Really Easy Cheesecake

A recipe from my friend Marie, she said it was easy and she was right......

Get a packet of ginger biscuits, crush them up. Remove small child from kitchen having a tantrum because she wanted to eat the biscuits. Melt some butter, mix with biscuits, press into cheesecake tin, chill.

Whisk up tub of Marscapone and tin of condensed milk (which I have managed to find in France, hurray!!) with juice & zest of some lemons or limes for a good 4 minutes. Apparently if you don't do this for long enough, it won't work. Not being prepared to take that chance, I whisked it for ages........

Pour into tin, chill

And that's it. Chuck on some chocolate curls if you're feeling really extravagent - we didn't have any chocolate :-(

My dinner guests loved it, the kids ate 2 lots each, I finished what was left for breakfast the next day, fantastic.

Cuban Roast Chicken

I'm on a roll now, people keep sending me recipes so I guess I'd better get my finger out and actually blog some of them......

So next up, this one:

That Med Lemon Chicken recipe sounds delicious - I do chicken with citrus lots of times. Another variation for you to try, esp if you like ethnic-easy - and exotic for France - is this CUBAN roast chicken :


Prepare EXACTLY as your friend's recipe, except leave out potatoes & herbes de provence. Instead of straight lemon juice, use a combination of lemon, orange, & lime juice (or buy the 100% citrus juice melange from Lidl, dirt cheap), salt & pepper, sliced onions or dried onion, & LOADS of garlic (however you prefer, fresh cloves or powdered). Roast as you normally would, allowing to brown & crisp at end.

Serve with plain steamed rice (easiest way you can make it) & a bowl of hot, canned black beans (if you can't find canned black beans, then pink or red or white would do). Also, you can quickly saute big chunks of bananas till slightly crisp & serve all together. A typical Cuban spread!!!!!

And it was bloody delicious!! Had to go and cook it chez les guinea pigs due to my oven cooking slower than just leaving the food out in the sun would have done. Used actaul oranges, lemons and limes instead of juice as we happened to have a load lying around after a recent cocktail party, like you do......as for the sauted bananas, they went really sweet, it's a great combination. Nothing was left except bones and citrus rinds, which went into the composter, got eaten by the dog and sicked up the next day (you probably didn't need to know that though......)

Mediterranean Lemon Chicken

Well I have been given some recipes to try for my lazy cook collection and this is the first of them from my friend Chrissie up in Brittany. She writes:

"Take the biggest baking tray with deepish sides you can fit into the oven and fill it with chicken thighs, drumsticks and smallish or halved par boiled spuds. Slosh over this plenty of olive oil and lots of 'herbs de Provence' salt and pepper. Lastly, cut a couple (we use four) lemons into quarters and squeeze them over the top of the chicken. Now, the fun bit. Put some hot soapy water in the sink 'cos you're going to need it. With clean hands (we do try) get in there and mix the whole lot together. Once you've done that and washed your hands pop the whole thing into the oven until cooked ! The house, by the way, will smell amazing!"

Sounds nice and easy, doesn't it? Obviously I didn't bother peeling the spuds or anything, parboiling them is enough of an effort. You can get ready peeled & cooked spuds here vacuum packed but didn't have any handy and as yesterday was yet another Bank Holiday here, I had to use actual potatoes......the rest of it was very simple though and the results were fantastic, tried it out on some friends they loved it too, nothing was left, not even the juice!

My friend Guy in this photo is highly qualified as far as eating goes, he once challenged a friend to see which of them could eat the most beef in a year, you'll find the journal of that year here, needless to say he won, being an insanely competitive person ........not sure how great it was for his health though.

So thank you, Chrissie, a great recipe, really easy to do and tastes fantastic! Oh and the kitchen does indeed smell amazing......