Category Archives: One burner

Warm chicken and celeriac salad  

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This salad is superb warm or cold – and if you don’t call it ‘salad’, then it’s great hot too!  But if forced to choose between them, warm would be my absolute favourite.

Like many chicken recipes it would be very good made with pork instead.   You can make it in an oven if you have one, or on a single hob if you don’t.

It’s a salad that doesn’t need extra carbohydrate – the celeriac is filling.  But if you are feeding the seriously hungry then fresh crusty bread would be brilliant.  Or you could try adding cooked bite size potatoes to the mix – small potatoes boiled if you don’t have an oven, or large potatoes cut small and baked with the celeriac if you do.  Or turn your favourite pasta through it – larger shapes would work well.

The essence of it

Cube some celeriac, toss a little salt and oil over it and roast at 200C for 25/30 minutes.  If you don’t have an oven, sauté it gently in a frying pan, probably for slightly less time.  Add the chicken thigh fillets, cubed to bite size, stir to mix, and roast or sauté for another 10/12 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through, stirring well from time to time.

Let the mixture cool slightly, season if needed, and add either a dash of lemon juice or a touch of balsamic vinegar.

Toss the leaves in the French dressing (or leave them undressed if you don’t have any French dressing – the chicken/celeriac mix is succulent).  Arrange the leaves on the plate, and pile the chicken and celeriac mixture in the middle.  If you have a lemon, top each plate off with a lemon quarter, for diners to add extra lemon juice if they want it.

Voilà!

Happy, quick, and easy cooking, and – bon appétit!

Anna

And now in more detail

For two:

2 – 4 chicken thigh fillets (depending on how hungry you are), cut into bite-sized pieces.  See the end of this blog post on how to ringing the changes to use other sorts of chicken instead of expensive thigh fillets, or indeed to use pork).

One medium sized celeriac, also cut into bite sized pieces

A lemon if you can (a squeeze of lemon juice would do instead), or a scant dessert spoon of balsamic vinegar per person makes an easy and delicious dressing for the chicken/celeriac mix.

Oil for frying

Salt and pepper

Salad leaves / rocket / lettuce

1 tbsp approx French dressing

Cut the outer skin off the celeriac and divide it into bite sized chunks.  Toss a little salt and oil over it and roast at about 200C for 25/30 minutes – oven vary, and it is also affected by the size of pan you put it in – if it has lots of space and it will cook more quickly and brown more readily; if it is squeezed in it will take longer and won’t tend to brown.

If you don’t have an oven, sautė it gently in a frying pan with the lid on  – this is also generally a little quicker).

While the celeriac is cooking, cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and when the time is up add it to the celeriac, stirring well to mix.  Roast / sauté for another 10 minutes.

It may then all be ready, but if the chicken has cooked right through before the celeriac has softened enough, just pick out the pieces of chicken and leave the celeriac to go on roasting / sautéeing until it is either al dente, or fully softened, as you prefer.  If the chicken isn’t quite cooked (no pinkness when you cut one of largest pieces in half) then leave it a few minutes longer.

Let the cooked chicken and celeriac mix cool slightly, season it with a little pepper, and mix together with the juice of half the lemon (or a few shakes from the bottle if that is all you have) or the balsamic vinegar.   Recheck the seasoning and add more salt if needed.

Toss the leaves in the French dressing, arrange them on the plate, and pile the chicken and celeriac mixture in the middle.  Top each plate off with a lemon quarter, for diners to add extra lemon juice if they want it – such elegance!

(Whether you are eating it while still warm or else when cold, obviously you won’t want chicken – or pork if you make it with pork – standing around on a warm day, so if you don’t have a fridge don’t make it too far in advance.)

And some variants

Thigh fillets are expensive (though you may be able to justify them to yourself on the basis that that spending a bit more to make cooking easy when on holiday is a lot cheaper and healthier than go out or having a take away).

Any alternative chicken leg meat works well, because its greater juiciness than breast means it melds superbly with the celeriac and does away with the need for much dressing (which simplifies things too).  So you could certainly do this with leg joints, or with bone-in thighs, which are less expensive, or with drumsticks.  Even possibly with chicken wings, though I haven’t tried that.

If you are using bone in thighs or drumsticks they will need longer to cook than diced chicken – start them at the same time as you start the celeriac.  If you are using a whole leg joints you may want to give them five or ten minutes before you add the celeriac.

If it just has to be chicken breast for you, that’s fine too, but watch how quickly it is cooking with an eagle eye – too long and it will go dry and stringy.  Probably ten minutes max if diced, but always check by snipping a larger piece in half.  For chicken breasts you might want to consider the gourmandise version where you use mayonnaise with a touch of mustard as the dressing for the chicken celery mix …. “Naughty but nice” has to be the only comment!

Unless you are using chicken breasts, which do mind being over-cooked, this dish is very good natured about timing – a bit more or a bit less doesn’t matter, just as long as the chicken isn’t undercooked.

And like so many chicken recipes, it also works well made with diced pork.

Bon appétit!

Anna

Glorious Butternut Squash Gratin

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This dish combines the sunshine of butternut squash with the tang of red peppers, topped off with either cheese and breadcrumbs for crunch, or else meltingly soft cheese. The perfect antidote to a grey, miserable day like the one when I am writing this, but a wonderful reflection of the weather on a sunny day.

Butternut squash is perhaps the most glorious of the vegetables that are readily available now but were almost unheard of in the UK a couple of decades ago.  It tastes fantastic, keeps extremely well, and it even grows happily in our climate.

But butternut squash is the devil’s own job to peel.  So how can it make an appearance in a blog of recipes for travelling – recipes for cooks who want good food without too much effort and probably with less than first class facilities?

It can do this because a simple trick transforms the murderous chore of peeling butternut squash.  Put the unpeeled squash in a bowl or a saucepan (cut in two if necessary) and cover it as best you can with boiling water.  Let it stand for a couple of minutes and drain it.  Now even a blunt peeler in an ill-equipped holiday cottage glides through the skin.  It’s not a trick for the bivvy brigade, or campers with very limited facilities, but if you have a kettle, a saucepan and a peeler, you’re in the frame!

You can make this dish in an oven, or finish it off under the grill, but it is especially brilliant made in a Remoska.  The top heat does something special to it.

If you don’t have any of these, it can certainly be made on a hob, but you’ll need to be happy with the topping being soft melted cheese – and why shouldn’t you be?!

The essence of it –

 Sauté or roast onions, red peppers and butternut squash, all chopped to bite size.  Top with cheese and breadcrumbs, or just cheese and brown the top in the oven or under the grill (or sprinkle cheese over the top, put a lid on and wait for the cheese to melt.  That’s all!  You have to eat it to believe how good it is.

Happy quick and easy cooking and – bon appétit!

Anna

And now in more detail –

Ingredients for four people

A large butternut squash, or two smaller ones

Up to one pepper per person, ideally red, or yellow, but green is good too and produces a different dish.   Half a pepper per person is fine for smaller appetites

2 medium onions – red onions if you are feeling fancy, but white are good too.

50 gr / 2 oz cheese per person for topping, more for hearty appetites.  Lots of different cheeses will work – see the detailed recipe

A small handful of breadcrumbs per person, if you can get hold of breadcrumbs.  Use just cheese if you can’t – equally good, just different

Your preferred oil for cooking

Salt and pepper

Click here for Remoska instructions, otherwise here is how to make it with just a single burner, or an oven, or a single burner and grill.

Chop the onions, not too finely, and sauté them gently in the pan while you de-seed and chop the peppers, also not too finely.

Add the chopped peppers to the pan while you peel the butternut squash, stirring the pan from time to time.  Turn the heat down or take it off the heat temporarily if the veg are beginning to colour.

The pieces of butternut squash should be bite-sized.  Add them to the veg mix and continue to sauté, stirring from time to time, until they have softened but still have some bite.

If you are lucky enough to have been able to use a pan that will go under the grill or in the oven, add the cheese topping and grill it until brown, or put the dish with topping in a hot oven until the top is browned.  This might be 10 minutes 200C, or 15 at 180C – whatever suits your plans, and the vagaries of the oven you are working with.  Just keep an eye on it until it looks attractive and ready.

If you have no grill or oven, then put the cheese over the top, add a lid and leave it undisturbed for about five minutes on an extremely low heat (you may need to use a heat diffuser).  If your cooking equipment is not that sophisticated, just take the pan off the hob – it won’t lose much heat with a lid on.  When the five minutes is up, open it, discover nicely melted cheese, and serve.

If you ask “what cheese?”, I will answer “what cheese do you have?”.  If you have the wherewithal and time to make decent breadcrumbs, or can get them in a shop (not those horrid yellow-orange things), then a mix of just plain cheddar and breadcrumbs takes some beating. Grate the cheese and mix it loosely by hand on a plate with roughly an equal volume of breadcrumbs (how many breadcrumbs can be very haphazard – it makes a very good but different dish whatever proportions you use).

If you’re using breadcrumbs, Cheshire or Wensleydale or Lancashire could be good, or similar hard cheeses.  You could give it a go with anything you can grate.

If you don’t have or don’t want breadcrumbs, or if your facilities mean you have to just melt the cheese by leaving the lid on the pan, then the world’s your oyster.  You are spoilt for choice.  What cheeses do you know that melt nicely and whose flavour would work with peppers (which are probably more finicky about what they go with than the serene and charming butternut squash is)?  Gruyere is the ultimate melting cheese, with emmental following close behind, and if cutting the cook’s work is more important than keeping to a tight budget, both have the advantage that they are often available ready-grated in supermarkets. Or what about some very ripe camembert or brie that needs eating up sliced over the top?  Or mozzarella roughly torn?

If this dish could ever seem to be putting in too many appearance and to be in need of a makeover (it hasn’t yet here, despite multiple repeat outings), you could dress it in entirely new clothes by using a blue cheese – stilton left over from Christmas (it freezes well for exactly this sort of purpose), gorgonzola, cambozola – a whole range of blue cheeses.