Katsu Curry At Home

Who doesn't love a good katsu curry? Be it chicken or some kind of tasty deep fried vegetable alternative, it's a favourite for many, and something I often find myself daydreaming about. I recently had lunch with a Annie, a lovely Illustrator friend up in Leeds for an internship which I am soOoO jealous of, and we went to my favourite Japanese restaurant in Leeds, Little Tokyo. Although I was beyond satisfied with my veggie sushi set and pork gyozas (bloody amazing), her Katsu made my mouth water and I was determined to make my own ASAP. I'm a student, I can't justify eating out thaaat often..

This isn't a 30 minute recipe, I'm afraid. It was my first time making this so I know I dragged it out longer than necessary, plus I was taking photographs, but a few elements require prep work, so give yourself an hour and a half.. ish.

I don't really have a perfect recipe post layout sussed yet, so what I'm going to do is walk you through the photos with notes and pointers and such, then give you a more refined method and ingredients list at the bottom. Sounds good? Okay.

Whisk up your egg and blitz your bread in a blender. I grilled the crumbs off just to get rid of most of the moisture.

Beat your chicken breasts until they're flatter and wider, so will cook quicker and get more crispy coating! So gross juices don't go flying everywhere, put them in freezer bags, remembering to squeeze out all the air before sealing. I didn't have a rolling pin so I used the edge of this chopping board.....lol. Cover the breasts fully in flour, then egg.

Add a little seasoning to the crumb mix, then cover the eggy chicken in the breadcrumbs, pushing them in so they're completely covered in a nice thick layer. Cover these and pop them in the fridge so the coating sticks well to the chicken.

Cover the sushi rice with water and rinse thoroughly, about 4/5 times. I didn't have a sieve... but it would be much easier with a sieve. The packet should give you instructions on how much water to add and cooking instructions. I covered mine well in a saucepan, brought it to the boil for 10 minutes with the lid on, then took it off the heat and let it sit for a further half an hour with the lid still on. Only lift the lid once you're ready to serve, stirring in a very small amount of sushi seasoning just for some added flavour. This will keep it hot!

Instead of searching around for Japanese style ingredients, you can find good alternatives in most small supermarkets.

That lumpy, green monster is in fact frozen spinach. I think I'm incapable of just leaving curry sauces as they are. I have a NEED to add extra stuffs. I can't help that I'm so wild and free and such.

I didn't really know how to approach the chickpeas, but it worked perfectly in the end. Rinse them thoroughly, then cover them in water on a low heat to simmer away for about 30-40 minutes. I cooked a whole tin but only about half went in the curry.

The curry sauce! What is life without some onion, eh? Don't, I don't want to think about it. Dice it up fairly small and fry it off for 5 minutes before adding the chickpeas. Stir them around for 2 minutes, then add the curry paste (or sauce), spinach and hot water. With this particular curry paste, I used 4 cubes out of 6 because it apparently serves 5, HA. 

That can simmer away for as long as need be, just remember to keep stirring and don't let it reduce too much as you want it to be thick and lovely, but not burnt! 

Cut up the chicken all fancy like they do in Wagamamas. This will also let you make sure it's fully cooked through! 35 minutes on 180 should do it, but even so, we don't want any poisonings, do we.

Ingredients

For the breaded chicken:

2 large chicken breasts 

1 large egg

Plain flour

A few slices of bread, blitzed up (I used rye as that's all I had)

Seasoning (I used garlic powder, onion salt and pepper)

For the curry:

Curry paste/sauce (go for the mysterious "curry" curry. Not anything specific like chicken tikka, unless you absolutely insist on chicken tikka. It's yellow)
-EDIT: 1tbs Curry powder, a similar amount of flour, stock water and a dash of soy sauce makes a perfect curry sauce!!

1 medium onion

Half a can of chickpeas (not dried)

A few handfuls of spinach (fresh or frozen)

Olive/rapeseed/coconut oil (Please stay away from sunflower oil. Article)

Other:

Sushi rice or your normal favourite

Sushi rice vinegar, if you want

Greens!! I chose mixed leaves. Green beans, broccoli or peas would be nice!

Method

Blend up your bread slices into crumbs and grill them for a few minutes to get rid of most of the moisture. Mix in your seasoning, to taste. Whisk up your egg, pouring it onto a plate with raised edges, same with the bread crumbs, and cover a chopping board in flour. 

Put your chicken breasts in freezer bags then flatten them with a rolling pin. Cover the chicken in flour, then egg, then press in the breadcrumbs so they're covered in a thick layer. Leave in the fridge for half an hour+ so the coating sticks.

Rinse your chickpeas then place in a saucepan, covering them with water, to simmer away for at least half an hour. In the mean time rinse the sushi rice and according to the cooking instructions on the box, place on the boil. Mine needed to be brought to the boil for 10 minutes, with the lid on, then left to sit, without taking the lid off, until serving. The rice can be slightly cooler as the curry will heat it up. Pre heat the oven to 180/200.

When the chickpeas are ready to come off, drizzle olive oil into a baking tray, place on the breaded chicken and drizzle a little more on top. Place into the pre heated oven. Dice the onion into fairly small pieces then drain the chickpeas and store them in a bowl. Fry the onions in oil for 5 or so minutes before adding the chickpeas for a further 2-3, then add your curry paste and hot water/curry sauce and spinach. Allow the sauce to thicken on a low heat, stirring periodically until the chicken is ready. The chicken should be turned about 10 minutes before taking out.

To serve, take the lid off the rice and stir in some sushi seasoning (completely optional), then wet/oil your hands and gather a ball of sticky rice onto each plate. This can get messy but it looks pretty, ha! Slice up the chicken, then pour over the curry so it covers half the chicken and half the rice, keeping both from becoming soggy. Add a few greens and voila!! 

I do hope you liked the recipe! I wouldn't trust myself to make the curry sauce from scratch, but with all the additions and home made breaded chicken (bloody nice by the way!) I think it still counts as a recipe, right? If you do make it, let me know how it goes! :)

A Weekend Doodle Diary

Last weekend I took Jack along to a little weekend getaway with my mum and two sisters. We rented out a really lovely house in the farmy hills of Cumbria. It was a massive and weird and lovely thing to introduce Jack to my family for the first time. Amazingly, they got on really well. If they hadn't, Jack wouldn't have been able to flee anyway. Many hills, no Uber.

As some of you will know, I've actually switched degree courses to Illustration (from Graphic Design), and our summer project is to keep a sketchbook. I started this summer very enthusiastic about it, however, such is life, I've been an absolute shit and have not kept up with it very well at all. Part of the problem is that I've never had a single sketchbook before. I tend to have many on the go and grab one whenever I feel a new product design bouncing around in my head. So, on Friday the 12th I sat in a coffee shop and decided to draw what I'd done that day, and it turned into quite a fun little weekend series. I hope you find it fun to read through. A pen vlog. For obvious reasons I'm very happy I documented it :')

Equipment:
Uni pin fine liner in 0.2
Promarker in Cool Grey 2

NO TIME FOR PRICKS

"No Time For Pricks" Phone Case - £18 / "No Time For Pricks" A4 print - £10

SIGHH IS HEADING TO NEW PLACES. Yes. I'm not quite sure where, but Art Print mountain and Watercolour valley seem likely destinations. With a new year at university fast approaching, I'm working on diversifying and developing my art style lots, which will no doubt have an impact on the products coming out in my shoppy shop. I really don't know why I've held off on making proper art prints for so long. It was obviously very stupid as who doesn't love decorating their walls?? But DO NOT FEAR for I have many ideas and great equipment at uni.

At Sighh I'm all about creating products to make you feel positive, inspired and motivated. "No time for pricks" is a snappy way of getting yourself in the zone each morning to go out, be yourself and remove negativity from your life. All in a bit of a funny way because cacti...pricks....we all know it's funny okay.

It's a bit dramatic to say I had the time of my life designing this, but I kind of did. If you've followed me for a while or had a look through my work, you'll see its almost exclusively smooth, digitised work (hand drawn then edited with Adobe Illustrator). Although this has boded well so far, for years I've been itching to develop and try something new so I'm going to be making a real effort from now on to do just that. I'm thinking traditional print, paint, gold foil, hand finishing as much as possible and just experimenting. So it was a breath of fresh air to spend a day or two filling up pages in my sketchbook, feeling that repetitive movement from paint, to paint water, to paper. 

Product details:

The phone case files have been designed and are ready to go, but the A4 prints still need to be printed, which I aim to do at uni next week. However, as I can't absolutely guarantee the dispatch date, they're going up for pre order. This way I know how many to print in the first batch! :)

As always, there are a wide range of phone models available! Check out the drop down menu on any of the phone cases to see for yourself.

The frame is not included, so I can't wait to see how you mount them/where/or what kind of washi tape you use!

LAUNCH: 6PM 07/08/2016 www.sighh.co

Also, I just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone on Twitter this morning who got involved with the idea of me designing new products like pyjamas/bedding/colouring books! The discussion has lead to loads of new plans for the future!! Thank you for showing excitement because it really is the fuel to my art train.

Foods of the week #1

I've been wanting to do a Weekly Meals post for months, but after seeing the backlash on youtubers' What I eat in a day videos I decided that just highlighting a few of my favourites that I've made recently would be the best option. I'm usually cooking for two, so these are foods that can be made in bulk or would serve you for the next day. It's also been VERY BLOODY HOT this week so my ingredients have been lighter and more green - which I'm v happy about - and I probably had a cider along with all of these too, because sun.

Hot, roast vegetable salad

Salads are amazing because they can contain almost anything and everything that needs to be used up in your fridge. The flavour combinations are infinite and they're a nice alternative to stodgy meals more suited to winter. However, I'm not one for a meal that doesn't leave me satisfied, and I know that's why many people would opt for a sandwich over a plate of "leaves". I get around this buy adding hot ingredients to my salads, in this case, a nice combination of roasted, garlicky veg and a dollop of houmous. 

Uncooked ingredients:

• Spinach and iceberg lettuce as the greens
• 1/2 bell pepper - could be chopped and roasted as well, but I wanted to dip it in the houmous and it added a nice crunch to the salad
• 1/2 an avocado 
• A handful of olives, chopped
• Houmous
• Feta, crumbled
• Balsamic dressing

Cooked ingredients:

• 1/2 a medium onion 
• A handful or two of cherry tomatoes, halved
• A handful of mushrooms, sliced
• Olive oil
• Salt/pepper/mixed herbs
• One crushed garlic clove

The seasoned veg should be cooked at about 210 degrees celsius for 10-15 minutes, or whenever the tomatoes have softened and there's a nice amount of juice. Serve hot!

Mediterranean vegetable couscous with feta

 

I had some left over roasted tomatoes/onion/mushroom mix from the previous salad, so added it to a cheat bag of mediterranean veg I picked up from the Co Op for £1 (amazing), diced it all up into a tiny mix and roasted everything for another 10-15 minutes at 200C-ish. This time I added it to couscous. I love couscous because it's soso easy and takes on the taste of what you put it with, but a more nutritional option would be quinoa. I always end up making loads and this recipe was enough for 3 meals!

• Mediterranean vegetables (courgette, onion, bell peppers, tomatoes)
• I don't know how much couscous I put in but it didn't look like much and still almost overflowed my saucepan
• Feta, crumbled
• Black pepper to season
• A blob of houmous 

10 minute tortilla chips

I love making these SO MUCH. They're perfect for when you have some houmous to use up and/or your tortilla wraps are a bit stale and you wouldn't use them for a sandwich. It's as simple as slicing them up into segments, adding some seasoning (or not) and popping them in the oven for no more than 10 minutes. I drizzled on a tiny amount of olive oil to get the paprika to stick then put them in a pre heated oven, around 200C, until crispy. Melting cheese on top is amazing too!

• Any tortilla wrap - I'd usually go for wholemeal 
• Optional olive oil and smoked paprika 
• Optional grated cheese
• A dip of your choice

Stuffed crust tortilla wrap pizza

So this idea came about when we had two wraps left but hardly any tomato puree. As there's almost nothing nicer than a cheese toasty in this world, except a cheese toasty that tastes like pizza, I made this pizza wrap double layered and filled with smoky cheesy goodness. I have another pizza wrap recipe here. The toppings could be anything your heart desires, but mine desired an Italian deli board.

• 2 tortilla wraps
• Tomato puree 
• A handful of olives, chopped
• A handful of spinach, torn
• Marinated artichoke - I'd picked up a deli pot, most supermarkets do stuff like this now and would also have sun dried tomatoes and mozzarella which would be amazing 
• Grated cheddar
• Smoked paprika 
• Mixed herbs

I spread a layer of grated cheese on the first wrap and sprinkled on some smoked paprika, then added the second layer with the rest of the ingredients on, then popped it into a pre heated oven for around 10 minutes at 200C. SO YUM.

So yes those were my favourite foods of the week. I hope this was vaguely interesting/saliva inducing. If you make any of these or want extra details on how to, tweet me! :) @pollyvdsz

NEW IN: PINS

Probably Late / Ugh Mug / Needs Coffee / Cat Lady {£6.50}

PINS! The new craze. Yep. Did you ever imagine the days of the customised denim jackets would be back? Well they are, and I'm surprisingly thrilled about it. It's making way for new, really fun and free pieces to design. Enamel pins, button pins and embroidered patches could feature ANYTHING. I guess you could say that about notebooks and art prints, but pins are essentially little doodles you get to carry around.

With that in mind, I've kept my first luxury enamel pin collection black and white, to reflect little doodles that represent the owner. Cat lady is an identity for all those who might need to address why they're covered in fur, Needs Coffee and Probably Late say something about the wearer to those who read it, and the Ugh mug (maybe my favourite) is a simple stamp of sarcastic apathy. I have plans for SO many more along these lines, so fingers crossed this first collection goes down well!!

The pins are made from a shiny black nickel, and filled with bright white enamel. I was so happy to see that they were shiny because I actually thought the metal would be matte black *phew!*. They attach with a metal pinch clip at the back, except the Ugh mug which has a rubber clasp instead. 

Can we just stop for a second and appreciate their packaging????? These were a WORLD OF FUN to design and I must say a big thank you to Megan for illustrating the scenes so well during our collabs. Don't they look all professional and stuff? 

Things you can put pins on:

Dungaree front pockets

The shirt/jumper you're wearing that day

Tote bags

Rucksacks 

Denim jackets

Pencil cases

I friggin' cannot wait to see photos of these pins being worn out in the wild! Tag #SighhDesigns and @sighh.co on Instagram or tweet me at @SighhDesigns! Much love. Which is your favourite?

A DINNER PARTY OF SORTS

Moving into this house for second year has been wonderful. I can't describe how happy I am to be out of halls, in a lovely bright house with big windows, wooden floors and white walls. Even when it comes with a few too many ants, a floating wardrobe I don't know where to put and a toilet that is prone to blockage...and will cost £130 to repair, kewl. I moved in on the 1st of this month, a Friday, and had everything unpacked and ready with the motivation of cooking a big, celebratory Sunday roast for me and Jack, which happened, yay! The kitchen is small but sweet, and with the place to myself until September I'm determined to do ALL OF THE COOKING and fill up this blog with lots of foodie posts.

My friend Megan, who you may be aware of from our two collaborations for Sighh (the Kitties and Doggies phone cases), is going home for a month at the end of the week, so I thought it would be lovely to have her round for a meal, which became a double date scenario with Jack and her boyfriend, Isaac, invited also. We had been talking about going out together for weeks without it coming to anything solid, so I was very much excited (and a little nervous, as you always are with the boyfriends-meeting-friends situation).

With a day's notice and some food requirements to consider (no spice, nothing too strange, no pepper) I decided on a starter of stuffed potato skins and a main of prosciutto wrapped cheesy stuffed chicken breasts, veg and an optional creamy mushroom sauce, then apple and blackberry crumble (adapted from this post) for pudding, plus nibbles. With the potato skins and stuffed chicken breasts I mixed up the flavours so there was something to interest everyone - as being the ~host~ it's your job to cater to the guests and make sure everyone is happy.

I thought I'd give you a little run through of what preparations I made during the day and a bit on how the evening went!

12:30/2PM

Having not yet done a proper shop, I spent the morning deciding what to put on the menu then popped to the co-op - luckily just a 4 minute walk down the road (omg). I was really conscious that I didn't want to spend the whole evening in the kitchen when I should be socialising, and that actual time planning would have to happen here. So, I prepped pudding by cooking down the fruit filling and mixing the crumble, popping everything into fridge bags for later. I also bagged chopped up mushrooms and onion for the main course's sauce.

4PM

I then got the potatoes going by washing them, adding olive oil and salt and putting them in the oven.

3/4PM

Next came the chicken which I stuffed with a mixture of mozzarella, cheddar, sun dried tomatoes, basil leaves and spinach, then wrapped in prosciutto. I wrapped the baking tray in cling film and put it in the fridge for later so it was just a matter of popping it in the oven when things got busy.

5PM

At about 5PM the baked potatoes were finished, and Megan had arrived. We left them out to cool while we popped to the shops for wine (my passport/only ID still hasn't arrived...) and proceeded to catch up, change clothes, drink, prepare food and laugh about how housewifey we felt. 

7PM

We forked out potato from the skins and popped it into two boxing bowls, adding a mixture of cheddar, mozzarella, basil leaves and sun dried tomato to one, and adding lightly cooked garlicy pancetta and onion, cheddar and spinach to the other. I would have tried a few more varieties but we only had two mixing bowls and it was a bit of a rush anyway! We filled the skins back up, popped more cheddar on top of them all, added clingfilm and left them ready for dinner. At this point the guys had arrived and it was time to crack out all of the crisps, dip and wine.

As I provided the food, everyone else was kind enough to provide the other bits. As we're three students plus a very minimalist graduate (Jack) it's not surprising none of us had 4+ sets of everything, so they each added their own plates, cutlery and wine glasses for a makeshift dinner setup, plus my backup paper plates which came in very handy. This was a casual affair, okay.

At this point I'd had a lot to drink and completely lost track of time, but it was really lovely getting to chat to everyone properly and I was so glad I'd prepped all the food already. 

As I became more and more pissed, the plating up took a hit and so did the photography. Bare with.

The potato skins were intended as a starter, but as there were so many and we didn't have enough green veg, they became part of the main too. I was very conscious of over cooking the stuffed chicken which I always do, having poisoned an ex once... so I was pretty chuffed with how these turned out - also considering the are no numbers on the oven so you don't know how hot it is (!!!?!?!?).

I mean what is this photo? So pissed. Thank you to Megan for the action shot, everyone ended up with a very sufficient amount of custard after we were done here.

The rest of the night is a mixture of more wine, cards against humanity, card games and that one where you guess the word on your head. It was a very late night and I didn't even have to keep them there by force, so I think it was a lovely success all round and the food was complimented lots which makes me SOOOO HAPPEEEEEE.

-

I had never hosted something like this before, or been on a double date of any kind, so what essentially was a couple of friends over for dinner meant a great deal. I'm twenty, living in a house, with a boyfriend of 5 months and one day (not living together, but we're almost always together). Sometimes I feel like a real genuine adult who is adulting and it makes me well up. Although I've stopped growing vertically, I can tell that I'm growing a lot as a person. I'm finding myself doing things, like having three people who didn't know each other (ish) over for dinner, and actually doing it even when it seems scary. I let go of my anxiety inducing, irrational feeling that I am personally responsible for conversation/people having a good time, and watched humans with their own social skills, and 7 bottles of wine, get on and create a lovely evening.

Calling all friends, pls, let's cook together.

This was a very unstructured post, so if it's held your attention this far, I'm glad. Let me know if you have any tips on organising/hosting things like this - I'd love to get better! I hope you enjoyed a little life insight.