How the light gets in; and another Bad Italian Recipe

It's been 6+ weeks since this blog started, and more than that since working-from-home for some of us started; and while I helped set this up, I'm so massively happy that others have been doing the heavy lifting for most of it. A work thing which would have kicked me soundly in the head regardless of when it happened has come up at exactly the wrong time, and my concentration has been utterly shot outside work since - have been doing knitting (and mostly un-knitting) of brioche stitches, and watching a lot of rubbish telly. I've been taking photos of cooking (usually the difficult bit) but not writing words (usually the easy bit).

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

 Leonard Cohen (1934-2016), one of my Mam's favourites 

So. My imperfect offering. Thanks, Leonard.

Wednesday night's dinner was Chicken Amatriciana Tray Bake. I think this is another of those terrible bastardised Italian recipes but it's tasty. And I first made it in preparation for a visit by WoollyWormhead who needs to be gluten-free; so the traditional pasta version wouldn't work; I've adapted it since with whatever I have to hand. I usually halve it for 2 nights' meals; but what came in last week's Sainsbury's delivery was 6 thighs; so I went for 3/4 of the quantity of chicken and potatoes, and the full complement of everything else. I'd rather not be eating it for 3 nights, but the use-by wasn't that great either, and my imagination, along with my concentration, has pretty much gone.  The nice thing is that all the actual cooking is at the start, so if you lose interest later there's minimal effort.  A timer is your friend for this one.

You make a paste with chili, tomatoes, garlic and olive oil, in a mini-blender if you have one. If you don't have one, you probably have another solution; my mini-blender is a prized and wonderful thing.

You spread it all over the chicken and halved baby potatoes and bung it into a Gas 6/200C oven and leave it there for half an hour. They don't say to give it a stir; I do.

You add pancetta (or chopped smoky bacon, or equivalent). Normally, I'd just add the pancetta; but I made a crucial miscalculation. You're meant to add fresh mini tomatoes later; but I realised I had very few tomatoes left from what turned out to be a bag of mush. So I drained a tin of chopped tomatoes, castigating myself for not keeping the juice, and added them as well - but with the pancetta on top and the tomatoes on bottom where I could. Another 15 mins.

And then finally, the "fresh" tomatoes. And because I had this the first time I made it and it was lovely, and I've never dared try the recipe without, one of those pots of mixed-olives-and-feta. This one was bought in the Before Time with a 2-month expiry date and was about to get past that...  And because I'd been to the post box and the corner shop, I also stole another branch from the big rosemary bush in front of the hedge of the house next to the (closed) Chinese takeaway - the bush had been strimmed, unfortunately, but I assumed that also meant the owners weren't that bothered...

Another 15 minutes in the oven, dump a third of it onto a plate, and ecco. Yum.