Chilli Up North Blog

This is straight from the Hairy Dieters book apart from I substituted the Harissa for some Jack Daniels Hot Chilli sauce.

I love Harissa and I’ve made the recipe loads with it but it works just as well with the Jack Daniels sauce, it’s got a decent enough kick to it the best bit however is the whisky flavour that comes through adding a nice little twist to normal BBQ style sauces and a little sweetness to work against the chilli.

It would be great done on the BBQ especially as you can make the salad in advance or while the chicken is cooking.

Serves 4

Bulgur wheat salad

• 100g bulgur wheat
• 150g cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered if large
• 1/4 cucumber, diced
• 4 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
• small bunch of flat-leaf parsley (about 10g), plus extra to garnish
• small bunch of fresh mint (about 10g)
• finely grated zest of 1/2 unwaxed lemon
• freshly squeezed juice of 1/2 lemon
• freshly ground black pepper

Chicken:

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/2 tsp sunflower oil
• 3 tbsp Jack Daniels Hot Chilli Sauce
• lemon wedges, to serve

Method

1. To make the salad, rinse the bulgur wheat in a fine sieve and tip it into a medium saucepan. Cover with cold water and bring to the boil, then cook for about 10 minutes until just tender, or follow the packet instructions. Rinse the bulgur in a sieve under running water until cold and leave to drain.
2. Tip the cooked bulgur wheat into a large serving bowl and add the tomatoes, cucumber, spring onions, garlic, parsley, mint, lemon zest and juice. You’ll need about 3 heaped tablespoons of each herb once chopped. Season with lots of freshly ground black pepper, toss everything together well and leave to stand while you cook the chicken.
3. Place each chicken breast between 2 sheets of cling film and beat with a rolling pin until about 1.5cm thick. You need to make the chicken breasts about the same thickness so they cook evenly.
4. Brush a griddle pan or non-stick frying pan with a little oil and place over a medium-high heat until hot. Griddle or pan-fry the chicken breasts for 2 minutes, then turn them over with tongs and cook on the other side for another 2 minutes.
5. Brush the chicken breasts with half of the hot sauce on 1 side only and turn over. Cook for a minute while brushing the reverse side with the remaining hot sauce. Flip over and cook for a further minute or until cooked through. Check that there is no pinkness remaining.
6. Transfer the chicken to a board and leave to rest for 3–4 minutes before serving. Garnish with extra parsley and the lemon wedges and serve hot with the bulgur salad.

Check out the Jack Daniels sauce website here

This is another one of those quick and easy recipes that makes the perfect mid week meal as there’s next to no washing up, no preparation and you can serve it with pretty much anything from a huge side salad to steamed vegetables and new potatoes.

The Jamie Oliver Herb Crust is surprisingly fiery, has a lovely crunch and stacks of flavour, it’s one of my favourite toppings for chicken and fish, It comes in different flavours too which have all been pretty tasty, the Chilli Rosemary one was great on chicken.

It’s available in most supermarkets and when I bought this it was on offer in Morrisons but if you can’t get the Jamie Oliver Piri Piri Herb Crust then some breadcrumbs mixed with chilli powder, chilli flakes and herbs should do the trick.

You can also use pretty much any white fish, It would be fantastic with Ling, Hake or Cod but I went for Haddock as it’s what the shop

Spicy, crunchy and easy!

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 500g Haddock loin, skinned and boned.
• 4  tbsp Jamie Oliver Piri Piri Herb Crust
• Choice of side dish.

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 200 degrees C
2. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper
3. Sprinkle some of the Jamie Oliver Herb Crust onto the tray
4. Place fish on top and press down, roll the fish so that it gets a bit of a coating.
5. Sprinkle the rest of the herb crust on top and lightly press into the fish
6. Press any loose crumbs up against the side of the fish.
7. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes depending on the thickness of your fish and how you like it cooked.
8. Serve with your side dishes.

This is a recipe from a book called “The Burger” which I picked up from the cheap bookshop in town a few months ago, It’s a great little book which is written in a cartoon style and is packed full of tasty burger and accompaniment recipes.

The original recipe didn’t have chilli in or the mango chutney as I added them to spice things up a bit. It also suggested BBQing the burgers which I did but they were a bit difficult to flip so I’d be tempted to grill them or fry them next time.

This makes 4-6 burgers depending on how big you make them.

Ingredients

• 175g new potatoes
• 225g mixed nuts (I used almonds, pecans, walnuts and hazelnuts)
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 2 small eating apples, cored and grated (I used Granny Smith Apples)
• 175g blue cheese, crumbled (I used Blacksticks blue)
• Salt
• Pepper
• 55g breadcrumbs
• 2 tbsp wholemeal flour
• 1-2 tbsp sunflower oil
• lettuce
• 4-6 cheese topped buns
• 2 tbsp mango chutney
• 2 tbsp soured cream

Method

1.  Cook the potatoes in a pan of boiling water for 15 mins or until they are soft, using a potato masher or fork, crush into small pieces, place in a large bowl.
2. Place the nuts and onion in a food processor and blitz into small pieces add to the potato.
3. Add the cheese, chilli and breadcrumbs to the potatoes and mix well
4. Season with salt and pepper then shape into 4-6 equal size burgers.
5. Roll each burger in the flour, wrap in cling film and chill for at least an hour.
6. Brush each burger with some oil then BBQ for 5 mins each side until hot through.
7. Mix the soured cream and mango chutney, spread a little on each bun, top with some lettuce
8. Add the burger and enjoy.

Firstly sorry about the lack of posts lately, I’ve been really busy and not had chance to type stuff up, I’ve got some great recipes ready to share so I’ll try to post them sooner rather than later.

So addictive.

In the meantime I’ve been getting my chilli fix in plenty of different ways, one of which is these stupidly addictive chilli pistachios from Morrisons.

I don’t know how new they are but I’d never seen them before until they caught my eye when I was looking for some snacks and now I can’t stop buying them.

They are really simple yet unbelievably additive and tasty, they are basically shell on pistachio nuts sprinkled in a blend of chilli powder, they are slightly salty, really pungent and packed full of flavour, they aren’t particularly hot but the more you eat the more the chilli builds up so there is a little bit of lip tingle.

They cost just under two quid and are well worth buying if you see them, I’ll certainly be picking some more up next time I’m in Morrisons

For gardening enthusiasts, it’s the spring planting season, and that’s always a good time to experiment with a few seeds and plants you’ve never tried to grow before. Of course, you may have a firmly established garden routine, and it may be that your ordinary selection of plants is plenty to keep you busy. But, if you’re interested in starting something new this year, why not consider something that you can enjoy in more ways than one? Edible plants are getting trendier in home gardens, so the next time you head to your local gardening centre or an online store like MySmartBuy.com for gardening supplies, consider looking into purchasing one of these sorts of plants:  such as chillies.

While many people prefer not to eat chillies on their own, there are many types of meals and cuisines that utilize chillies to great effect in the cooking process. For this reason, a chilli plant can be very handy to have around. Furthermore, they don’t take up a great deal of space, and can fit in nicely to even a full, established garden. They can, however, be a bit of a challenge – so, as you’re getting started, here are a few basic tipsfor how to go about growing your chillies.

• Prepare The Seeds – To help prepare your chilli seeds for germination, it is often recommended that you place them between two damp sheets of paper towel and keep them warm. Within two to five days, the seeds will have swollen, and potentially even sprouted a bit, and will be ready for planting.
• Plant The Seeds – You can plant your chilli seeds in ordinary compost, and begin to try to keep their temperature constant and warm (70 or 75 degrees). Additionally, it is important in the early stages to keep the compost from growing dry. Full watering is excessive at this stage, but light misting and spray is encouraged.
• Provide Light – It’s also important at this stage to make sure that your seedlings have access to constant light during the day. Artificial light is recommended, particularly if your climate does not always involve long hours of light or consistent brightness during the day.
• Re-Pot The Seedlings – Potting for chilli seedlings is actually quite straightforward. The sort of pot and compost you use is not necessarily important, which means that you can take this step fairly ordinarily. Re-potting should occur after the chilli seedlings sprout their second sets of leaves.
• Begin Watering Regularly – Once your seedlings are re-potted and ready to grow, you’ll need to begin an ordinary watering routine. Again, you can simply water when the soil the seedlings are potted in begins to look dry on the surface, and as your plants grow you’ll want to start watering at least once a day.

Sometimes you’ve just got to go with what’s in the cupboard and the fridge, a bit like that old TV program Ready, Steady cook.

I found the ingredients below and it was “no meat” night so decided to throw them all together and hope that they turned out as good as my cheat’s chicken burger.

Crunchy, creamy, delicious

I served it with a huge side salad with light dressing and it worked out pretty well, if you wanted to add some meat it would work well with chicken or pork in it.

Ingredients

• 1 Jar Old El Paso Enchilada Sauce
  
• 1 small head of broccoli broken up into florets
• 1 small head of cauliflower broken up into florets
• 1/2 red pepper, sliced
• 1/2 green pepper, sliced
• 1/2 yellow pepper, sliced
• 3 Spring onions, sliced
• 4 mushrooms, sliced
• Salt
• Black pepper
• 1/2 bag/box of Old El Paso Nachips or your favourite tortilla chips. Crushed up into chunks
• 25g strong cheddar cheese, grated
• Old El Paso Sour cream
• Olive oil

Method

1. Pre heat your oven to 200 degrees
2. Bring a large pan of water to the boil, season with salt and blanch the broccoli and cauliflower until cooked, drain
3. Wipe the pan then quickly fry the peppers, stir in the broccoli and cauliflower then tip over the Enchilada sauce. Mix well and warm through.
4. Tip into an oven proof dish.
5. Sprinkle over the the tortilla chips, followed by the cheese.
6. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes until the cheese has melted and the sauce is bubbling.
7. Serve with salad and a drizzling of sour cream.

This is quickly becoming my go to sauce for pretty much everything, it works well as a sauce for meat, fish and even on pizza, the base sauce can be spiced up however you want, If you want Mexican flavour add Mexican spices, if you want to add smoked chilli then add smoked chilli, if you want to make it fresh and zingy add fresh chilli and lime, it works with pretty much everything I’ve tried, it’s especially good with smoked paprika then drizzled over pork tenderloin.

If you are vegetarian just switch the chicken stock for vegetable stock. If you want it thicker just add less stock or cook it for a little longer.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 500ml chicken stock
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp Tabasco.
• 1 tsp olive oil
• salt
• black pepper
• pinch of sugar
• 1 tsp of oregano

Method

1. heat the olive oil in a saucepan then add the tomato purée and heat through
2. stir in the other ingredients apart from the stock
3. now add the stock a splash at a time, stirring well
4. heat and keep stirring, once the sauce is at the consistency you like stop adding the stock,remove from the heat and serve

As soon as I spotted these on the shelf in Morrisons I had to buy them, although I very nearly missed them as the packaging isn’t much different to the normal ones and the contains hot chilli sticker is quite small, not good if your eye sight isn’t great. They actually looked bigger and fluffier than the non chilli hot cross buns with a little flecks of red here and there, obviously coming from the chilli.

On slicing them open, the red tinges were more obvious and they seemed to have plenty of fruit in, although they almost didn’t fit in the toaster they were that big and fluffy. They toasted really quickly so it’s best to keep your eye on them as you don’t want burnt buns.

Lightly buttered with salted butter and served with a nice strong Hasbean espresso they went down a treat, you could certainly taste the chilli in them which added a nice dry flavour against the sweetness of the fruit, there was a tiny little bit of heat but not enough to be considered really hot, even by my wife’s standards. There was plenty of fruit in all for buns and they were suitably sticky without being overly so.

Would I buy them again? Yes I would, even without the massive chilli heat they were decent hot cross buns, although If we had a Booth’s near by I’d be in there buying their sour cherry and chocolate hot cross buns as they are possibly my favourite hot cross buns ever.

I’m  a huge fan of Mexican and Mexican style food but always struggle to choose what to have, that’s why I love burritos, they offer the chance to stuff them full of your favourite Mexican treats and fill your belly. They are also great for dinner parties and mid week meals as they an be prepared in advance or even frozen.

Although this recipe using chicken, my favourite filling has to be pulled pork, so if you’ve got time and or the inclination swap out the chicken filling for some of this pulled pork.

You can also make your own rice but to keep it quick and easy I used Tilda Mexican bean rice. I served it with sweet potato wedges and a huge salad.

It doesn’t take very long to make but if you have time it’s best to leave the chicken to marinade for a few hours. You an also spice up the left over tinned tomatoes before topping your burrito with a little bit of Tabasco, a pinch of chilli powder and some paprika.

Serves 4

• 2 large chicken breasts, skinned and cut into thin strips
• 1 red pepper, thinly sliced
• 1 green pepper thinly sliced
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp hot paprika
• 2 tbsp ancho chilli or Chipotle paste
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 jar pickled, sliced Jalapeño
• 1/2 bunch fresh coriander
• Salt
• pinch of Cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 tin of Mexican bean salad, drained and rinsed
• 1 packet Tilda Mexican bean rice, cooked according to the packet.
• 4 flour tortillas
• Sour cream
• Salsa
• Guacamole
• 20g grated cheese, Monterey Jack is best.
• Olive Oil

Method

1. If you are making and serving straight away, pre heat your oven to 200 degrees C
2. Put the chicken in a large bowl, sprinkle over the dried herbs and spices, add a dash of olive oil and the cider vinegar along with the garlic. Mix well and leave to stand.
3. Heat a large frying pan, dry fry the tortillas for 20-30 seconds each side, until they start to puff and bubble up, set aside.
4. Add a little olive oil to the pan and fry the chicken and it’s marinade for a few minutes until it’s nearly cooked
5. Add the onion and peppers, cook until soft.
6. Add the beans and Jalapeños (feel free to keep some for decoration) to the pan and mix well.
7. Add the Chipotle or Ancho paste along with t the tomato puree and stir.
8. Now add half of the tin of tomatoes and stir
9. Cook for 10 minutes until everything is nice and soft.
10. Now you can either leave it to cool or start assembling your burritos.
11. To make the burrito lay each tortilla out on a worktop, divide the rice between the tortillas, placing in the middle of each disk.
12. Next spoon over the chicken mixture
13. Top with a spoonful of salsa, spoonful of  soured cream, spoonful of guacamole and a spoon full of salsa, and a little bit of the grated cheese, keeping some back for the topping.
14. Fold your burrito
15. Bake the burrito in the oven for 5 minutes
16. Remove, top with a couple of spoonful’s of the left over tomato and the left over cheese, put back in the oven for another 5-8 minutes until the tomato is hot and the cheese has melted.
17. Serve

Cauliflower has to be one of the most boring vegetables ever, I’ve never really got on with it unless it’s been spiced to hell with curry spices, in picallili  or covered in cheese so when I found a cauliflower in the shopping trolley I knew there was only one thing to do with it.

I think this is  a pretty traditional cauliflower cheese recipe that I just tweaked a little, had I had more time to plan I’d have swapped some or all of the cheddar for some chilli cheese like Mexicana or Dutch Hot.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 1 Medium cauliflower, broken down into florets.
• 125g strong cheddar cheese, grated
• 500ml semi skimmed milk.
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 red chilli, split in half
• 3 cloves
• 5 peppercorns
• 1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
• 50g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 25g parmesan, grated
• large pinch of grated nutmeg
• Tabasco (optional)
• 4 tbsp natural breadcrumbs.
• Salt
• White pepper
• 1/2 tsp English mustard powder.

Method

1. Pre heat your oven to 200 degrees C
2. Place the milk, bay leaf, nutmeg, cloves, peppercorns and red chilli in a pan and warm through, set aside for as long as possible to infuse the flavours into the milk before straining into a jug.
3. Wipe the pan clean
4. Fill the pan with boiling water, add some salt then add the cauliflower, cook for 3-4minutes until the cauliflower is al-dente.
5. Drain the cauliflower and place in a large ovenproof dish.
6. Wipe the plan clean
7. Melt the butter in the pan before whisking in the flour to form a paste.
8. Now gradually add the milk mixture whilst whisking until you’ve used all of the milk, heat for a few minutes, stirring occasionally so that the sauce starts to thicken, once the sauce is nice and thick remove from the heat and stir in half of the parmesan and 3/4 of the cheddar cheese and all of the mustard powder.
9. Taste then season with salt and pepper
10. Tip over your cauliflower and mix well.
11. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top of the cauliflower, sprinkle the chilli flakes over along with the breadcrumbs
12. Bake in the oven for 30-40minutes until the cheese is bubbling and the top is nice and crispy.
13. Serve with a dash of Tabasco.