This post is sponsored by Nuffnang.
Something new for me this week, I tried out two new recipes Cottage Pie and Chicken Schnitzel Salad and they were both cooking videos! I have only ever used traditional print recipes before but I really enjoyed the experience of cooking along with Curtis Stone on the Coles Recipes website.
Coles Recipes website is multimedia, in that you can watch the videos and it also has the written instructions. I think this works well as I found I needed to use both. The video is great for giving you all the extra tips and hints that you don’t generally pick up in your basic recipe in print. The text instructions help those of us, that need to keep checking back frequently to make sure we are doing the right thing!
Cottage Pie
I have previously made a pretty basic version of Cottage Pie, but oh my this recipe is good! It was such a hit with the kids that the oldest three have already said they are going to ask for it when I do our next monthly menu plan!
I really wasn’t sure how the small cubed pieces of pumpkin and carrot would go down with the kids, but they loved it and so did mum and dad. It was good to be able to see the actual size Curtis cut his veggies so I could replicate it for our pie.
Cooking along with the video was like having your very own teacher in the kitchen. The super thing about the way videos have been set up is that you don’t have to watch all the video if you don’t want to. You can choose which section of the video you want to watch, for example I watched Part 1 Potato and Parsnip Mash about 8 times, as I have never cooked mashed potatoes like that before. I picked up so many great tips like:
- Place drained potatoes back over the saucepan in the strainer so the potatoes steam dry, helping to make a creamier mash.
- Warm milk and melted butter together before adding to potatoes.
Plating the dish is not my strong suit, so being able to watch the video to see how Curtis Stone puts the dish together, meant my little Cottage Pies turned our nearly as cute as his!
The meat in first.
Then the mash.
And then the fab tip about a light coating of melted butter on the top, gave the pies that lovely golden colour on top.
Warm Chicken Schnitzel Salad
The second recipe I tried was a chicken schnitzel salad. My kids opinion on chicken schnitzel is that it is plenty good enough on its own and doesn’t need to be made all fancy pants with a salad, especially one that has blue cheese, so I made some plain schnitzels for them! Me and my friends however thought this was a beautiful spring/summer lunch! I have to agree with Curtis in that Pink Lady apples are divine addition to this salad!
Not sure if I am just the world’s slowest cook, but this dish did take me almost double the time that the recipe stated (15 min prep time and 15 min cook time). Still for a pretty special salad under an hour isn’t too bad.
I had the MacBook on the kitchen bench and used a combo of video and written instructions to take me through the steps:
Preparing the pumpkin.
Another sensational tip from Curtis Stone on how to flatten out the chicken breasts – use zip lock bags. Is there anything that a zip lock bag can’t do????
What I would have called crumbing the chicken, but Curtis taught me it was “Pane” (pronounced pan-eh).
My “Paned” chicken!
Plated watching the steps on the video that Curtis Stone makes to build his Chicken Schnitzel Salad.
The video section on the Coles Recipe page is growing, so it is worthwhile to check in regularly and see what they are cooking!
Our Family Menu Plan For This Week.
Baking: Coconut Macaroons
Monday: Cottage Pie
Tuesday: Slow Cooker Rogan Josh
Wednesday: Left Overs
Thursday: Chicken Noodle Soup
Friday: Meat Triangles
Saturday: Chicken Schnitzel Salad
Sunday: Sausages and Steamed Vegetables
If you are looking for further recipe inspiration, check out my complete list of Family Friendly Recipes. All of these recipes are in the database of the Planning With Kids Free Menu Planner. You can use the menu planner to plan a week of meals for your family and then print out the associated shopping list.