My "Everything But The Kitchen Sink" Pasta Mix!

Sorry about the lack of posts over the last few weeks, I was doing my mocks! :O I thought that I'd put up a recipe that was totally different from the last one, so here it is, a delicious pasta mix! Its simple I know but you can pretty much throw in whatever you can find in your kitchen and it will still taste brilliant! I ALWAYS make too much of this mix, so there's plenty left for a great lunch the following day. This is a really sweet mix so if you don't fancy that much then leave out the brown sugar. If your feeling braver, add a teaspoon or two of hot chilli powder! You can manipulate the recipe to taste whatever way you want it to. So try it out and mess around!  :)




Pasta Mix!

Ingredients:

• 1 Carrot
• 1 Onion
• Half Yellow Pepper
• Half Red Pepper
• 5 Mushrooms
• 2 sections Garlic
• 2 Handfulls Cahews
• Juice of 1 Lemon

• 3 Breasts Chicken
• 2tbsp Soy Sauce
• 2tbsp Honey
• 1tbsp Sweet Chilli sauce
• Penne for 4 people
• Chicken stock cube
• 50g soft (dark) brown sugar
• 1tsp Cumin
• 5tbsp tomato Purée

Method:


First, chop up all of the Vegetables. Cut the Carrots and Peppers into strips and dice the Onions and Mushrooms. Put everything into a bowl with the crushed garlic and Cashew nuts and pour over the lemon juice (with bits!) Mix this around lik a salad and cover over the bowl with a plate or something. Leave this to one side for now.


Fry the Chicken in the biggest pan you have with a drop of oil, the 2 tablespoons of Soy sauce, the 2 tablespoons of honey and the Sweet Chilli sauce. Once the outside of the chicken has turned white, cut it up into tiny pieces and put on the kettle for the Penne. Make sure all of the chicken gets coated in the mix of sauces. Now put the Pasta into a pot with a bit of salt and pour in the boiled water until the pasta is submerged. Bring this to the boil and let the pasta cook. Don't forget to stir it around every few minutes so that the pasta doesn't stick to the pot!


When the chicken is almost fully cooked, prepare the stock cube in half a cup of hot water and add it to the pan. Lower the heat and let the mix simmer. Stir the Dark Brown Sugar and cumin into the mix. At this point, you could produce a delicious curry if you made rice instead of pasta and also added a handfull of sultanas, a chopped up apple or two and an extra teaspoon of Cumin! 


Next, Mix in the Tomato Purée and let the mix simmer on a low heat. Now drain off the Pasta and rinse off the salt with hot water. Add the Vegetables to the mix in the pan and then stir in the pasta. Make sure everything gets covered in the sauce. Serve it up and enjoy!

Soundtrack to this recipe:
Nas- Hero Ft. Keri Hilson
Rihanna- You Da One

Birthday Cake! :D

I got the base recipe for this vanilla sponge cake from a friend about two years ago and I've used it countless times since. This is one of my favourite recipes ever because its so simple, it tastes great and you can use it for any size or shaped cake you like! Basically for this one, I took the base recipe (the sponge cake) and added  a few tablespoons of blueberry puree. Then, I used a recipe from a Donal Skehan cookbook for the Cream Cheese icing. You can leave out the blueberries to get a plain vanilla sponge cake if you want, and then cover the cake with cream, fruit or chocolate!


 It was my sister's birthday over the weekend so I thought that it would be the perfect chance to put together the first recipe for the new blog, so here it is!

Vanilla and Blueberry sponge cake with Blueberry and Cream Cheese Icing:

Ingredients:

Blueberry Puree:

• 1 punnet fresh Blueberries.

Icing:

• 225g full fat Cream Cheese at room temperature
• 375g icing sugar
• 2 tbsp Blueberry Puree

Vanilla Sponge Cake:

• 225g (8oz) Caster Sugar
• 225g (8oz) Real Butter
• 340g (12oz) Plain Flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder
• 4 eggs
• 2/3 tsp Vanilla essence

Method:

I started off by making the icing, just to get it out of the way, but you could just do this while the cake is in the oven, if your stuck for time. First you have to do the Blueberry puree, which is a lot simpler to make that it sounds! All you have to do is pick out about five or six of your favourite looking blueberries and put them to one side for later. Then, blitz the bejesus out of the rest of the punnet with a hand blender for about a minute, until you get a nice smooth mix.

Next, we'll move on to the icing. Beat the Cream Cheese in a bowl until its nice and soft. Then, sift in the icing sugar, a little at a time, until its all incorporated. Make sure there's no lumps and you should be left with a smooth, glossy icing that's a little bit gloopy. Stir in the two tablespoons of Blueberry Puree, cover the bowl with clingfilm and put it in the fridge for later. 

If you just want to make a plain Vanilla sponge cake, you can start here and leave out the Blueberry Puree. First, preheat the oven to 220/240 degrees Celsius. Cream together the butter and sugar in a big enough mixing bowl, until it has light and fluffy texture. Then, add the flour and baking powder and stir with a knife, sharply, until the mixture looks a bit like breadcrumbs.


In a separate, smaller bowl or cup, lightly beat the four eggs and mix in the vanilla essence. 
Pour this egg mixture into the flour mix a little at a time, stirring gently until its all combined. Finally, stir in the 4 tablespoons of Blueberry puree (if necessary).

Grease a 9 or 10 inch, round baking tin with butter and then dust very lightly with flour (to prevent the cake from sticking to it) you don't want any clumps. Turn the tin upside-down to get rid of any excess flour and then pour in the mix. Put the cake into the oven and lower the temperature down to 200/180 degrees Celsius. Bake for about 30 minutes. Test with a knife to check if its done; when inserted into the centre of the cake, the knife should come out clean.

When the cake is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool completely. When its ready, spread the icing over the cake with a broad, flat knife or spoon. Throw on the extra Blueberries and your ready to go!

Enjoy! :P

Happy Birthday Joni!!! :D

Soundtrack to this Recipe!:
Snow Patrol- Just Say Yes
David Guetta- Turn Me On (ft. Nicki Minaj)

1st blog!

Right, so this is my first time writing a blog... ever. So, I'm not too sure where to start but I'd say it'd be good to let you know that this will be a cooking blog, with the odd random post about my pet budgie (Siris)! My name is Stephen Conlan and I like to think that I can cook :P


Basically I'm going to scour the Internet and any cookbooks that I can get my hands on, to give you the best and most fool-proof, tried and tested recipes that I can find. I'll also throw in a few of my own original recipes, which i plan to have a lot more of in the future. I'm seventeen now and about to do my leaving cert. My aim is to get up at least one recipe, post or link every two weeks and for all of the special occasions, but I am going to apologise in advance if they're not regular because I'm probably going to be getting pretty stressed out come June and the big exams :/


It doesn't matter how good (or bad!) you are at cooking, I can guarantee you that, with these recipes, you can go from burning a hole in your kitchen table (when trying to make popcorn!) to producing delicious, good-looking and sometimes even healthy food.


The recipes that I put up will all be easy to follow, with pictures to guide you every step of the way.

However, I do think that it's really important to note that these recipes aren't just instructions for you to follow, they're more like guidelines! The recipes are all going to work out perfectly the way they are but if you don't like a certain ingredient or you think that trying something different would be nicer, don't be afraid to mess around! 

 Let the recipe be an inspiration and you might surprise yourself!

I'll be putting up my first recipe during the week, so watch this space! (and subscribe :P)

Stephen Conlan