06 April 2008

Sunday lunch....My way!

Sunday lunch, traditional family meal, roast dinner and Yorkshire pudding, food heaven?...well it can be, but , in my house at least, it is more like this... 'the beef is too bloody', 'ahh, I don't want broccoli' and worst of all 'damn, my Yorkshires didn't rise'
What starts off as a lovely meal can leave you stressed and harassed.
This Sunday my dearest OH found himself suffering from the dreaded 'man flu' poor him, or poor me depending which way you look at it :). So this left me with a dilemma, a Sunday dinner for myself and the kids, well one child as my son was also poorly, would be far too much work and not worth the bother. Using this to my advantage I made Sunday lunch my way.

Completely selfish and completely enjoyable, relaxing and delicious.

I had a few organic chicken legs in the fridge so decided on cooking one of my favourite meals 'Tagliatelle with chicken from the Venetian ghetto' from Nigella's How to eat.
I love this recipe, although I altered it slightly, by using linguine in place of tagliatelle and whole chicken legs in place of a whole chicken, well, there was only two people eating it.

This is so simple, roast your chicken (I throw some chopped onions and unpeeled garlic cloves in with it too), rip it apart, toss chicken, skin and all the roasting juices in the pasta with some toasted pine nuts and sultanas, delicious. Perfect for slurping.

My Sunday lunch version of Venetian chicken :

2 chicken legs
1 tbsp EVOO
needles from 1 / 2 sprigs of rosemary
I onion, peeled and cut into 8
4 cloves of garlic (in the skin)
20g sultanas (soaked in water)
50g pine nuts, lightly toasted
200g linguine
Preheat oven to 200c
Rub chicken with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place in a baking tin with the onions and garlic and sprinkle with the rosemary.
Roast for 30 - 40 minutes, until well browned, and the juices run clear.
When the chicken is nearly done put a pan of water on to boil.
Remove the chicken from the oven and take the meat off the bones, leaving on all the skin, rip apart into 'mouth' sized chunks.
For the sauce pour all the juices from the roasting tin, along with onions and garlic cloves, into a saucepan, add the drained sultanas and toasted pine nuts, simmer while you cook the pasta in the salted water.
When the pasta is cooked and drained, toss it in the pan with the sauce, throw in the chicken and transfer to a large bowl. Enjoy.



Pudding

I always cook a pudding on Sunday, but my original plan for rice pudding got put on hold, as due to illness it would get wasted.
My self indulgent, simple Sunday pudding was gooey chocolate brownies with creamy vanilla ice cream and hot blonde chocolate sauce.

These were absolutely delicious, although after two helpings I started to feel slightly nauseous.

Hot blonde sauce:

100g white chocolate buttons
280ml double cream
Heat cream in a saucepan til just warm,
add white chocolate to the pan,
after a minute or two turn off heat,
stir until chocolate has melted and the sauce has thickened.
Pour over gooey brownies and cold ice cream.

Sunday lunch heaven....I wish it was like this every Sunday.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Erica,

Your chicken looks wonderful. I made this for my blog a few months ago now and my pesky OH didn't like it much. Grrrr... I however loved it, and one tip; if you have any leftovers try them cold with a big dollop of mayonnaise! Yum!

Amy xxx

Nickki said...

Wow Erica, everything looks so delicious. That is also one of my favourite chicken recipes. Sometimes I just use chicken thighs. What kind of white chocolate buttons did you use for the sauce? xxx

Oh my! Apple pie! said...

Amy: I am eating the leftovers for dinner tonight, mayo sounds good.

Nickki: I used locally produced chocolate buttons, just normal confectionary ones. They were lovely, not too milky bar sweet.

Hevz said...

OMG...that blonde sauce looks to die for yummy

Anonymous said...

I love that chicken recipe it's so easy and yet so good.

Now for the pudding, brownie heaven. So delish.

hungryandfrozen said...

That looks like a marvelous Sunday lunch. That pasta recipe of Nigella's is amazing! And now I have an enormous craving for white chocolate... :)

Nickki said...

Ok thankyou Erica, I really like the sound of that sauce. x

Anonymous said...

Delicious chicken recipe. Thank you for the inspiration. I made it with left over roast chicken (dark meat) and left out the sultanas. Fabulous, but yours looks much darker and nicer.
Thanks again, I'm going to try your mint cookies next. You should start a book. :)

minnie