Nigella Lawson's Coq au Riesling from Nigella Express.

I love simple every day ingredients coming together and making that delicious dinner that reminds you of home. Who can go wrong with chicken, white wine, bacon, garlic and mushrooms?? Ok maybe a vegetarian but they are seriously good together. Add buttered pasta and holey moley look at what you have just created for dinner.

Last night I made Nigella Lawson's Coq au Riesling from her cookbook Nigella Express. This book does make you think from the name of the book that its all express dinners and in some ways it is. There are recipes that take 10 minutes to prepare from start to finish and then some like the one I cooked last night which are super quick to start then all you do is leave it for 30 minutes cooking, while if you're like me go and have a shower after a sticky day at work then when you get out and get in your jimmy-jams your dinner is nearly ready. I'm sure I say this all the time but I love meals like that!

I have this problem though where I like to keep adding ingredients when I cook by myself... especially if I'm the only one eating it like tonight (I made Nigella's recipe yesterday). I am writing this and I feel like I could kill the next person to walk in the apartment with my garlic breath. I even tried to eat something sweet after to cancel it out and all these lovely shortbread biscuits tasted like were garlic shortbread... yuk! Getting back on track... I struggle with recipes that don't require many ingredients and I feel I keep having to say to myself 'trust the recipe Dani... trust the recipe!' because otherwise I'll try and add an onion to everything or find some dried herbs in the cupboard or if I'm feeling really adventurous I'll find some jarred goodies in the fridge and sometimes it works but on those rare occasions (like tonight)... I fail. But it just shows that we are all human and we can all learn from mistakes.... mine tonight is no raw garlic chunks in carrot salad. On the plus side - if a vampire tries to get me tonight I'm safe! (or is that onions?)

Anyway this recipe I made last night was so good and I trusted what Nigella told me to do and didn't add anything extra. I did however not have garlic oil but I've seen on youtube clips that if you add whole cloves of garlic to oil and heat the oil it makes a kind of instant garlic oil. I left the whole garlic cloves in there and then fished them out and gave them to Tristan when I served up. And used a pinch of dried dill to garnish instead of fresh. It was so much yummier than my disaster of a dinner tonight. It was chickeny and winey and smokey from the bacon and you all know how much I love pasta! This weeks shape was casarecce which is like curled slightly twisted tubes. I loved them. One of my favourite shapes yet!

Try this recipe below. It's super easy, simple and very tasty! An all round winner in my books :) And trust the recipe!!!! TRUST THE RECIPE!

Nigella Lawson's Coq au Riesling from Nigella Express.

serves 3
(Original recipe here. The recipe below has been adapted slightly to feed 2 people plus one lunch)

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
100g streaky bacon, diced
1 leek, finely sliced
4 boneless chicken thighs, chopped into large-ish chunks
2 small bay leaves
250g button mushrooms, roughly torn into pieces
500mL dry white wine
salt and pepper to taste
400g casarecce pasta (or any type of pasta you like)

- Heat the oil in a casserole pot and add garlic cloves and bacon. Fry for 3-4 minutes on a medium heat.

- Add the leek to the pan and cook for 1 minute to soften.

- Add chicken pieces, bay leaves and mushrooms to the pan. Mix everything through then add your white wine.

- Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer then cook for 30 minutes covered.

- Cook pasta according to packet instructions or until al dente. Put a knob of butter over the piping hot pasta and mix through.

- Taste the chicken and sauce then season with salt and pepper.

- Serve the Coq au Riesling on top of the buttered pasta and then sprinkle a pinch of dried dill (fresh would be better but I only had dried) on top.