Pan-fried chicken with spinach and pine-nuts

I love the versatility of chicken, and I am addicted to spinach. So this recipe of mine is a way to use two of my favourite ingredients for a healthy and filling meal.

The best thing is this can be made for approximately 90p per portion, so it is perfect for someone on a budget who only has the use of a hob-top, and it takes only 20 minutes maximum to cook.

This should serve four people.

Chicken, spinach and pine-nuts

You will need: 
1 large, deep frying pan (or wok)
4 chicken breasts - we use Tesco frozen chicken breasts, 8 for £3.25. These are perfect for families on a tight budget as it works out about 40p per chicken breast.
1/3 bag of fresh baby spinach (£1 per bag) - approximately 30p worth
2 tablespoons of pine nuts (£2.80 for a bag - lasts for ages).
1 brown onion
Dried herbs if available
Salt, pepper, butter/spread.

How to:
Defrost the chicken breasts.
Chop the onion and fry in a little butter/spread. Add the seasoning and herbs. Stir well.
When the onions are beginning to brown, dice the chicken and add this and a little more butter/spread to the pan. Keep stirring until the chicken is well-cooked (and not pink in the middle). It will take about 15-20 minutes depending on the heat.
Add the spinach and pine nuts, stir on a low heat.

This can be served with potatoes (served various ways), rice, other grains such as cous-cous or salad.

I used to make this and similar meals when I was a lowly student living on a very tight budget, and it always has a lovely 'wow' factor, despite how simple it is.

Magic Soup

You know the old adage: feed a cold,starve a fever? This is a truth that most people do not understand. They think that it means feed someone if they have a cold, and starve them if they have a fever. They think wrong, based on an ignorance of English proverbs and medicine. It means 'if you have a cold, eat well to prevent a fever from taking hold'. Effectively, you starve off the fever from taking over from someone with a cold.

I do believe that natural cures are the best: fresh fruit and vegetables, hot lemon and honey, ginger, garlic and so forth. For any cold a powerful blend of herbs in a hot chicken broth is part of the solution. This is my own recipe for a herby soup that will help effect an 8-hour turnaround in the event of a cold.

It is also a lot cheaper than buying a host of ever-expensive medicines at high-street stores, and is a great way of using up leftovers. Healthy and on a budget!

Therefore I call it Magic Soup.

You will need:
5-6 small chicken breast strips
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 small onion
1 cup of peas
1 cup of sweetcorn
1-2 tablespoons of honey
1 small chilli pepper
2 chicken stock cubes
1 teaspoon of mint
1 teaspoon of rosemary
1 teaspoon of saffron (optional)
Pinch salt
Pinch celery salt
Ground black pepper
Dash of paprika

Take a large saucepan and put in a little oil, the herbs, finely chopped garlic and a finely diced onion. Heat this up with the honey, stirring continually.

Add the diced chicken, the peas, the stock cubes and the sweetcorn. Stir until the chicken is part-cooked and covered with the seasoning.

Cover with 1.5 pints to 2 pints of water and leave to boil for 20 minutes.

Add salt, celery salt, pepper and paprika to taste.

It should look like a clearish, sparkling broth and have a good kick to the back of the throat with every spoonful.

Serve generously, it is a powerful, good, tasty soup with a chilli, garlicky hit that will get to work immediately.

It cured man-flu, it can cure any cold.

Of Dating and Dicing: the United Dairies' Delectable Chicken

UD three-wheel float, c.1954. Photo posted to the Milko group by Don Reid

This is the first ever recipe I tried out of the first recipe book that I ever owned and it has become a staple in the Mermaid household.

Until 1995, I had learned from my mother, along with some stalwart cookery books from 1940-1978. Fruit cake? No problem. Rissoles? Easy! Stuffed Sheep's hearts? Bugger off.

But here I was at university, and I was about to cook my first meal for a man. Not just any man, but a chap with whom I was hoping to become romantically involved. This called for some more modern cuisine. But it also called for dining on a budget. I was a student, after all.

There was no proper internet to turn to, nor smart phones. I didn't even have a mobile phone back then. But then staring into the Spartan fridge in our painfully clean kitchen (we were three OCD neat freaks and still best friends, though not quite so tidy now), my gaze landed on a pint of milk and I had a brainwave.

Now during the 1980s and 1990s we used to support our local Milkman from the United
Dairies. He would come every Saturday with fresh eggs, milk in cool glass bottles, pats of golden, creamy butter in shimmering gold paper. And, once a year, my mother would buy me a diary for the year, which had recipes dotted throughout. I turned to this for help and there it was. For 1998, Pan-Fried Chicken in Mustard Sauce.

I cannot quite remember how UD told me to cook it but it was a doozy of a recipe. Here is my version, with love.

As an aside, I used to wash and clean the chicken before I cooked it. I used to wash off all the blood and fat, and then clean it with lemon juice and salt. All my friends' mothers did the same. Apparently this was not the right thing to do. Oh well I ain't dead yet. Anyway I do believe the lemon, salt and pepper gave something extra to the chicken. You decide.

I've built on the recipe by adding mushrooms and crushed garlic, but these are optional.

Ingredients (serves four)
1 pack of slender chicken breast fillets. I think at the time I used Sainsbury's budget label or Morrisons.
1 tub of 200g creme fraiche
2 medium brown onions
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 pack baby button mushrooms
6 teaspoonfuls of Dijon (grainy) mustard
Also
2-3 cups of basic white rice
1 bag of green beans (or mange tout if you want to be posh)

How to:
In one saucepan, start to boil the rice in a little water.

While this is doing, finely chop the onions and start to fry them in a little olive oil (or whatever you have) in a large frying pan. Add the crushed garlic.
Start dicing the chicken.
When the onions start to brown, turn down the heat.
Add the diced chicken to the pan and stir gently until it starts to turn white on the outside. Keep on a moderate heat for 10 minutes until the chicken is white in the middle.

Dice or slice the mushrooms. Clean and prepare the beans, and put to steam for five to eight minutes. If you do not (as I do not) have a steamer, put a small covering of water and butter over the beans in a saucepan and lightly cook with the lid on for about 8 minutes.

Add the diced mushrooms to the pan and season with a little butter, pepper, salt and/or garlic to taste.

Whack in the creme fraiche as soon as the meat starts to brown on the outside and stir in the mustard. Within two to three minutes, the sauce should look brown and the mustard worked through. As soon as the rice and beans are done, serve.

To look fancy
I grow my own chives so it's easy and cheap to put a lovely garnish on the meal. Also to create the bowl effect with the rice, put lots of rice into a small bowl - I have a small round plastic one left over from Uni days - and turn upside down on the plate.

It looks great, full of fresh flavour and zing, but all for less than £8:00 for four people. Now THAT is a champagne taste on a Cola budget!

Oh, and I ditched the romantic interest from University eventually, even though he loved the meal.