Buffalo Chicken and Quinoa Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

So I'm finding this round of blogging slightly more tricky. Yes, yes, I understand this is only my third entry in this house but I am suffering some quite obvious problems. Firstly, since my last internet home I have actually moved physical home. I am now officially a city dweller. The city part is irrelevant to my problems, the new flat is key. The lights are really yellow and being winter I'm not really seeing much natural light so my pictures aren't doing well. 

This would be workable if it weren't for the other issue.

In addition to this, our house was broken into recently and my lovely camera was stolen. The insurance company kindly replaced it. Unfortunately, not so kindly, they disagreed with the cost of the camera and as such I have a nice wee digital camera which won't take close up pictures and will only allow me to stand a foot away and use the zoom. Frustrating. 

However, that being said I have tried my best for you lovely souls. Today I bring you a very weird kitchen creation which is the result of too much Pinterest and bad advice (though possibly correct) on what is involved in 'buffalo'-ing something. 

There are two things I have noted recently:

1. Quinoa seems to be queen bee of the health food pulses; and
2. Everthing seems to be better if your chicken is buffaloed.

I'm not sure that either of these are true but it seems to be the internet consensus. Personally I would have preferred wild rice in this recipe as I think the nutty flavour of the quinoa adds too much to the taste. 

That being said the chicken was amazing!

So lets eat: 

This was inspired from the recipe half baked harvest with a few tweeks to make it more me. 

How to make: 

• As I did this in a wok everything cooks quite fast so I would advise preparing all your ingredients first. Chop up two chicken breasts into bite size piece, very thinly slice a quarter of a white cabbage, dice a stick of celery, and thinly slice a large carrot. 

• Heat a tbsp Oil in the wok with 2-3 tbsp of Hot Sauce. 

• Throw the Chicken into the wok and cook for 4-5 minutes until it's well coated in the hot sauce and mostly cooked. 

• while the Chicken is cooking make your blue cheese dressing for the topping. You can buy blue cheese dressing but you can make a very easy version by munching together the following: 1 tbsp of sour cream, two large slices of strong blue cheese (I use stilton) and 0.5 - 1 tbsp of mayonnaise. 

• Add the veg and cook until the cabbage is soft. 

• Throw in a pack of pre-cooked quinoa (I used a mix of white and red) and cook through till hot. 

• Serve with additional hot sauce to taste. 

Enjoy and remember if your not a fan of quinoa I recommend this with wild rice instead.  

Home-baked Chips

So for my new start I thought I'd start with an old simple recipe. In fact this the oldest recipe in my internet life and was the basis of my very first post. 

I thought I would bring it back as both a good luck charm and a reminder that there is nothing better than really good chips.  

Home-baked chips:

1. Cut two-three large potatoes into sticks about 1/2cm thick and boil for 3-4 minutes. 
2. Drain the water off the potatoes and add a knob of butter, cajun spice mix (mine was shop bought, not made this time), salt and pepper to the pan with the potatoes and toss till well coated. 
3. Pop them out onto an oven tray and bake on 190C for approx 25 minutes or until golden brown (tossing every 10 minutes). 
4. When they are done sprinkle liberally with salt and serve.

Guacamole:

1. Put in a bowl: a large avocado, half teaspoon of chilli flakes, a (small) tablespoon of lemon juice, a generous pinch of ground cumin and a pinch of salt. (Adjust depending on your tastes.)
2. Mush with a fork to a consistency you like, I like mine quite chunky, and serve. 

This should all serve two people with generous helpings of chips. (p.s. fried eggs go really well with this and make it a bit more of a 'meal' as apparently I'm strange for considering a bowl of chips  dinner.)

Now, if any of you have read my old post, you may notice the difference in the guacamole recipe. I can only put this down to three more guacamole making years of experience. The recipe has become more avocado centric with the key being to get a perfectly ripe avocado. This can be quite tricky but I have picked up a couple of tricks along the way which I will happily share with you(assuming you don't know these already). 

Firstly, if you squeeze the avocado gently there should be a bit of give. Secondly, once you have found one that feels right pull out that tiny little stalk looking bit out of the top - it will give you a colour guide as to ripeness: 

• Completely green - not ripe enough
• Green going brown - ripe (good for slicing and salads) 
• Light brown - very ripe (good for guacamole)
• Brown/furry - Over ripe

Hope this helps. Enjoy.

xxx

So, where to start?

Welcome to my new home. I hope you like the view. 

 

My previous blog was much more foodcentric and in order for me to branch out a bit I figured why not a fresh page and a clean start.

 

I would usually undertake my new starts at new year. However, I think that Pancake Day/ Shrove Tuesday works just as well, if not more fittingly for a food blogger, particularly as I have already failed at my New Years resolutions.

 

With all the soon to be failed promises of chocolate absinance coming up over the next 40 days, I thought I might join in but instead of giving up chocolate/crisps/etc (which I believe may be an impossibility for me) I am going to commit to this new blog.

 

My hope for this little internet home of mine is that it will be a bit more of me than my last house. Not to worry as I'm sure it will still hold my personal recipe collection but hopefully I will be able to look at a few other bits and bobs along the way. I can't say for certain what those will be yet but hopefully we'll both have a bit of fun finding out.

 

So here goes nothing...