Nineteen Minutes

We changed things up a little bit this week. I can't wait to tell you all about it! The feast consisted of Stuffed Cypriot Chicken, Pan-fried asparagus & Vine Tomatoes, Cabbage Salad, St Clement's Drink and Vanilla Ice Cream Floats. It isn't the most outrageous or wowing of meals as far as the 30 Minute Meals cookbook goes, but it is simple, healthy and delicious. What more could  you ask for?

We were cooking in a different kitchen this week, eating off different plates and dining in a different room. It is the first time we have taken the meals out of our own kitchen and it was a really nice little change up. It was perhaps a little bit more stressful, trying to find the right serving dishes for the meal amongst all the unfamiliar cupboards, but we got there in the end. If nothing else, the warm lighting and different decor ended up giving me some very dramatic and impressive looking photos, which I am quite happy about!

Now, if you're not into getting your hands dirty, you probably won't enjoy this meal very much. There's a lot of hand-to-food contact in the preparation stages and if you're squeamish about raw chicken, or getting too touchy feely with food then you will probably suffer through the cooking stage of the meal. But I can guarantee you that it is worth it in the end! The chicken is really simple to make and it basically looks after itself while you get everything else up and running. I love a fuss-free meal and this chicken dish is perfect - it takes little preparation, the cooking is simple and it comes up beautifully.

I have made the asparagus and tomato dish a couple of times before - simply because it looked so good and I needed a nice veg dish to contribute to a meal with friends. The colours are amazing, just looking at the bright, luscious green contrasting with that gorgeous red gives you the impression of freshness and high nutrition. It is dead easy to make, incredibly difficult to mess up and it makes a really nice side to any meat dish. The leftovers were fantastic too - I chopped them up and dropped them into a mixed-leaf salad with a bit of grilled chicken and chopped spanish onion. It really helps to make your average, boring lunch a bit more special.

This week we also had the help of a fellow blogger in choosing our wine. We were given a list of wine to try and ended up selecting a nice red from France. Beyond reading the label I'm not much use at choosing wine - I can generally find my way through sweet and dry, and red vs white, but that is as far as my knowledge goes. So the label on this particular bottle reads "Georges Duboeuf - Beaujolais-Villages" and I can confirm that it is delicious. It even goes well with this meal! For some more in-depth insight into the wine world, I can recommend you read this blog: http://thewinebl0g.blogspot.com.au/p/contact.html.

The St Clement's Drink was not all that I had expected - I think this may have had more to do with the individual ingredients than anything else - but in theory the recipe is quite good. I believe the oranges I used may have been a bit beyond their best before date, making it a bit too tangy. Add the tartness of the lemon and it ended up being a bit of a disaster and almost all of it got tipped after the meal. So my advice here is to make sure you get really fresh (but not too ripe!) fruit. I think it may even work a bit better with lemonade instead of the sparkling water.

And finally, the Vanilla Ice Cream Floats. Yummy! A recurring problem has been that the desserts have coffee in them. I personally don't mind having a little bit of coffee at night, but usually our guests are not keen on too much caffeine after dark - and rightly so. This was the case again this week. I had intended to mix up a bit of hot chocolate in place of the coffee but realised that I had none left on hand, so I gave my non-caffeinated guests a cup of ice-cream with crushed up bikkies in it and that seemed to go over fabulously. I enjoyed the coffee over mine - ice cream, cookies and coffee are a mix made in heaven! Again, it is dead easy and it is also a way to cut down on a few calories, because you're combining the dessert course with the coffee. You don't need to add any sugar and because you're using teacups you end up with far less of a dessert than you might ordinarily make. Its alllll good.

So there it is. Simple and unpretentious, delicious and relatively healthy, full of fresh and whole ingredients. And it looks as though we can expect a little more of that next week too, with Piri Piri Chicken, Dressed Potatoes, Rocket Salad and Quick Portuguese Tarts. Can't wait!

Til next time - Bon Appetit!