Nancy's Best Nachos With Mexican Pulled Chicken and Gaucamole

Well I don't know about your part of the world, but in mine it is feeling thoroughly Autumnul. It's dark now when I get up and dusky when I'm leaving work, and there's a sharp chill in the wind, not to mention the onflux of rain we have been hit with.

All these combined mean that now is comfort food season. I want big hot bowls of soup for lunch and carb-tastic tummy warming meals for dinner, and I want them to include some of my favourite fall flavours - pumpkin and squash, ginger, cranberries, apples, carrots and parsnips and nuts of all kinds just to mention a few.

Another of my favourite things to eat when the weather has turned brisk and grey is chilli, it warms you up from the inside out and has even been shown to promote a feeling of wellbeing, which is especially useful in a season where less sun = less vitmain d to keep your spirits up.

Now I can't stand anything too hot, I am a bit of a chilli whuss in all truth - I like the flavour of chilli more than the heat, and I think South American cooking does this the best. Mexican recipes often use dried chillies which are then soaked in hot water and usually blended into sauces or moles (no not the snuffly grey animal) which can have many many ingredients - as is often in foody cultures families have there own recipes which are handed down and are often a closely guarded secret.

Trying to decide what to make from the wide range of Mexican dishes was a tough one, so I tried to think of what I like to do when the weather turns that involve food and then it came to me - I love to cosy up on the sofa with Pete and Cleo eating something delicious and watching movies.

So what do you eat while watching movies, other than popcorn and naughty big bags of chocolates? Nachos! I know the ones at the cinema are foul, drippy plastic cheese and 'salsa' that looks like runny jam (bleugh!) but these babies will knock your socks off and are really not difficult or that time consuming to make. Of course they are pretty calorific (cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips...) but they are the perfect occasional treat for a movie night in with your friends.

Nancy's Best Nachos With Mexican Pulled Chicken and Gaucamole
Serves 4

Mexican Pulled Chicken Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
2 small or 1 large red onion, sliced into thin rings
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed and diced very small
2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
pinch of salt and ground black pepper
2 large chicken breasts, skin removed
1 x 142g can of tomato puree
the juice of half a lime

Guacamole Ingredients
2 ripe avocados, diced
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed and diced very small
2 tbsp finely chopped coriander
the juice of half a lime

Nacho Ingredients
1 1/2 bags of slightly salted tortilla chips
100g grated mozzarella
100g grated cheddar
1 x 150ml tub sour cream
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped coriander

Mexican Pulled Chicken Method
Fry the onions, garlic and diced chilli in the olive oil in a deep pan over a medium heat for two minutes, then add the paprika, cumin, oregano and s&p and cook for a further few minutes until softened and starting to crisp up slightly.

Add the two chicken breasts and cook until they are coloured all over, then add the tomato puree and pour on enough water to just cover the chicken. Put a lid on the pot and cook on medium high heat for 35-45 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and tender.

Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside for a moment. Turn the heat down to medium and continue to cook the sauce while you pull the chicken. This is done by taking two forks and literally pulling apart the meat so it looks shredded.

When the sauce has reduced by half add the chicken back to the pan and stir until everything is covered. Set aside and start to build your nachos.

Nacho Construction
Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F.

Spread the tortilla chips on a deep sided baking tray and then cover with the pulled chicken. Now take the two cheese and sprinkle them over the top so everything is evenly covered.

Bake the nachos for ten minutes until they are warmed through and the cheese is melted.

Gaucamole Method
Do this while the nachos are baking - just mix all the ingredients together and leave to one side for the flavours to develop for a few minutes.

Final Nacho Construction
Spread the soured cream over the hot nachos and then pour over the guacamole before sprinkling over the spring onions and coriander.

Serve with a cold Mexican beer and a good movie!

Notes
This pulled chicken can be used for many more recipes and is a great weeknight standby. Serve it in buns a la pulled pork sandwiches, roll into flour tortillas like a fajita, stir through some pasta or use in place of mince in a Mexican style lasagna.

The chicken can also be made in advance which would mean making these when guests are coming over would be a doddle - you'd just need the ten minutes of cheese melting and sauce daubing and you're there! Just keep the chicken refirgerated in an air-tight container, but use within a day of cooking - you can't be too careful with poultry.

Feel free to use different cheeses in this recipe too, I just used what I had on hand - the mozzarella is always good as you get the 'stringy' factor and it's nice and creamy against the tomatoey chicken.

Nancy's Best Macaroni and Cheese

After a work week like last week, I really needed a big plate full of comfort food. Being left to cover three peoples jobs is definitely not fun, and definitely not something I will be repeating after this second week of it is over. Part of me wishes that food didn't make me feel better - I would be a hell of a lot slimmer if it didn't - but sadly I don't earn enough to go on shopping sprees to lift my spirits. Until I win the lottery, I will soothe my soul with delicious but not so nutricious dinners.

This recipe is by far one of the best comforting meals I can think of and involves three of the archetypal warm you up from the inside ingredients - cheese, cream and pasta. Not for the weight watching (or the faint hearted some may say), this oven baked pot of starchy goodness was apparently made popular in the Western world by Thomas Jefferson who brought it back to Virginia, USA after his adventures in Italy, the land of wheaty cheesy goodness. Pasta? Pizza? Cannolis? Boy does that country know how to eat.

Onions cooking with garlic and sage / Milk infusing with bay leaf and nutmeg

So you can imagine my surprise when Pete let slip that he had NEVER EATEN MACARONI CHEESE? What? Is that possible? Not even the crappy boxed stuff or lame pre-packed ready meals? Of course I had to make him try it, and start with the best version possible - baptism by fire I say. My guy is a big time cheese lover, and emmental is one of his favourites so I added that to my recipe and it was a really good choice adding a slightly sharper edge to the rich creamy sauce.

Cooking roux / Finished white sauce

You could really use any cheese combination you like, but I wouldn't advise using any more mozzarella than I have here - I think if you upped the amount below it would be too stringy to mix thoroughly through the macaroni and onions. As you can see below my sauce was very elastic but still viscous enough to coat everything well. A sprinkling of parmesan over the top would add another layer of sharpness to cut through the cream.

Finished cheese sauce / Macaroni, onions and sauce mixed to perfection

Do try to get panko for the topping too, it really is far better than regular breadcrumbs and gives a beautiful crunch to the burnished exterior.

I really would not advise this as a regular meal, one serving probably contains a whole days worth of calories and fat and I don't want to be held responsible for the first death by cheese clogged artories...

Just going into the oven / Just out of the oven

Nancy's Best Macaroni and Cheese
Makes 8 servings - this can be halved or the leftovers can be frozen after they have cooled for up to 1 month

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large white onion, diced
5-6 sage leaves, torn in half
1 large garlic clove, cut in two
500ml milk
2 bay leaves
pinch of nutmeg
30g plain flour
pinch of salt
pinch of ground black pepper
250g grated mozzarella
250g grated mature cheddar
200g grated emmental
250g macaroni
2 cups panko (or regular) breadcrumbs

Method
Preheat the oven to 190 C / 375 F and butter either 2 medium or 1 large deep sided oven pan. Put these to one side out of your way.

Fry the diced onion, garlic halves and torn sage over medium heat until they are soft and caramelised. Remove the garlic halves and sage leaves and set aside - this can be done in advance and refrigerated if needed.

Warm the milk over low heat with the broken bay leaves and nutmeg until it comes to a simmer, then turn off the heat and remove the bay leaves . Melt the butter in another deep sided pan over medium heat and when it starts to bubble mix in the flour, salt and pepper, then cook for 1 minute. Whisk in the hot milk in 4 parts - it may seize up at first but keep whisking and when all the milk is added you should have a smooth sauce. Keep cooking this mixture, stirring often, until it bubbles and thickens - this should take around 10-12 minutes. While this is cooking put the pasta on to boil for aroudn 8 minutes - you want it to be al dente as it will soften more in the oven.

Take the pan off the heat and thoroughly mix in the cheeses, leaving a little of each to use as topping, and set aside. Drain your al dente macaroni and rinse it in cold water to get most the starch off. Add to the cheese sauce with the onions you cooked earlier and stir through so everything is well combined.

Pour into the buttered oven pan(s) and top with the remaining cheese and a good layer of panko breadcrumbs. Put into the oven and bake for 30-45 minutes until the tops are golden, bubbling and crispy. Serve alongside salad with a balsamic and olive oil dressing and eat your way to high calorie heaven.

Nancy's Best Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Cookies are not something I make very often. I think it's a combination of the fact that I always get distracted by cake recipes and that Pete and I will sit and eat a whole big batch in one sitting as they are so moreish. I wish my metabolism would allow me to do this with no ill effects on my already suffering waistline, but it just won't. I get ridiculously jealous of those lucky lucky women who can plough through dozens of cupcakes and cookies and stay thin and gorgeous (cough... Natalie of Bake and Destroy... cough) but for me, those treats go straight to my thighs. But, my green eyed monster being pushed aside, these cookies really are worth an extra half hour on the cross trainer.

The perfect cookie recipe is one of the holy grails of baking and I think this gets pretty close - it has taken long enough to develop! Chopped cold butter? Room temperature butter? Melted butter? A mix of sugars? Which kinds of chocolate? Nuts or no nuts? So many ingredient decisions to make and quantities to change! The cooking time is also a very important part of a perfect cookie. I am definitely a chewy gooey fan, but I do know some crispy cookie lovers so have given cooking times for both styles. I have used walnuts in my recipe also but if you are allergic or just plain hate nuts feel free to leave them out altogether, you could add in another 50g of chocolate if you so desire.

Nancy's Best Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Makes 20 large cookies

Ingredients
125g slightly salted butter, melted
100g caster sugar
200g dark muscovado sugar
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
200g milk chocolate, roughly chopped
100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
100g walnuts, roughly chopped (optional)

Method
Preheat the oven to 170 C / 338 F and line two baking trays with greaseproof paper.

Beat together the melted butter, caster and muscovado sugars until no lumps remain, then add the eggs and vanilla essence and mix until light and creamy - around 2-3 minutes.

Mix in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt until just blended and then stir in the chocolate and walnut chunky by hand with a wooden spoon - the mixture is very thick and chunky now and therefore it may damage your hand beaters or stand mixer.

Drop very heaped tablespoons of the cookie dough onto the baking sheets leaving around 8cm between them (I baked four cookies on each tray at a time).

Bake in the preheated oven for 12 to 13 minutes for chewy cookies or 16 to 17 minutes for crisp cookies. Remove and let cool for a few minutes on the baking tray before removing to a cooling rack and baking the next batch. Try one warm out of he oven - so so good!

Notes
I like to chop the dark chocolate quite finely and the milk chocolate into pretty big chunks, that way the dark chocolate is distributed better through the dough so the cocoa flavour is always present, and then you'll hit a big milk chocolate chunk deposit every now and again which is always nice!

Try and use the best chocolate you can get, after all, it is the star of the recipe.

The dark muscovado gives a real caramelly taste to the cookies which the walnuts accent really well, but as I said before, the nuts are optional but highly recommended!

And look how pretty they are wrapped up as a present - who wouldn't be thrilled to be given this as a gift...?

And a side note...
Today I was drinking some cream soda and decided I needed some ice cubes so I grabbed some from the freezer. It was only after throwing them in that I realised I had grabbed the white wine cubes that I always keep in the freezer in case I need a little wine for a recipe and don't feel like drinking the rest of the bottle. As it turns out, cream soda and white wine go together really well! I think it's my new summer drink of choice. Second to Pimms of course...