Chicken Lasagne

I love Italian food, but…who doesn´t? Pasta, cheese, and tomato are a beautiful combination, and if we add some béchamel sauce, meat, chicken or whatever we like, it results in an awesome dish, called Lasagne!

I like to make my own béchamel sauce. It’s not difficult, and I only make the amount I need.

Today I will show you how to make a Chicken Lasagne.

Let´s start:

Ingredients (3-4 persons)

• 1 chicken or 3 big chicken breasts already cooked and chopped by hand
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 2 garlics, finely sliced
• Olive oil
• Salt
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 200gr tomato, diced
• 100 gr corn
• 100 gr mushrooms
• Boiled water (100-200 ml)
• 9-12 lasagne sheets (depending on the size of your baking tray)
• 200-250gr Grated Emmental cheese

Béchamel Sauce

• 40 gr plain flour
• 40 gr butter
• 500 ml milk
• Salt q.s.
• Pepper q.s.
• Nutmeg q.s.

Instructions

First prepare the chicken filling

1. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, warm the olive oil with the onion and garlics, stirring frequently, until lightly browned (about 7-8 minutes)
2. Add the chopped chicken to the pan, and cook for about 3 minutes, stir occasionally
3. Add the tomato purée, the diced tomato, corn and mushrooms, 100 ml of boiled water, and stir it for 1 minute. Cook it for 7-10 minutes, and set it aside. Note: You might need more boiled water because your sauce can get dry

 Now let´s do the Béchamel sauce

1. Warm up the milk (you can use the microwave). Note: You just want it to be warm, (not boiling).
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat.
3. When the butter is melted, with a wooden spoon, add the flour, a bit at a time, stirring in between, until it is fully incorporated into the butter.
4. Slowly, add the warm milk to the mix, whisking vigorously to make sure it's free of lumps.
5. Simmer for about 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently to make sure the sauce doesn't scorch at the bottom of the pan. If you like to have a thick sauce, just leave it for a bit longer. Set aside. Note: Cover it with plastic film to cover the sauce, so it doesn´t get a thick layer on top.

 Finally you can start to lay up the lasagne

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
2. Lay up the lasagne in a baking tray, starting with a layer of bechamel sause, then the lasagne sheets (to cover all the baking tray)
3. Put a 1/3 of the chicken filling, the white sauce and the grated Emmental cheese.
4. Repeat twice.
5. Top with the grated Emmental cheese
6. Bake it in the oven for 35-40 mins, until piping hot and crisp and bubbling on top.
7. Serve immediately

Baby C Birthday Party

I really loved to do this especial order, for Baby C birthday party. Pink, gold and white layout, beautiful colours for a beautiful baby girl! :)
 

French Toast

What a lovely and different suggestion for a breakfast or even brunch, French Toast. They are so delicious and they melted in the mouth. We all love here at home! And one more time is easy and quick to do!

Ingredients

• 5 white bread slices
• 100 ml milk
• 2 eggs
• sugar
• cinnamon

Instructions 

1. Beat the eggs
2. Heat a pan with oil over medium-high heat
3. Dunk each slice of bread in the milk, soaking both sides
4. Dunk each slice of bread in the eggs, soaking both sides
5. Place in the pan, and cook on both sides until golden. Serve hot!
6. Put sugar and cinnamon as you like

Chicken with beer

Sometimes we have a stressed day, and we don´t have any ideas for dinner. So, we just want something easy and quick to do. This recipe is incredible simple to make, with only four ingredients.

Chicken with beer (3-4 persons)

Ingredients

• 4 chicken breasts chopped
• 1 french Onion dried soup mix satchel (50 gr)
• 1 beer (330ml)
• 40 ml milk

Instructions

1. Start to chop your chicken breast
2. In a pan put the french onion dried soup mix, the chopped chicken, the beer and the milk, let cook for about 25-30 minutes at medium heat, stir occasionally

Suggestion: You can serve with white rice

Chocolate Banana Cake

My kids love bananas, and here at home I always have a lot, and sometimes we forget to eat them and they become a little bit ripe.

 I don´t like to throw food away, and my suggestion for this time is to make a Chocolate Banana Cake, is so delicious and doesn´t contain too much sugar because the bananas are sweet.

I promise your kids will love, and ask for more!

Ingredients

• 3 ripe bananas
• 100 gr brown sugar
• 40 ml olive oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 125 gr greek yoghurt
• 150 gr flour
• 30 gr cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• salt

Instructions

 1.    First, preheat the oven to 180°C, and grease a 18 cm pan with butter and flour. Set aside

2.    In a bowl, mash the bananas and the brown sugar together

3.    Add the olive oil, eggs, vanilla extract and greek yoghurt. Mix all together

4.    Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt together. Add to the liquid mixture and mix everything

5.    Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake it for between 35 to 40 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the center of the cake must come out clean

6.    Remove it from the oven and let it cool down for about 10 minutes. Then, turn it out to a wire rack

Donuts

This is a recipe I've tried a few times now, and this time I got it just right. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did! 

Ingredients

• 600 gr plain flour
• 260 ml full milk
• 2 medium eggs
• 11 gr instant dry yeast
• 100 gr butter
• 40 gr sugar
• 8 gr salt
• 8 gr vanilla sugar

For the coating I used:

1. Sugar
2. Chocolate Glaze (Mix it all together)
   1. 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar
   2. 2 tablespoons of milk
   3. 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder
3. Red Vanilla Donut Glaze (Mix it all together)
   1. 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar
   2. 2 tablespoons of milk
   3. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1.    Add all the ingredients into the mixing bowl, start mixing for 2 minutes at low speed

2.    After that, increase the speed and continue mixing for another 10 minutes

3.    Remove the dough from the bowl and gently make a ball

4.    Place the dough in a greased bowl, set it aside and let it leaven until it doubles the size

5.    Put a bit of flour on the table and place the dough on top. Start rolling it until it has about 1 cm thick. Note: Make sure that you have the same thickness throughout

6.    Cut your dough with a donut cutter, if you don´t have, you can use 2 round cutters, one bigger and another smaller to make the hole

7.    Note: I put my donuts in a peace of baking paper each, as I show in one of the pictures.

8.    Set it aside, again, to leaven a little more, but now just the time to rise 50%

9.    Put the oil in a frying pan at 160 ˚C

10.  Put your donuts in the pan, and let them fry until they become gold.

11.  Take them out to a plate with kitchen paper so the oil can drain

12.  You can decorate as you like

Pastéis de Nata

To start, I bring you a very famous recipe in Portugal, the most typical sweet of Portugal, “Pastéis de Nata”.

I made this recipe for the first time and it went very well. To repeat for sure!

Is not difficult at first, and your kitchen will be a mess in the end, but I but it's worth it!

So let's get to work and in the end I want to see your results!

Ingredients (for 10-12 units)

• 250 gr of whole milk
• 150 gr of sugar
• 75 ml of water
• 30 gr of flour
• 4 egg yolk
• 1 or 2 cinnamon sticks
• 3 or 4 strips of lemon peel (sicilian lemon)
• About 300 gr of puff pastry (You can buy this frozen puff pastry in the supermarket – I used 4 plates)

Instructions

First we need to prepare this sugar syrup:

1.       Pour the sugar and the water into a clean saucepan

2.       Stir the sugar and water until most of the sugar has dissolved (don’t stir any more than this) and put over a low heat

3.       When starting to bubble leave it for 3 more minutes, then turn of the heat and put it aside

Time to do the milk cream:

1.    Dissolve the flour with a little cold milk and stir very well until it becomes a paste / cream without lumps

2.    Bring the remaining milk with the cinnamon and lemon peel (without the white part) to the heat. In the moment it begins to boil, very slowly add the hot milk to the mixture of flour and put it all again in the saucepan, always stirring until thickening. Then put it aside

3rd step – Make the Pastel de Nata cream:

1- Add the syrup to the milk cream, always stirring to avoid lumps

2-    Allow it to cool down for about 10 minutes and mix a little of this cream into the yolks to avoid a temperature shock

3- Then add the rest and stir well to incorporate the egg yolks into the cream

4- Pass the cream through a sieve to remove the cinnamon stick, lemon and some lumps that may have formed

For the puff pastry:

1- Stretch the puff pastry just a little bit. Sprinkle it with a bit of water, wrap it in a roll and cut it in pieces of 2 to 3 cm, depending on the size of your molds

2- Put the pieces standing in the molds (see picture) and spread it on the molds with the help of the humid thumb to avoid grasping. Take it to the fridge for about 10 minutes

To cook:

1-  Fill about ¾ of the molds with the cream and bake it in the preheated oven at 250ºC (or as much as your oven reaches) for about 10-12 minutes

NOTE:  It is important that the oven is heated for about 20 minutes before placing the pastries

The cakes should be golden crunchy and creamy with roasted filling on the surface. Adjust the cooking time according to your oven and the size of the dishes. All ovens are different so be careful not to bake it too much. Most likel, the cakes will show different patterns of black spots on the surface

If you don´t have the typical forms of Pastel de Nata, it’s possible to use muffin’s, pie’s or disposable aluminum forms

Welcome to my Blog

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Today is my first post! 

Hope I can help you making some good dishes, and also give you nice ideas.

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