As this blog clearly shows, savoury cooking is not my thing like sweet cooking and baking is. I do cook and enjoy savoury food, of course, but it rarely features on this blog because I don’t often stretch myself or try new things as often as I do with desserts. Something I rely on in savoury cooking quite often is chicken as it’s an easy staple we always have in our house and there’s so many ways to cook it. As this is a baking blog, I also often use pastry in my savoury baking. Today I combined the two to make jumbo chicken and carrot pasties.
I’d had these saved in my Savoury To Make file for a long time, and one blustery day I just really had a craving for a properly hearty dinner. I made them in a few stages – the pastry and filling one day, and then basically cooked them to order the next day whenever somebody wanted one, just rolling out a wodge of pastry and forming the pasty and cooking one or two for that meal. I originally found them on this blog here where I think they were made for a picnic but I made mine much bigger. They were perhaps a bit too big – but they were filling and delicious! I added a slosh of cream to the filling and think perhaps they could have done with another small chicken breast, but overall I was pleased with how easy and successful they were. They have piqued my interest in savoury explorations! Enjoy :)
A quick trip to Sainsburys later and this problem was solved and I was ready to get cracking! I wanted to make a curry from scratch to practice balancing different spices and flavours and also to have a go at making one of my favourite convenience dinners. My family have our Marks & Spencer ready meal favourites sorted: a moussaka for my Mum, pizza for my Dad and always a curry (and some sneaky Percy Pigs) for me. This recipe was from Sorted Food which is a group of guys who run a YouTube channel and website that I love – proved by the fact that I currently have 25 of their recipes bookmarked! This recipe intrigued me because you marinade the chicken in a spice paste and then add this to an onion base mixture containing several other spices, almost like making two separate curries and combining them halfway through cooking. The curry was spicy for a spice wimp like me, but nothing that an extra dollop of yoghurt or drizzle of cream couldn’t solve. I was really happy with the end result and, marinading time aside, it probably didn’t take too much longer than walking to Marks and back to pick up a curry. You can find the recipe here – enjoy!
