Cornbread - with some cheeky chilli

Going without dairy is actually relatively adaptable in most of my cooking - while I miss the flavour of butter, cheese and chocolate I can replace the cows milk products with rice, coconut, or sheeps milk products. Except in tea. Nothing works in tea. Excuse me while I have a little weep.

To this end I adapted my cornbread recipe to become cows milk free so that we could have it with a chilli, and a barbecue bean casserole for my lunches last week.  I see it as an alternative to rice, M likes it as well as.

Despite the adaptation it remained a lovely light bread with no flavour of the coconut milk and the only tangible difference for me was that it was slightly drier than usual. I've also taken to adding chilli to everything lately (I have no idea why, but no, I'm not pregnant) and this was no exception.

Chilli cornbread - cows milk free

175g cornmeal
125g plain flour
45g caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
250ml coconut milk
1 egg
45g Pure (dairy free spread)
1 cup of frozen sweetcorn, cooked briefly in the microwave and drained
2 teaspoons of lazy chilli

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C.

2. Grease your tin - I used my brownie tin

4. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and stir until combined(ish) - this is a bit like making muffins, it's never going to be perfect and that's fine. Add the sweetcorn and chilli at the end

5. Pour and scrape into your tin and bake, for 20 minutes

6. Resist the urge to eat it all whilst warm. 

Meal Planning Monday: The Bank Holiday edition

Well it's a Bank Holiday and clearly this is late, owing to much decluttering this weekend in both mine and M's houses in advance of certain big moving adventures set to happen in the not too distant future. I shant tell you when, but will let you notice when the backdrop to the pictures changes (for the better? I hope so).

That said, M and I had a lovely day together on Saturday, pottering, shopping and dinner. Between being on my feet all day and last week's three Couch to 5km runs I should be feeling super fit and healthy. In actual fact I'm coughing and full of sinusitis. Yes, again. This means food this week needs to be full of nutrients as well as quick and easy.

Breakfasts: I'm trying to go back on the small doses of dairy this week so have some yoghurts to have with a banana and cup of tea.

Lunches: Houmous with veg sticks and lots of fruit - if it gets colder again then it'll be Butternut squash soup that I made last week and froze

Snacks: Another batch of oaty bars have been baked for this week (blogpost to come)

Baby starter will be fed Tuesday and baked on or around Thursday

Dinners:

Monday: Cottage pie, with steamed purple sprouting broccoli

Tuesday: Leftover cottage pie, more broccoli and cabbage

Wednesday: Butternut squash, chorizo and cannelini bean chilli (again, leftovers that were frozen)

Thursday: M is at Welsh and I'm at Brownies so soup for me

Friday: It's the end of the week, and in clearing down M's freezer I found some chicken kievs (which were the hight of sophistication when I was growing up and requested as my birthday tea for many of my formative years) so those, with lots of veggies and wedges for M

Saturday: At present we have no plans, but I think I'll cook up a big pan of chilli con carne to have with rice or cornbread. It keeps the freezer stocked with dinners, and works out really cheaply as I double the kidney beans. I've just had a look-see and noticed that I haven't blogged the recipe I use, so will do so next weekend.

So that's this week in the Pantry - what does this Bank Holiday week hold in store for you? Don't forget to pop over to At Home with Mrs M and see what the other linkers are up to.

Meal Planning Monday: April showers got me down

Well I think we can all agree that it's wet, windy and miserable out there. Anyone who has good weather? If you could please just not mention it, that would be great. 

So another week of work, blogging, baking, guiding, sleeping... and so it goes on. I feel a bit like I usually do in November; slightly devoid of any inspiration. This week will be a challenge on the meal planning front, I'm sure. 

You'll be pleased to hear that baby sourdough is proving ever so slowly in the kitchen at the moment. Not quite doubled in size, but hopefully the warmth of the kitchen will keep her going. 

The other baking I've done this evening (that I will blog this week) are some granola/ energy bars for M. He runs around like nobody's business on building sites and burns up more energy daily than I'm sure I do in a week. Hopefully these should give him some oomph at 3pm when he needs that kick to get through the rest of the afternoon. They're loosely based around something I saw on River Cottage the other week, and the flapjacks I used to back as a child. 

So, this week:

Breakfasts: Cereal and Toast for M. Fruit for me, hopefully moving to sourdough (if it ever proves that is) 

Lunch: I think I'll be making soup this week - the weather is just too foul to try and manage on salad or veg sticks. 

Dinners:

Monday: Fortunately we had roast chicken tonight so tomorrow will be leftover chicken, stuffing with veggies and a baked potato. 

Tuesday: Chicken and mushroom risotto (mental note to self: get chicken stock out of freezer) and then I'll make stock from this chicken

Wednesday: Possibly a butternut squash soup using the soup, and with the sourdough and some cheese. 

Thursday: Butternut squash, chorizo and cannellini bean chilli

Friday: Leftovers of the chilli - with cornbread (don't tell M but I'm going to introduce him to the wonders of Nigella's cornbread)

Now we've got no plans next weekend, except my Mum is coming to visit, so I think I'm going to do slow roast pork, but also a bit of batch cooking, maybe a lasagne, chilli and cottage pie (we just cleared M's freezer out, there was a lot of mince). Hopefully I'll have a better handle on the sourdough so will be able to bake for Saturday morning, which will mean we can have poached eggs on toast. 

Not a terribly exciting week I'm afraid, but it's just that kind of weather really - I feel like I should be in summer skirts skipping around, but I'm wrapped up in woolies and wellies. Sad times. 

However, make sure you pop over to At Home with Mrs M and see what everyone else is up to this week. 

Chorizo, Bean, Butternut Squash and Pepper chilli

Now I know that this isn’t particularly festive and for that I apologise. I know that I owe you pictures of iced Christmas cakes, and truly meant to photograph my Christmas dinner for you, but couldn’t let you see the extent of my gluttony on that day. The shame just overtook me. I couldn’t even manage pudding! I know, I nearly died of shock myself. I have just made Nigella’s Christmas Morning Muffins, albeit a few days late as I had some cranberries and orange knocking around having failed to make her Cornbread stuffing from Feast before going home for Christmas. I got as far as making the cornbread, but just ended up eating it out of the baking tray. I know, I’m never going to stay in these jeans if I’m not careful. I think the cold means I’m burning off more calories though – if that’s not the case, just let me delude myself, at least until my favourite denim won’t do up.

Anyhow, I noticed that this has been on my ‘To cook’ list for ages now, which is a bit of a fib as I’ve been cooking and eating it regularly for the last couple of months.

It’s a Waitrose.com recipe and without wishing to be sycophantic, I have to say that the recipes on their website seem to be largely infallible. Their chicken, butternut squash and barley casserole is a favourite of mine, as are their banana and chocolate muffins and each time I try something new I seem to like it. Clearly I am a Waitrose girl at heart (albeit on an Asda salary!)

Much like the Lentil ragu of recent months this is one of those recipes that another foodie tried and recommended and as such it’s going great guns around the net. I have to say it’s shockingly easy, a complete one-pot dish and a great midweek dinner. Despite being a chilli, made as described it’s not at all hot. In fact each time I make it I actually think I should add more chilli, but haven’t remembered to as yet. I also haven’t served it with rice as I tend to find it has enough carby-ness (it’s a word) without any addition, although I did serve it with cornbread that I made up with every intention of making into a Nigella stuffing, but just necver got around to! I’m going to try a different version of cornbread tonight, one with a bit more kick as the plain Nigella version is at once salty and sweet and as such doesn’t quite sit right with me. I also omit the sugar as I find butternut squash plenty sweet by itself. Yes I know I routinely add maple syrup to soup, but it’s my blog, I’m allowed to be difficult. Anyway, that’s enough rambling, here’s the link to the recipe on the Waitrose site, and my annotated version below.

Chorizo, Bean, Pepper and Butternut Squash Chilli (with my annotations in italics)

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
225g Spanish chorizo (from the deli counter), peeled and diced
1 large red chilli, chopped – I use one hotter chilli, de-seeded, but will up this to 2 next time.
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
1 red pepper, deseeded and chopped
1 butternut squash or pumpkin, about 500g peeled weight, deseeded and cut into 3-4cm dice – this works out at about half an average butternut squash, so I peeled and chopped the whole thing and froze one half for the next month.
410g can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed – now for some unknown reason Asda only sell tinned beans in 300g tins so after much deliberating I just added 600g. Contrary to what I expected it didn’t taste unnecessarily ‘bulked out’ with beans, in the way I remember eating casseroles as a child so don’t worry about that.
20g pack fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped – Have I mentioned that I just buy those huge bunches of parsley, coriander and mint from the ‘ethnic veg’ section of the supermarket and freeze them so that I can just add fresh herbs when I need them. In the winter there’s nothing in the garden and to buy those little plastic packs of them is ridiculously expensive. Frozen taste just fine.

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and cook the onion and garlic for 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the chorizo and red chilli, and cook for a further minute until the chorizo releases its red juices.

2. Add the tomatoes, sugar, pepper and 150ml cold water. Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

3. Stir in the squash, cover and simmer for a further 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the squash is tender. Finally, add the cannellini beans, simmer for 5 minutes and stir in the parsley. Serve immediately

I mentioned that I served it with cornbread, I also imagine it would be nice with tortillas, soured cream and lots of grated cheese. The recipe I used for the cornbread is below, next time I’m going to google for one that’s a bit more sure of itself in the savoury department

Cornbread (known as polenta in posh supermarkets)

175g cornmeal (polenta)
125g plain flour
45g caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
250ml full fat milk
1 egg
45g butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C.

2. Grease your tin - I used a shallow pyrex dish, but think it would be nicer in one of my loaf tins.
3. Melt the butter and then add the milk and eggs, beat together.

4. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and stir until combined(ish) - this is a bit like making muffins, it's never going to be perfect and that's fine.

5. Pour and scrape into your tin and bake, for 20 minutes.

As I said, I found this too boderline between salty and sweet (not that it stopped me eating it) and having googled a bit, it seems lots of recipes add chilli, creamed sweetcorn and cheese to make it more savoury, so consider this a work in progress.