Gordon Ramsay’s Chicken Escalope

For the last few months we’ve had an arrangement with friends of ours, another couple, whereby we take it in turns on a monthly basis to have the other couple round for dinner. Rob and I were the first to host and I remember scouring endless recipe books and websites to find a perfect main. In the end, it was Gordon Ramsay’s F-Word that came through for me with a recipe for Escalope of Chicken. [EDIT 8th Jan 2011 – the original recipe on the channel 4 website seems to have been removed, but I’ve found it again on another blog: Tasty Eats at Home: Escalope of Chicken with Tomato Sauce]

This is a pretty simple recipe to follow and is very forgiving to the less-confident cook as you can get things out of the way and then leave them to one side without worry. Tonight’s the 3rd time we’ve cooked this and we’ve learned to leave the chicken in the oven a little longer than 8 minutes in order to get nice golden-brown cheese.

When we cooked this for our friends it went down exceptionally well and became one of my favourites although it’s definitely in our top three least healthy dinner options due to the amount of oil – Gordon Ramsay’s a “little oil” is what we’d probably call “a generous glug” – and cheese. The tomato sauce on its own has the most amazing flavour, despite using only cheap cherry tomatoes, and consequently I think we’re going to try cherry tomatoes for our next attempt at pizza sauce. The combination of tender chicken, crispy breadcrumbs, soft bursting tomatoes and gooey mozzarella makes the chicken escalope so moreish and you can’t go wrong with sautéed potatoes! Really, it’s just posh chicken & chips with tomato sauce and I love it!

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Tortellini: The Quick and Easy Dinner

We have a friend coming tomorrow to stay with us for a few days and the flat has been looking like a bit of a disaster recently. Rob was out this evening and I got home at about 7pm knowing that I had a good couple of hours of cleaning ahead of me. Two hours of tidying, vacuuming and scrubbing later and the last thing I wanted to do was cook a proper dinner!

Tortellini really does offer a remarkably quick and easy dinner option but, unlike the ready meals that may be an obvious choice, it also tastes fantastic and I’ve often chosen it even when I’ve all the time in the world!

Tonight’s dinner took no more than 5 minutes to prepare. While the kettle boiled, I chopped up some baby spinach and halved some cherry tomatoes. I then brought the water back to the boil in a pan and added a pack of spinach and ricotta tortellini (no matter what else I try, I always come back to spinach and ricotta, mmm!). A minute later, I drained the pasta and then drizzled it with olive oil. Half went into tupperware for tomorrow’s lunch and the other half was mixed up with the spinach and tomatoes. Once plated up, all it needed was a few grinds of pepper and it was ready to devour! Delicious!

I always used to make a tomato sauce to go with tortellini, but just using the olive oil really makes you appreciate the flavours of the filling so much more (plus it makes it that much quicker!).

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