Friday Night Take-away - Chicken Vindail

I got into cookery at university.  It was my first time away from home, fending for myself.  It was also the start of the Celebrity Chef boom of the mid 90's.  My parent's generation had had Floyd, The Galloping Gourmet and Food and Drink but we now had Oliver, Rhodes and Fearnley-Whittingstall.  Jamie and Hugh in particular got me excited about food and if it weren't for them I wouldn't be the person I am today.

It was the perfect storm.  New exciting chefs on shiny new programs at the same time as I was able to spend vast amounts of time watching the telly.  These days however I spend less time watching the box and when I do, the food programs all too often fail to make me want to cook anything.  The recent trend of cooking competitions with celebrity spin-offs do little but annoy me and certainly never get my culinary imagination fired up.

There has been one gem for me recently.  Amongst the Masterchef's and Come Dine with Me's shone Rick Stein's India.  I'm a big fan of Stein's.  I've liked, with few exceptions, everything that he has done.  I know that some people find his delivery to be condescending and vaguely annoying, like a broken toenail or Morrissey, but I like him.  More to the point I have really liked this latest series.  I make curries quite regularly but I've got into a rut, using the same spice mixes and sauces so discovering new combinations and methods has been inspiring.

I bought the cookbook which accompanies the series a couple of weeks ago.  I was going to wait until Christmas, but impatience got the better of me.  The fist thing I turned to was Saag Paneer.  I'm happy to tell you that Rick agrees with me on how this is cooked.  I then started to look for a recipe for tonight's meal.

My first choice was Chicken Vindail.  It comes from Chennai and is a quick cooked chicken curry similar to vindaloo in that the sauce is finished with vinegar.  Because the vindail was essentially chicken and sauce, I decided to cook a side dish too.  I flicked through the Vegetable chapter of the book and chose Poriyal, a dish of peas, carrots and beans finished with coconut.

The poriyal was so fresh and fast to cook that it may well become my standby side dish.  I replaced the peas that the recipe called for with some home grown broad beans just to make it even fresher.  The vindail was, without a shadow of a doubt one of the best curries I have ever cooked.  It was possibly one of the best I have ever eaten, at home or in a restaurant. 

The meal devoured, I went back to the book and started tagging recipes for future use.  Normally a good cook book will get three of four tags but Stein's Curry now has eighteen tagged recipes for future cooking, not including the two from tonight that we'll definitely cook again.  I can't remember the last time I was this inspired by a TV program or cookery book.  I feel a lot of curries* in the near future.

*curry being the adopted generic term used to cover all Indian cookery.  The closest translation for curry means gravy which neither of these dishes had.

Friday Night Take-away - The Cheese Burger

The reality of being a parent really struck home this week.  R woke up last Thursday covered in Chicken Pox and our plans for the week were chucked out of the window.  We have been in self-imposed quarantine ever since.  My planned Birthday meal was cancelled and both Z and I had to re-arrange work as we had to keep him out of nursery.

Every cloud has a silver lining and ours has been more meals as a family.  In a normal week R has his meals at nursery and we eat our tea after R has had his bath and gone to bed.  This week we've been making sure dinner was on the table by the time the worker of the day got home.  We have even given R his first taste of Chinese food with a Chicken and Oyster Sauce stir-fry with noodles.

Tonight though, we are back to normal routine.  I don't finish work until six o'clock on Friday so R had cottage pie before I got home.  Once he was nicely tucked up in bed we cracked on with our take-away style meal of cheese burger and chips.

Even before the horse meat scandal broke we tended to make our burgers from scratch.  I have heard of people adding breadcrumbs, egg and even tomato ketchup to the meat as seasonings or binding agents for their burgers.  All we ever add is finely chopped and fried onion, salt and pepper.  By the time the mince and onions are mixed by hand I find the burgers hold their shape pretty well.  I fried the burgers for a couple of minutes on each side before letting them rest while I got on with some garnishes.

People smother their burgers with all sorts of toppings.  A recent take-away menu that fell through our letter box had fifteen different beefburger options*.  I'm not going to tell you how to top your burger but I went with Jarlsberg, dijon mustard, tomato ketchup and some crunchy gem lettuce leaves.

There is only one thing that I will change the next time I make burgers.  I own, and have never used, a mincer.  I am determined to dust it off and start experimenting with different cuts of meat to make the best burger.  I have even seen ox heart burgers on display in butchers' shops and having recently tried pig heart I'd love to give that a try.

*there was no pulled pork on offer although I'm sure it won't be long before it appears on the standard take-away menus alongside doner kebab meat.

Friday Night Take-away - Filet-o-fish

I realised recently that, although we have been keeping to the tradition of the Friday Night Take-away for a couple of years, there is one take-away establishment that has escaped a mention.  Tonight we have set that straight by knocking up a couple of fish burgers for me and Z.

There was a time in my life when I was a regular visitor to the burger bar with the golden arches.  As a 6th form student I had a Saturday job as a till monkey in a supermarket.  Every lunchtime, for two years, I wandered across the road to McD's and ordered the largest burger on the menu*.  This trend came to an end when I went to university.  A combination of no Saturday job, not having much disposable income and there not being a McDonald's close to my flat meant that my burger intake wained.

If we did treat** ourselves, normally in a moment of drunken abandon, I would stick to my guns and get as much meat as my wallet would allow and Z would usually order a filet-o-fish.  This left us with a problem.  For some reason, no matter which branch of McD's we staggered into, there were never any filets ready to eat.  This meant I had to either; A) wait for Z's filet to arrive, while my burger went cold, or B) eat my burger then sit there wanting a second burger watching Z eat hers.  Due to this, I have resented the filet-o-fish for years.

I do however love a fish finger sandwich.  The fact that they are on almost every pub menu is testimony to their greatness and, possibly, our inability to let go of more innocent times.  They do vary in quality, from reformed "white fish" in basic sliced white bread to monkfish goujons on ciabatta, and every thing in between.

To my mind a fish finger sandwich is a lunchtime treat and not an evening meal so tonight, I let bygones be bygones, set my resentments to one side and set about recreating the filet-o-fish.  Like the hyper-global-fastfood-chain I based my filet on 100% fish fillet.  To keep costs down I opted for coley but you could use any fish you fancy.  The fish fillets were coated in flour, egg and bread crumbs before being shallow fried and served in a bun with home made tartar sauce, cheese and lettuce.  This was every bit as good as I thought it would be and we didn't have to wait half an hour for it to be ready.

*washed down with a diet coke.  I am well aware of the irony of a greasy burger and a diet drink but I honestly prefer the flavour of diet coke to the full fat version.
**some treat!

Friday Night Take-away: Chana Saag

With the Olympic Food Challenge taking up all of our time over summer we have neglected some of our own food traditions.  The Friday Night Take-away started before I had even thought of writing Tonight's Menu so it's about time we started cooking our own take-away inspired food at home again.

To ease our journey back into our Friday night ritual I'm using leftovers from the Olympic Food Challenge. Qorma e Sabzi from Afghanistan to be precise.  Fried onions and a tin of chick peas were added to the mild spinach curry, along with some garam maslala and chilli powder to lift the dish.

Having transformed Qorma e Sabzi into chana saag it was only right that we had even more leftovers to mop up the curry.  I had made too many puris for Pakistan so I defrosted a couple of them, warmed them up and tucked in.  We can get spinach dishes from the local take-away but they are nowhere near as good as this.

Friday Night Take-away - Fish Fingers

There are two steadfast Friday traditions in our house and it's not often that they converge.  Today however, both Fish Friday and Friday night take-away are singing from the same hymn sheet.  I had sent Z shopping earlier in the day to get provisions for the weekend.  Included on her shopping list was cod.  I was planning to roast the cod wrapped in bacon and serve it with bobby beans* and roasted cherry tomatoes.

When I got home from work, it turned out that the dinner plans had taken a change of path.  Z had cooked R some fish fingers with some of the cod that she bought on Kirkgate Market.  She and my mum both liked the look of the toddler's food so much that they decided to knock my plans into a cocked hat.

The thick fillets of cod were sliced into fingers and rolled in beaten egg and breadcrumbs before being shallow fried.  We stuck with the bobby beans and some new potatoes as the accompaniments but really it should have been chips and mushy peas to really recreate the take-away experience.

*Green beans, French beans, call them what you want.  I had never heard them called bobby beans before moving to Leeds but it's such a cute name it will probably stick.

Friday Night Take-away - Chicken Thai Green Curry

Whenever possible, which isn't often at the moment, we try to cook a take-away style meal on a Friday.  South Leeds is awash with take-aways that offer curry, pizza, pasta and any combination of kebabs.  Some of them even allow you to have your kebab on the pizza, which just sounds wrong to me.  A couple of the Chinese take-aways have started branching out and now feature a couple of Thai dishes at their bottom of the tri-fold glossy menus.  I haven't tried any of them, but it is nice to know they are there.

With Z's mum staying for the weekend we decided to push the boat out and have a couple of courses for our evening meals.  Tonight we went for a starter and mains.  The starter came courtesy of a vegetarian week sample from Z's workplace.  It was received in the same bag that contained the disappointing risotto from earlier in the week.

This was a Simon Rimmer branded Thai Potato-cake mix.  After the disaster that was the risotto I was dubious about serving these to a guest* but they weren't half bad.  The flavour and heat that they provided were spot on, fragrant and fiery.  My only complaint would be the texture, they were too soft and pulpy, but they are a great idea and I'll happily make something similar from scratch in the future.

Our main course was a standard Thai Green Curry.  The last time we cooked a green curry we used prawns as the protien, tonight we had chicken.  We made the same paste as that meal; ginger, garlic, lemon grass, lime zest, spring onions and coriander ground up in a food processor.  The chicken was fried in batches and set aside.  Onions, green peppers and broccoli were stir-fried with some of the paste, before a tin of coconut cream was added along with the cooked chicken.  The dish was finished by stirring through the rest of the paste so that the flavours were fresh and served with jasmine rice.

*even if it was the mother-in-law.

Friday Night Take-away - Crispy Aromatic Duck

Z pointed out, quite rightly, that we had fallen off the Friday Night Take-away wagon.  It's not that we had grown tired of the tradition, simply that we had failed to think about it when planning our meals for the past few weeks.  To get things back on track I decided to roll my sleeves up and try something new, crispy aromatic duck.

There was no way that I was going to sacrifice a whole duck to this cause, there are only two of us after all, so I bought a couple of legs and started looking for a recipe.  What I found was incredible and, to be honest, labour intensive and time consuming.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and do what I normally do, make it up as I go along.

Using Ken Hom's spice rub; five spice, szechuan pepper, black pepper salt and cumin, the legs were marinated all day and that is where we went our separate ways.  I'm sure Ken is nothing but authentic, but steaming the duck legs for three hours then letting them cool completely before deep-frying them was just a little much for me.  I also found a recipe which instructed poaching the duck for hours in vegetable stock but that too seemed a bit faffy.  For simplicity's sake I decided to roast the seasoned duck legs until the meat was falling from the bones and take it from there.

The shredded duck meat was served with hoi sin sauce, spring onion, cucumber and of course Chinese pancakes.  We also had some pork and Chinese cabbage dim sum and some fried rice to soak up the Tsing Tao. 

Beer, a home made take away and an England win in the Euro's.  Do Fridays get any better than this?

Friday Night Take-away - Pizza

Z has been doing the cooking all week and she pulled out all of the stops for our Friday Night Take-away.  We quite often pimp a shop bought pizza with additional toppings but today Z made the whole thing from scratch.

The dough was made following a Jamie Oliver recipe.  Z made this during the day with a little help from the boy.  It was rolled as thin as possible and topped with tomato sauce, parma ham, salami, mozzarella and parmesan cheese and baked for 10 minutes with our oven turned up to 11.  The only way it could have been improved would have been to turn the oven up to 12, but it doesn't get that hot.

Friday Night Take-away - Turkey and Spinach Korma

We have Z's Mum staying with us this week.  She's helping with childcare/toddler wrangling while we pack up the entire ground floor of our house.  In return for all the help that she's giving us we're paying in food and drink.  Having a third person to cook for is no hardship, it's only a little bit more food.  It also means that you need to consider the other person's food preferences which is a good workout for the internal recipe book.

Z's Mum is not a big red meat eater, so white meat and vegetarian cooking is on the menu tonight and tomorrow.  Tonight, as it's Friday night, I cooked a curry but rather than using the ubiquitous chicken, I cooked turkey instead.

The curry was a nice quick one to make.  Onions and garlic were fried before the spices were added, with a splash of water to stop them from burning.  Then the turkey was added along with a tin of coconut milk.  After simmering for a few minutes add some pre-cooked spinach and a bunch of chopped coriander and serve.  We had chapatis and basmati rice.

Friday Night Take-away - Piri Piri Chicken

Yesterday we went around to a friend's house for our evening meal.  Out of politeness and good grace I decided not to post about the meal.  This is only fair as before the meal they did not know that I had a blog, never mind a daily food one*.  Of course the subject came up over the course of the evening.

Host "What have you been doing lately?"
Me "Nothing much, spend most of my time writing about the food we eat on my food blog."
Host "What? You're kidding right? You have a food blog?"
Me "Yes, really.  It's not recipes, just the story behind the evening meal.  Why we've cooked it, where the inspiration comes from etc."
Host "You're not going to write about this meal are you?"
Me "No. That would be unfair."

So having only broken a promise a little bit, I'll move onto tonight's menu.  As it's Friday we're sticking to the cook at home take-away tradition and tonight we're having piri piri chicken.  The piri piri is a relative new comer to the take-away menus that flop with all too regular an occurrence through our letter box.  This is due to the success of one national chain of restaurants who, believe it or not, are South African in origin.

My first experience of said chain was through a friendly Portuguese who recommended them, not on the strength of the chicken but on the authentic custard tarts that you can order for dessert.  Sadly they are all too often sold out of these cracking little puds to make it worth visiting these days.  The fact that they now cover Leeds like a rash also puts me off**.

The marinade for the chicken can now be bought off the shelf in supermarkets up and down the country but I prefer to make my own.  It is more like making a hot vinaigrette than most marinades; lots of oil and vinegar, garlic, a sweet red pepper and oregano, all simmered together.  Only once the pepper is cooked do you remove from the heat.  At this point add lemon juice and as much chilli as you and your loved ones can handle.

Once the sauce is completely cool blend it to within an inch of its life then pour over whatever piece of chicken you have to hand.  We had a couple of chicken legs left over from our last Swillington Farm meat box.  To keep with the restaurant experience we had our chicken with skinny fries, corn on the cob and coleslaw.  The chips and corn were from the freezer, the coleslaw was home made so that I didn't feel quite so dirty.

*For the record we had a cracking beef stew with great roasties and a chocolate bread and butter pudding for dessert.  Thank you Laura and Mark.
**Give me an independent restaurant any day.

Friday Night Take-away - Pizza

Z was late home from work tonight.  I could hardly begrudge her some post work drinkies as one of her best friends is leaving Leeds for a life down under.  I was sad not to be going along but somebody had to hold the baby.  By the time she got home from The Adelphi, R had had his supper and was ready for bed and I had made a quick tomato sauce for the base of two pizzas.

We had pimped a shop bought pizza for a quick meal last weekend and fortunately, we had some of the salami left over.  This, along with olives were the star of the first pizza.  The second one was veggie with peppers and char-grilled artichokes.  Just in case there wasn't enough bread on offer I baked off some dough-balls as pre-pizza nibbles.

Friday Night Take-away - King Prawns in Black Bean Sauce

This week saw the start of the Chinese Year of the Dragon and as Z is a dragon*, I though it only fair that she could choose tonight's menu.  As luck would have it she has chosen a Chinese dish for our Friday night take-away.

A simple stir fry of prawns and baby vegetables in black bean sauce with noodles.  Good food doesn't get much quicker.  Unfortunately the food miles on the veg stick in the throat.  I'd prefer to eat locally and seasonally whenever possible.  In a toss up between organic veg from Peru and its equivalent non-organically grown plant from around the corner I'll have the local one thanks.

The reason that we have baby corn and sugar snap peas in the house at all, boils down to yet another food preference.  I hate the idea of good food going to waste, especially if it has travelled from the other side of the world.  So when we saw the packet, reduced for a quick sale, we bought it.

Looking back at this week's meals we have eaten a lot of different vegetables, a fair proportion of which have been in season and at their best right now.  As with all things foody, balance is the key, so I won't be racked with guilt over my stir fry veg for too long.


*now I'm for it.

Friday Night take-away - Chicken Jalfrezi

I'm nothing if not true to my word.  This is why, on a Friday afternoon, after a long week at work, I have packed the family into the car and driven the 210 miles from Leeds to Bristol.  My mission is to repay a gambling debt to Mr S before he gets the mob involved.

Mr S is a Reading FC fan and earlier this season I suggested that the outcome of the Leeds vs. Reading match at Elland Road should result in one of us buying the other a curry.  What could I lose*.  Reading had never beaten Leeds at Elland Road in the League and we (Leeds) were on a nice winning streak.

Unfortunately Simon Church decided to score after only two minutes of the game and I sat through the next 92 minutes hoping that Leeds could save my poppadoms.  They didn't.  That was 17 December and this is the first opportunity I have had to repay the debt.

The deal was to buy the victor a curry so there is no cooking tonight.  The take-away chosen by Mr S was Radhuni in Fishponds.  Reassuringly the menu opens with the words "we prepare our ingredients and cook our dishes the finest traditional way." Which is good to know.

We ordered enough for four including; some great onion bhajis, chicken jalfrezi, lamb achari, king prawn rahundi and chicken kashmiri.  With good friends, the conversation should feel like it hasn't stopped since you last saw them, no matter how long ago that was.  It's fair to say we have some really good friends in Bristol.


*a curry

Friday Night Take-away - Southern Fried Chicken

Just in case you didn't already know, let me fill you in.  We have a little family tradition on a Friday night.  We choose a take-away meal that we fancy and then cook it ourselves from scratch.  The rationale behind this is that we take charge of the ingredients (e.g. free range chicken), it usually costs less and the food is ready when we are, not 20 minutes later.

We were undecided as to what to cook tonight when fate smiled on us and through the letterbox, fluttered our salvation and muse.  Take-away menus normally have a short lifespan in our house, off the doormat and into the recycling bin in under 30 seconds.  This particular piece of urban jetsam has been saved a fate better than land-fill for the moment.

In my hands was a menu for American Fried Chicken.  This particular variation on a well known theme was festooned with chicken-in-a-bun meal deals, each with its own twist.  We decided we'd be traditional given it's our first try at SFC.

I need to point out that the one piece of kitchen equipment that I have been denied is a deep fat fryer, therefore our chicken will be roasted not fried.  Still, what's a litre of oil between friends.  We submerged chicken drumsticks in egg and then coated them in flour seasoned with smoked paprika, oregano and coriander*.

According to the menu, coleslaw and French Fries are the traditional accompaniment.  Fries were from the freezer but the slaw was yet another good way to plough through the cabbage and carrot mountain that we are still struggling to shift.

*The Colonel wouldn't give me his recipe.