TWD - Freestyle Mushroom, Herb and Ricotta Tart

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Freestyle Mushroom, Herb and Ricotta Tart.

The base is made of a mix of plain flour and almond meal, blended with herbs, and rolled into a free form shape.

The cooked base is topped with a mixture of ricotta, yoghurt and herbs.

I can’t eat mushrooms, so for the topping, I used shredded chicken instead. I also subbed chicken stock in place of wine when cooking the topping. My herbs were basil, oregano and thyme.

I made a serve for one from a quarter of the recipe. This tart would have been nice served with a green salad, but I didn’t bother.

To see what everyone else made and their thoughts on it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Recipe Tin Eats Irish Chicken Stew

It was another cold, grey day today following heavy overnight rainfall. It was perfect weather for a stew - cue Recipe Tin Eats Irish Chicken Stew.
 

This wonderful rich stovetop stew features browned chicken drumsticks cooked with stout, garlic, onion, beef stock, thyme, salt and pepper. I left out the mushrooms, but do feel free to include them.

It is a super easy stew and takes less than an hour to cook. Despite that, it has a depth of flavour second to none.

This winter, I highly recommend putting this delicious stew on the menu.

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

 Ok, I know this photo doesn’t exactly look appetising, but it’s a photo of what was a truly delicious meal.

The meal is Slow Cooker Beef Stew, made from this recipe on the BBC website.

Onions, garlic and celery are fried up with carrots, bay, thyme, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste and water.  

The stewing steak is browned and added with the vegetable mix to the slow cooker, then two beef stock cubes are crumbled on top, and everything is seasoned with salt and pepper. I also added frozen peas.

The slow cooker then does its work (8-10 hours on low or 4 hours on high). 

If you want to thicken the sauce, two tablespoons of cornflour made into a paste with water are added to the slow cooker and is left to cook for another half an hour.

Once cooked, the stew is served on mashed potato.

This stew has a deep, rich flavour and is very satisfying. And of course, the slow cooker makes it very low maintenance cooking.

If you like stew, then I recommend giving this recipe a go.

WWDH - Spiced Meatballs with Sticky Chilli Sauce

Kayte is resurrecting Wednesdays with Donna Hay on a casual basis. We may not post every Wednesday, but we will post whenever we make a new Donna Hay recipe.

This week, I made a recipe from Donna’s new book, One Pan Perfect. The recipe is Spiced Meatballs in Sticky Chilli Sauce. There are great Asian flavours in these meatballs - garlic, ginger, green onion and chilli.

 I baked my meatballs instead of frying them, and used a chilli tomato chutney in place of the Korean chilli paste in the recipe. I think these changes went well.

I served my meatballs with cauliflower rice and veggies.

I highly recommend both this recipe and Donna’s new book.

Orecchiette with Prawns and Zucchini

Nigella Lawson has said that she likes to keep frozen prawns on hand to make a prawn dish whenever she fancied it.  Inspired by this, I grabbed a tray of prawns at the supermarket recently with this orecchiette dish in mind. The recipe comes from Taste.com.

This dish is a terrific all in one, and dead easy to make.  If you'd like to try it, you will need:

400g orecchiette

60ml olive oil

2 crushed cloves garlic

2 tablespoons capers, rinsed

2 small chillies, seeded and finely chopped

2 zucchini, finely diced

700g medium green king prawns, deveined and cut into 3 (I just used small prawns)

2 cups baby spinach

1/2 cup mint leaves, torn

juice of half a lemon

salt

Cook the pasta and drain, retaining 1/3 cup cooking water.

In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a frying pan.  Add garlic, capers, zucchini, chillies and a half teaspoon of salt  and cook, stirring, for three minutes.  Add the prawns and cook on high until the prawns are cooked through.

Add the pasta, three quarters of the mint, spinach and lemon juice to the prawn mixture and mix to combine.  Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with the remaining mint.

Serve and enjoy!