Chicken, Potato and Gbejna Pasta Bake

The thing about living in London is that everything is done quickly. Restaurants' turn over of customers is quick, people walk in a hurry, date in a hurry and work in a hurry. I find that even though I do not have a 60 odd hour working week, still I do not find the time to cook myself a proper lunch and eat it in peace. Some people think I work three hours a day - WRONG!

I shall come to the point... The fact that everything is in a hurry, the need for dishes which take little time to cook, allow you to do the dishes while it cooks - hence having a tidy kitchen when it is dinner time (only a plate, fork, knife and dish to clean) - and are equally delicious becomes very important. Especially when compared to dishes which require the most rare herb in the country and very careful eye for about 2 hours in the kitchen! Although I love these big shot chefs, Nigella Lawson being my biggest obession, sometimes their recipies lack the chop chop its time to go feel to them!

So I have come up with something extremely quick, rather cheap, and which you can freeze for a rainy day. Those of you reading from Malta, this would be very easy to do. To all the London readers (if any!) there is a good substitute to the typical Maltese ingedient - Gbejniet.

Recipie is - CHICKEN, POTATO AND GBEJNA PASTA BAKE.

The lovely thing about this pasta bake is that is quick to make and the Gbejna gives the dish that tangy flavour since they would have been made with vinegar.

INGREDIENTS

500g penne rigate, or penne lisce

250g Gbejna (can be substituted with Feta cheese)

300g chicken

4/5 medium sized potatos, chopped in small cubes and blanched

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander

1.5 tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp chopped garlic

Worchestershire sauce

Light sauce suace

5 tbls low fat cream (or yoghurt)

1 egg

60g parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper for seasoning

METHOD

Boil water in a large pot (to be used for the pasta) and another small pot (to be used for blanching the potatoes). As soon as the water comes to a boil in the small pot, throw in the potatoes and leave to blanche for around 10 minutes, or until slightly soft.

Lightly fry the chicken pieces with a little bit of olive oil (or for the healthy option frying spray) and add the garlic. As soon as the chicken starts to turn white, add the cumin, coriander, chilli flakes, worchestershire sauce, soy sauce. Add a little bit of yoghurt if you like for extra creaminess. When the mixture starts to look like a small sauce, throw in the chopped up Gbejna or feta cheese and mix through. Leave to simmer for no more than 5-7 minutes. Do not let the gbejna melt, although it shouldn't because it is not that kind of cheese. Turn off the heat and cover.

When the pasta boils, drain the water and put back into the large pot. Add the potatoes, the chicken mixture, the parmesan cheese, cream or yoghurt, the egg and season to taste. Transfer to a baking dish and sprinkle the top with pepper, and if you like some more parmesan cheese.

Bake in a 200 degrees fan oven for around 30 minutes and I find it particularly good if you let it cool for around 15-20 minutes before serving.

It should take no longer than an hour to bake and prepare. Quick and easy with a clean kitchen. Hurrah!

Enjoy!

Matt/Nigella

So this is the time of year when I stop teaching and take a trip to Malta for the holidays. What usually happens is that I start to contemplate on the year ahead, what my aim in life is and why I have undertaken this mammoth mission of trying to make it in the musical theatre business. However, to make sure I am always occupied, I usually create a project for myself - what other way of distracting myself from weeks without auditions?

On my trip back to Malta I decided to load up about 6 movies onto my iPhone and the first one I watched was Julie/Julia with my favourite actress of all time Meryle Streep, and Amy Adams fast becoming one of my favourites. What she did was basically cook Julia Child's book from cover to cover and write a blog about it. It is actually a true story and this insipired me to get my blog up and running again (besides an excuse to try beuf bourginion). I don't really know what it is going to be about but all I know is that there will be lots of cooking and lots of audition stories and some gossip to keep happy all those Maltese who wonder what exactly happens to those people who decide to go to London to persue their dream in acting.

To put you in the picture - I live with three boys: Thomas Camilleri, Robert Zammit and David Busuttil. It is hilarious, it is fun, it can get stressful but most of all it is my home in London and I love it. Outside our house is a lovely street with Daniel Craig living three doors down and Vanessa Redgrave only a few roads away. Seem appealing? Well, in the three months I have lived there, I have never seen Mr.Craig or Mrs.Redgrave once. I hope that this will change because I am tired of peeping!

To give justice to the title, I am going to write a little bit about my recent adventure - Nigella's Chestnut Cheesecake from her book called 'Feasts'. It is a lovely idea to have a chestnut cheesecake for Christmas but one ingredient was a little scarce in Maltese supermarkets - where the fuck is Sainsbury's when you need it?! I even went to a speciality shop and they did not have chestnut puree. I really wrecked my brains as to what I should do and then I thought - how hard could it be to make it? If they make it in big factories, surely I can make it in my kitchen right? Right. I looked for the receipie on Nigella's wesbite and there it was!!! Chestnut puree. So I am now writing this as I wait for my chestnut puree to simmer and become chestnut syrup. I am very excited. As for the cheescake, I am sure it will be amazing, as Nigella always is, and it actually has a little more glory because you have to pour the chestnut topping on the cheescake in front of your guests - talk about Nigella helping me to get my full glory when I serve it!

We will see how this turns out but I cannot wait!