Chicken and pea lasagne? Yes! Just scroll down if you don’t want to hear all my prattle.

Before we start: some good news. I’ve had a weird thing happening with my neck for ages where if I look to the right, there’s a click noise and a lot of pain. Very frustrating. But the good news: I was sniffing a flower and the pollen made me sneeze so hard that I’ve fixed whatever what was wrong with my neck. I’ve sneezed myself better! Let’s celebrate by being nice. No…

I’ve discovered a new past-time. Admittedly it’s one that shows off my mean, vexing side, but I don’t care. I <3 looking through and commenting on the Facebook ‘buy and sell’ groups in our local area. Honestly, the tat people try and sell is just beyond me. Plus, you get the bonus of looking at pictures of people’s houses and getting to suck air over my teeth at the state of the wallpaper or the “canvas art” littering every room. If I see another KEEP CALM AND DRINK PROSECCO poster I’m going to find a way to reach through the atoms on my iPad screen and torch their house.

As an aside, Paul used to know someone who drank from a cup that said ‘KEEP CALM AND GO MENTAL’ on the side. I rather think it remains to his credit that he didn’t smash it over her head.

I recently got into a spat with some orange harridan with a face like a rushed omelette who accused me of being a bald fat fuck because I accused her ‘100% NOT FAKE’ Calvin Klein dress as being fake. First of all, you can’t insult me by calling me a bald fat fuck because, if you remove the spaces from that and add slut, that’s my Grindr name, and secondly, I don’t think Calvin’s knocking out dresses under the name Calvan Kline. Calvan Kline sounds like a ski village in Norway, for one thing. Anyway, spluttering ill-conceived and predominately vowel-less insults at me has no effect. It rolls off me like gravy off a fat duck’s back.

Just an aside, I’m not always mean. I’ve bitten my tongue all weekend after seeing a PicCollage (it’s always a fucking PicCollage) recipe for ‘Hawiian BBQ chicken’. Hawiian? That’s how a Geordie mother calls her children in off the street.

Now, a lovely bit of news. You may remember from previous posts that we are part of something called the Reddit Gift Exchange? In short, you pick one of the monthly themes (for example, The Simpsons, or The 90s) and you’re matched with a complete stranger from somewhere else in the UK. You then buy this person a gift pertaining to the theme and send it to them. It’s a giant Secret Santa. You’re guaranteed a present in return from someone else and it’s all very jolly-hockey-sticks and amazing. We love it. In the twelve months we have been doing it we’ve had some genuinely brilliant gifts – homemade cookbooks, a massive box of ‘tourist’ paraphernalia from Scarborough, posters and gaming kit and plenty of others too numerous and marvellous to mention. I do love a Secret Santa, although I did once get my ex-boss a duck for her bath without realising it was a vibrator. That caused much embarrassment, especially when she tried it out in the office no-she-didn’t-don’t-worry. We didn’t have a bath!

So the theme this month was favourite decade and for both Paul and I this was definitely the 90s. It had it all – great TV in the shape of The Crystal Maze, 999 and dinnerladies, superb music (aside from Eiffel 65, fuck those guys) and proper morning-piss yellow Sunny Delight. Though for the record, remember we didn’t have much money and so branded radioactive drinks were out – the best we had was a bottle of Overcast Ennui in our lunchbox. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, our Secret Santa totally knocked it out of the park with their selection of 90s goods – just look at what we received!

Quite hard to see from Paul’s tiny photo which, in the spirit of the 90s, he seemingly took with a Game Boy camera, but there’s three CDs which I used to own and absolutely fucking love (especially the one on the right), a packet of Nintendo Playing Cards, two Tamagotchis, some Hot-Wheels and a proper little watch. There was also a lovely card. But good lord, what a perfect selection of 90s goodness – I had such a rush of nostalgia that my pubes disappeared and my voice unbroke. I know that’s not a word, squiggly-red-line, but it makes sense in this sentence.

I was always very lucky in that I didn’t go through the whole protracted stage of my voice breaking – I went to bed one night with a voice like Joe Pasquale and a scrotum like a tangerine, woke up the next morning sounding like Isaac Hayes and had a ballsack like a Bassett Hound’s ear. Perhaps it didn’t go quite as deep as Isaac but certainly I avoided all the squeaking and dropping that so many teenage lads seem to experience.

It was the Pogs that really sent us both whooshing back into memory land though. I absolutely loved them. God knows why, it’s just some natty coloured cardboard discs, but something about the simplicity really won me over. Paul and I tried to have a quick game only to send them tumbling all over the kitchen floor so god knows what has happened since, but back in the day, I was the King of Pogs. Well, perhaps the Queen of Pogs. I had the full set, a fluorescent green Pog holder and a slammer which was really just a massive, heavy-duty washer that my dad brought home from work. The Pogs epidemic swept through our school like the norovirus, with fights and scuffles leading to the outright ban of Pog battles in the playground. Didn’t stop us – we used to just play out of the sight of teachers. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe the amount of lads I beat off behind the sheds when no-one was looking. Some things never change, eh.

I reckon Pogs was also the first flirtation with crime for both me and my sister. We had been dragged along to a car-boot sale somewhere inexplicable and indoors and were bored shitless. Parents, don’t take your kids to car boot sales. They’re full of things other people don’t need or want and anything interesting a kid finds is always met with a ‘WE DON’T NEED THAT’ from the parents. Oh, but we do need a VHS of Beverley Callard’s Fitness First and a giant glass ashtray, apparently.

We had spotted a Pog stand full of slammers that looked like something out of Saw and not-quite-Pogs that were possibly printed at home. Didn’t matter. All about volume in those days, see. Anyway, I distracted the lady behind the decorating table by commenting on how fine her moustache was or something whilst my sister proceeded to fill her trousers with Pogs, all held in by virtue of her Adidas Poppers had been tucked into her socks. Genius right? We were like the Krays of South Northumberland.

Don’t judge us too keenly, we were young and bored. Karma got us back anyway because the Pogs were of such bad quality that the ink ran and they were ruined by the heat of a rustling shellsuit. I’m sure my sister probably has a faint imprint of a Tazmanian Devil somewhere on her ankle even now.

Mind, as an aside, Pogs were nothing compared to the thrill of completing a Panini Premiership sticker book. Seeing Alan Shearer’s smug, insufferable face sliding out of the packet on a shiny backing meant being King of All Things, if only for a day. Nevermind the arguments that Pogs caused, I’ve seen fights that looked like when The Bride battles the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill 1 over a four inch by two inch sticker of Tino Asprilla. No amount of trading Paul-Furlong-for-Kevin-Pressman-and-the-Nottingham-Forest-logo is worth having your first adult tooth kicked clean out of your mouth for.

Dangerous times indeed!

Speaking of teeth, you’ll need them to chew the next recipe. I know right, a flawless segue. Now listen, I can’t claim any credit for the idea of this recipe, I found it on another site (Every Nook and Cranny) and thought it looked delicious. Naturally, ours came out looking like someone had driven a car over it before serving, but hell, who cares. It tasted fine and I’ve adapted it for Slimming World. So let’s do this.

to make chicken and pea lasagne you will need:

• 2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded (three if you’re using supermarket ones) OR 500g chicken mince

Here’s the thing. Chicken breasts from our big Musclefood deal – you only need two because they’re so large and don’t shrivel away to nowt like the supermarket ones do. Click here to have a look – it’s definitely a good deal!

• 2 leeks, finely sliced (save your fingers and time by using a mandolin slicer, not least because they’ll be uniform and so skinny it’ll make the other vegetables jealous) (also that’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen this slicer)
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced (use a mincer – garlic powder is fine, but a mincer makes short work of this and takes no time at all – buy one here and I promise you you’ll never look back)
• 8 to 12 lasagne sheets (it depends on what size dish you use, see, I’m not just being awkward) (totally am)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp sage
• 3 tbsp passata
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• 200g peas
• 250g quark
• 30g grated parmesan (HeA)
• 70g reduced fat mozzarella ball (HeA)
• 12 cherry tomatoes (because I’m an ostentatious sod, I’m using ones grown in our greenhouse – next year raise a tomato plant and you’ll be amazed by the difference in flavour – because home-grown tomatoes actually taste of something, see)
• salt
• pepper
• worcestershire sauce

If you can’t get chicken mince and don’t have a food processor to make your own, don’t panic – use turkey mince instead. Perfectly acceptable swap and very easy to buy in supermarkets. Chicken is tastier, though.

to make chicken and pea lasagne you should:

• preheat the oven to 180 degrees
• if you’re using chicken breasts you will need to mince it – if you don’t have a fancy mincer (who does?!) then you can use a food processor with a grating blade, or use a cheese grater. Either way it’s a clart on so use chicken/turkey mince when you can!

Because we’re super fancy, we have one of these wonderful Magimix mixers. We threw the chicken breasts in there, pulsed them for a few seconds and that was that. If you cook a lot and have some spare moolah, I can genuinely and heartily recommend it. If you’re someone whose refrain to anything is ‘I CAN GET IT CHEAPER IN ALDI’, perhaps don’t even look.

• heat a large saucepan over a medium heat and add some squirty olive oil, but not Frylight. Never Frylight, it scares me.
• add the leeks, reduce the heat to low and cook until they soften, which will take about ten minutes
• when the leeks are soft, add the garlic, stir, and then add the chicken
• raise the heat to medium and stir well and cook until the chicken is no longer pink, because you don’t want to be revisiting the lasagne thirty minutes after eating as it thunders out of your arse
• add the oregano and sage, stir, and then add the chopped tomatoes, passata and tomato puree with 60ml of water
• stir the peas into the pan and simmer for about 10-15 minutes until the sauce has reduced. If it looks too thick add more water
• add salt, pepper and worcestershire to season however you like it
• in a small saucepan add the quark and parmesan and heat over a low heat until it softens, then remove from the heat as soon as the mixture is well combined, adding salt and pepper if you like – I like a really peppery sauce so I always shoot for the moon at this point
• in a deep dish assemble the lasagne however you like
• spoon a third of the chicken mixture into the bottom of the dish, followed by a third of the cheese sauce and a layer of lasagne sheets. repeat for two more layers – if you don’t have enough, just do two layers – it’s all going to get turned into poo, it doesn’t matter how well you put it all together
• top with torn chunks of mozzarella and pop on the cherry tomatoes
• bake for 35 minutes or until everything looks delicious and the top looks like a burnt knee
• serve with a side salad of speed food, or, do as I do, give a portion to your other half and then secretly eat all the crusty cheesy topping under the guise of going back to the kitchen for a drink
• it’s no wonder my thighs smell of bacon, is it

See? Nice and summery and a bit lighter than your traditional hefty lasagne. You can adapt this recipe however you want. I got scolded last time for using two HEAs in my recipe on the basis that one person is only allowed one healthy extra. This is true. But, this also serves four folks easily and six people at a pinch, and frankly, if you’re eating enough lasagne in one sitting to feed six people, you’ve got more to worry about than an extra 30g of cheese.

We’ve made three other lasagne recipes, why not take a look?

• slow cooker lasagne;
• baked bean lasagne (trust me, it’s nice!); and
• mini lasagne cups

If you’re looking for more pasta ideas or chicken recipes, click on the buttons below and be whisked away to a land of recipes and whimsy.

Cheers!

J

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