aren’t. Almost every new member of Respectrum (www.respectrum.co.uk) thinks they have found one, but gravy/stock & diet friendly cheese substitute are not available, they are the holy grail of the diet!
So whatever stock or gravy you are using, unless it’s been made by you from scratch, I am afraid isn’t suitable for the diet & needs to be binned. That goes for any dairy free cheese too – sorry!
A comfort food day wouldn’t be complete with out a good old fashioned pudding , so this afternoon I will be using my other slow cooler –yes I like slow cookers so much and find them so useful and cheap to use that I have two – to make some delicious rice pudding, which is the ideal cold day comforter.
All that talk of food combined with the smell of pheasant cooking has made me really hungry so I am off to have an early lunch :)
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