Chicken pot chicken pot chicken pot piiiie!

Miss me? Worried about me? Angry at me for the desertion? Just the first two? Aw, how sweet… If you’re mainly just the last one though, here, look at these eggs, no one can look at these eggs and harbour ill feelings, smiley face eggs make ill feelings inharbourable. And that right there is a fact. And a made up word. (Interesting side note: this egg face was 100% accidental, creepy or warm feeling inducing?)

I always skim through blogs and it seems that so many people take little breaks every now and then, and then bore their readers with their excuses, I will not do that. I’ve already wasted two paragraphs and a ridiculously cute photo going on about it, I’m now officially done. Full stop.

Next on this posts agenda is chicken. Chicken pie minus effort equals my kind of maths. (Well, if I’m being honest, even that much maths feels like too much…) That equation actually equals chicken pot pies but yeah, I take on any excuse to badmouth maths. (Algebra? More like boring-gebra!! That’s right, snap.). These pies are so nifty, so Nigella, so frigging good. When it comes to meals I pretty much have rice with everything, I don’t even remember the last time I had pasta with my spagetti, which kind of doesn’t make it spagetti, but I still tell people I have spagetti, I guess I like the thrill of the lie, no matter how ever so slightly boring that lie may be… But this time, when I spoke about my chicken pot pie dinner, there was no lying, there was no rice, I guess you could say these pies are helping me to be a better person, no more lying about pasta. I think I'm on the straight and narrow.

So here we have a bag full of chicken, flour and herbs, a photo which may not be so appetising, but oh so very useful, no flour everywhere, plus you get to shake that bag like a polaroid picture which is always going to be fun.

I’ve never made a sauce like this from scratch before, it was a little nerve wracking but upon the successful gravy making, pride was definitely felt.

An important part of the sauce was marsala. A lot of people only think of Italian cooking when they think of marsala, I will always think of visiting my Nan at 5 in the evening, mum in her work clothes with a scotch and coke, us kids in our school clothes and boiled lollies, and Nan with her marsala and coke. Fond fond. I had no coke on me but I decided to see what Nan was on about all those years. Alone, marsala is not recommended, i'll let you know how it goes with coke.

This part reminded me of when that guy made the kitten pie in young Einstein, I double checked my ramekins before putting them in the oven, I didn’t need that kind of bad press.

Lookit! They rise!

It was so beautiful and spherical, I almost didn’t want to ruin it…

But I did, I ruined it good. No regrets.

Before I ruined it I ran out of pastry. Im not proud of this, but it happened, and you should totally do it too.

Chicken, Mushroom and Bacon Pie

Nigella Express

Makes 2

• 3 rashers streaky bacon, cut or scissored into 2.5cm strips (Nigella scissors everything, now I do too. Join us.)
• 1 tsp garlic oil
• 125g button mushrooms, sliced into 5mm pieces
• 250g chicken cut into 2.5cm pieces
• 25g flour
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1T butter
• 300ml hot chicken stock (I haven't tried it yet, but next time I'm going to try stock with no added salt, the whole thing was just a teensy bit salty... If it needs salt you can always just add it!)
• 1T Marsala
• 1 sheet puff pastry (you have to buy several slices in a package so you may as well use alot more than this. It would be wasteful if you didn't...)

1. Preheat the oven to 220C. In a heavy based frying pan, fry the bacon strips in the oil until beginning to crisp, then add the sliced mushrooms and soften them in the pan with the bacon.
2. Turn the chicken strips in the flour and thyme (you could toss them about in a freezer bag), and then melt the butter in the bacon and mushroom pan before adding the floury chicken and all the flour left in the bag. Stir around with the bacon and mushrooms until the chicken begins to colour.
3. Pour in the hot stock and Marsala, stirring to form a sauce, and let the bubble away for about five minutes.
4. Take two 300ml pie pots (if yours are deeper, don't worry, there will simply be more space between the contents and the puff pastry top) and make a pastry rim for each one - by this I mean an approx 1cm strip curled around the top of each pot. Dampen the edges with a little water to make the pastry stick.
5. Cut a circle bigger than the top of eat pie pot than the lid, and then divide the chicken filling between the two pots.
6. Dampen the rim of the pastry again and then pop on the lid of each pie, sealing the edges with your fingers or the underneath of the prongs of a fork.
7. Cook the pies for about 20 minutes turning them around halfway through cooking. Once cooked, they should have puffed up magnificently.

Queen of Kitchens, Thy Name is Nigella.

Forgive me Nigella for I have sinned. The first time I met you (ie saw you on an ad for tea) I thought you were snobby and full of yourself, swanning round, smirking about drinking tea in bed. But oh how I was mistaken, the shame I feel for ever judging you is immense. I now harbour no ill feelings towards you, only feelings of wanting to be you. I know it was Austar that decided to put on a weekend marathon of your wonderful show, but I like to think you had something to do with it, a chef-like angel swooping into my loungeroom and opening my eyes to your brilliance. Thankyou, I will be forever grateful. In return, I shall buy all your cookbooks (as my bank account permits) and not let anyone say anything bad about your big bottom. One of the big things I miss about being home (along with being with family etc etc) are the Austar marathons. 72 hours of Will and Grace? Yes please! Mind numbing amounts of Friends? Don't mind if I do! 100 episodes of Girls of the Playboy Mansion? I shouldn't... but okay! This past New Year long weekend I was flicking around trying to find a marathon I could commit to, when I stumbled upon the food network. I saw Nigella, and she wasn't talking about tea, so I was intrigued. I was instantly drawn in by her adjective and simile filled descriptions of food. Who knew cheese could be voluptuous? I sure didn't, but I'm so glad that I do now. The real clincher I think though was her statement that burning your tongue while taste testing your dinner is a "tragedy." Something that I have always felt, but never been able to put into (such melodramatic) words. As I watched I frantically wrote down especially amazing recipes (very near all of them), missing steps and measurements as I went, being crushed when I had to pop to the shops and missed an entire episode. Since then I've missed Nigella, I wish every day were Nigella marathon day. But then yesterday I discovered that my favourite of the Nigella shows (Nigella Express) is a book! AND it has all of the recipes I hastily wrote down, and so so so many more! Instant buy. Instant sitting on my front veranda with my bird and reading it all the way through. It is honestly just the best cookbook that has ever happened to me; the intros, the methods, everything, you can just hear Nigella saying it all. "Place the potatoes in a freezer bag and hit them with a rolling pin." I love that she can sound all fancy British yet still be the kind of person that beats potatoes with a rolling pin. So please buy it, if not for me, for Nigella and her neverending list of adjectives. Or you could just sit around and wait for me to make everything in the book, which is totally going to happen. Number one: Doughnut French Toast. Nobel Peace Prize material, seriously, no one can fight when they have Donut French Toast in their lives.

First few stages - not looking so appetizing, but oh, just you wait...

I made this the day after the marathon and was going off my rough notes, so I didn't know I had to soak the bread for so long, but it was still good, I don't think I would want any more mixture soaked in than this...

See? They Still turned out super thick, so it's up to you!

My first time making french toast, I was NOT disappointed.

Incase you hadn't already noticed, my photos are now being taken with a super fancy camera. Christmas is the best. Thankyou family for getting it for me, I promise I will learn to use it properly... one day.

Doughnut French Toast

Nigella Express

Serves 2

• 2 eggs
• 4tsp vanilla extract (I haven't taken the plunge and bought extract yet, I'm just so cheap, one day I will, but till then essence works just fine!)
• 60ml full fat milk (that's what I love about Nigella, she isn't scared of a little fat)
• 4 slices from a small white loaf or 2 slices from a large white load, each slice cut in half.
• 25g butter plus a drop of flavourless oil for frying (on the show she said adding the oil helped prevent the butter from burning, fascinating! I used vegetable oil here.)
• 50g caster sugar (Nigella uses this sugar to dip the bread in, I decided this might be a little too much sugar so instead just dusted the toast with some cinnamon sugar, because who has ever heard of a doughnut without cinnamon??)

1. Beat the eggs with the milk and vanilla in a wide, shallow bowl.
2. Soak the bread halves in the eggy (eggy!) mixture for 5 minutes a side.
3. Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan, and fry the egg soaked bread until golden and scorched in parts on both sides.
4. Put the sugar on a plate and then dip the cooked bread in it until coated like a sugared donut.

In the intro to this recipe (yes, this little gem hidden away in an intro!) Nigella gives the recipe for a strawberry sauce if you so choose to swing that way. I myself swung in the golden syrup direction but it's always nice to have choices!

Direct from the pages of Nigella - You Can turn this into a dinner party doughnut-allusive dessert by whizzing up 150g hulled strawberries, 4T icing sugar and a spritz of lemon juice in the blender, to make a sauce to pour or puddle (puddle!) over.