This chicken sandwich makes a great snack or even a quick meal in minutes if you’re not ravenously hungry. It’s certainly filling enough to make a decent-sized lunch for most people.

Ingredients (per person):

• 1 wholemeal sub roll (or any roll, or two slices of bread)
• 1 boneless chicken breast
• Salad ingredients such as salad leaves, tomato, spring onion – whatever you fancy, really. You can also use whatever salad dressing you like, perhaps Caesar salad dressing, ranch (buttermilk) dressing or blue cheese dressing.
• Mayonnaise (or butter, if you prefer)
• Seasoned flour (optional)

Method:

Wash and pat dry the boneless chicken breast. If you want to keep things really simple, just fry up the whole breast in hot oil. Once the meat is sealed, turn the heat down to let the inside of the chicken breast cook properly. If the juices run clear and not pink then it’s cooked. (There is a risk of salmonella food poisoning from eating chicken that’s not been properly cooked.)

If you want to go for something a bit tastier then dip the chicken breast into seasoned flour, shake off the excess flour and fry it up in the same way as above.

(Seasoned flour is very easy to make. Just put a handful of flour in a bowl, add salt and pepper, paprika, dried herbs such as thyme or oregano, or anything else you fancy. If you can do this, you’re half-way to being able to make your own version of KFC. I’ll do a recipe for Southern Fried Chicken soon. Despite KFC’s secrecy about their recipe, it’s not difficult to make a tasty home-made version!)

I prefer to cut the chicken breast into pieces and dip it into the seasoned flour before cooking. You get more flavour of the seasoning that way, but it’s up to you.

Once the chicken is cooked, it’s a simple assembly job. Split the roll in half, spread with mayo (much nicer than butter), add the slices of tomato, the salad leaves and the chopped spring onions, and pop the pieces of cooked chicken on top. Add a bit of whatever dressing you fancy – or don’t. And voilà – a quick and easy recipe for a filling snack.

I guess it might seem odd to include a recipe for something as simple as a chicken sandwich. After all, a chicken sandwich could simply be a piece of cooked chicken meat between two slices of bread. But I’m sure you’ll agree that this version looks a lot more appetising than your bog-standard chicken sarnie. Try it and see!

Having visited the Mushroom Bureau’s website (which I mentioned in a previous posting) I decided to have a go at making their Weekend Mushrooms. But, true to form, I can never follow someone else’s recipe and prefer to do things my own way – so here’s their recipe and mine.

Weekend Mushrooms

Ingredients

• 4 breakfast or Portobello mushrooms
• About 60ml (4 tbsp) oil
• 8 medium eggs, beaten
• 30ml (2 tbsp) horseradish sauce
• 30ml (2 tbsp) chopped fresh parsley
• 75-125g (3-4oz) smoked salmon trimmings
• Salt & pepper
• 30ml (2 tbsp) fresh soured cream

Method

Heat oil and cook mushrooms in a large covered pan for about 6 minutes, turning occasionally.

Beat eggs, horseradish sauce, chopped parsley, smoked salmon and seasoning together.

Pour into a saucepan and cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally. As egg begins to set, reduce heat and gently stir in the soured cream. Continue cooking until egg has almost cooked through.

Serve mushrooms on warm plates topped with the creamy scrambled eggs.

Birthday Brunch Mushrooms (serves 2)

Ingredients

• 2 large Portobello mushrooms
• A little oil and butter for frying
• 4 large/medium eggs (I used 5 small ones because we could only get small ones today)
• 100g packet of good quality smoked salmon (not trimmings, yuk!)
• a couple of spoonfuls of horseradish sauce
• Parsley for garnish
• Salt and pepper

Method

Heat oil and butter in a frying pan and fry mushrooms until cooked.

Make scrambled eggs in the usual way. (I didn’t have sour cream but I don’t think it mattered.)

(I didn’t add the horseradish because I’ve never had scrambled eggs with horseradish before and wasn’t sure if it would taste good. I served the horseradish on the side instead. As it turned out the horseradish gave the eggs a delicious taste. I also didn’t add the smoked salmon because we had good quality stuff and I didn’t want to cook it, so I served that on the side too.)

Place the mushrooms on the plates, spoon some scrambled egg over them and garnish with parsley. (With hindsight, chives would’ve been lovely with this – possibly even better than parsley.)

I served this with a wholemeal sub roll, a couple of slices of smoked salmon, and a baby spinach leaf and cherry tomato salad. Yum!

I think my version is better (well, I would, wouldn’t I?) but it was the Mushroom Bureau who gave me the idea for this in the first place. Take your choice.

For the baby spinach and cherry tomato salad I simply washed and dried the spinach, halved the tomatoes and tossed both in a bowl with my usual homemade salad dressing. (One part red or white wine vinegar, two parts olive oil, salt and pepper or McCormick’s steak seasoning.)

 

Cut the butternut squash in half lengthways and remove the seeds.

Splash a bit of olive oil onto it, and roast in a hot oven for about 40 minutes, or until it’s soft.

Then add some cream cheese flavoured with sage (or whatever else you fancy) into the hollow where the seeds used to be.

Then pop it back into the oven to melt the cheese.

Easy and delicious.