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.

Chicken Calabrese

This is neither the time or the place to talk about illness.  It's not a heath blog it's a food blog*.  however my state of poorlyness this weekend has prompted Tonight's Menu.  This weekend was the hottest of the year so far and we had plans.  We had planned to visit a friend in Wilmslow for a barbecue and a session drinking his home-brew.  Everything was put on hold and I went back to bed at around 12:30pm on Saturday.

There I stayed, feeling sorry for myself, until the following day.  On Sunday I continued my convalescence on the sofa.  This was no bad thing as I got to watch the Wimbledon Men's Singles Final and the highlights of the German Grand Prix.  I also got to watch some food programs, which was one of my favourite pastimes before R turned up and wrestled the control of the telly from my grasp.

One of the shows I caught was Saturday Kitchen Best Bites.  I was still dozy and uncomfortable so I wasn't really paying attention but one recipe grabbed my attention, Spicy chicken calabrese with olive oil mash.  It looked like such a vibrant, colourful and most importantly tasty dish that I made a mental note to cook it soon.  I didn't realise it would be this soon however.

With me out on my back, Z took over the shopping and meal planning duties for the week.  She was planning on me being out of action for a couple of days so tonight she was going to cook chicken thighs with some leftover courgette and chick pea stew for herself.  However, I'm feeling well on the road to recovery and wanted some proper food to get me back into the swing of things.

The Calabrese is a stew of chicken and peppers and has one special ingredient, 'nduja, which is a spreadable, soft salami.  I'm not sure about eating 'nduja on toast as a snack, as was recommended on the program, but its uses as an ingredient seam endless to me.  Sadly I do not have any spreadable salami, so I had to improvise.  I added smoked garlic, hot paprika, crushed fennel seeds and oregano to the stew. 

The finished dish was delicious.  I served it with soft parmesan polenta instead of the recommended mashed potato, but only because we didn't have any spuds in the house.  I limited the amount of chilli in the dish to better suit my weakened constitution, but as summer stews go this was a winner.  I'll admit that the 'nduja would probably add some depth of flavour to the dish but it was certainly not a flop with out it.

I have a feeling that dishes similar to this will be popping up on our weekly meal planner quite a lot this summer.  There are very few ingredients so with a little imagination the recipe could be used with most meats, fish, or even made as a vegetarian dish.  I will defiantly be eating polenta more often as it only took 5 minutes to cook.  I'll also be on the lookout for spreadable salami, if you see any let me know.

*just

Tarragon Chicken

OK. I know it's been a while but we have been busy.  December was written off with every spare hour devoted to DIY in the run up to Christmas.  Then there was Christmas itself.  We had a house full for all of Christmas week, with both sets of R's grandparents wanting to share in his first proper Christmas.  I'm still, after over a year of blogging, uncomfortable photographing food when in a group of people.  I also didn't think it would be particularly polite to my guests to sit and type for the whole of the holidays.

Needless to say we ate well.  We kept Christmas day traditional with turkey* and all of the trimmings.  We also had; Chicken in Fig Sauce, Salmon in Champagne, Oxtail Ragu, Goat Curry and on New Years Eve we tucked into Steak and Chips.  Needless to say not every dish was to everyone's taste but cooking for six for a week, when you want every dish to be special, is tricky and not something I'm used to.

But that was then and this is now.  2013 is a new year and I was on the hunt for a new food challenge.  I've loved writing this blog but it was starting to feel a little forced.  What I needed was some focus and that has turned up in the shape of Everything But The Oink.  I'm going to attempt to eat everything that is edible from pigs over the course of the year.  I don't know how it will go but you can follow the results here.

However, man cannot live by pig alone** so there will still be room for other dishes and blog posts here on Tonight's Menu.  The first of the year is chicken in tarragon sauce.  I had bought a bunch of tarragon to make bearnaise sauce for our New Year's Eve steak and had lots left over.  This was such an easy and tasty meal to cook I'm amazed we haven't done it before. 

Onions are softened in the pan the the chicken was browned in, before a glass of wine is added.  Once that is reduced to about a couple of tablespoons you stir in a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard, double cream and the tarragon.  All that is left to do is return the chicken to the pan and sling the whole lot in the oven until the chicken is cooked.  You could serve this with rice or roasties and you can easily add the veg of your choosing.  After a couple of hectic weeks we kept it simple with boiled potatoes and steamed leeks.

*I know there are foodies out there who turn their nose up at turkey but I maintain that a good turkey is a thing of glory.  We also had enough leftover to line the freezer with goodies for the next few months.
**It is possible that man could live by pig alone but I'm NOT taking that challenge.

Olympic Food Challenge: Iraq - Chicken in Fig Sauce

After our non-country specific burger and chips last night, tonight we are back on track with the Olympic Food Challenge.  Tonight's member of the National Olympic Committee is Iraq, a country sadly best known to us as a battle ground, rather than the cradle of creation*.  It is possibly thanks to the country's recent history that its culture and food is not very well documented but one author, Nawal Nasralla, decided that we ought to know about her country.  It was on her website that I found the recipe for tonight's meal.

Afkhadh al-Dijaj bil-Teen, or Chicken in Fig Sauce, struck me as a simple and yet authentic recipe so we set about finding the ingredients.  To be honest there wasn't much to source but finding dried figs in Leeds could have been simpler.  In the end I turned to twitter and asked the good people at Millies who, it turns out, sell dried almost everything, including figs.

The recipe states that dates could have been substituted for the figs but I'm glad we persisted.  The sweetness of the figs along with coriander in the sauce created an almost festive flavour and the chicken was fall off the bone tender.  I served the chicken with bulgar wheat**, which I cooked in vegetable stock, and garnished the entire plate with fresh parsley and pomegranate seeds. 

This really was a great dish, one of the standout meals for the Olympic Food Challenge.  I have already planned it into our Christmas meal planner as it is so simple and yet so full of flavour.

*I know which I'd rather be remembered as.
**a grain we really should eat more of, it's as easy to cook as rice and has a better texture than couscous.

Olympic Food Challenge: Armenia - Garlic and Lemon Baked Chicken

Having baked fish with some lemon and orange last night for the Olympic Food Challenge, tonight I'm upping the citrus steaks with Chicken Cooked with Garlic and Lemon in the Oven from Armenia.  I was tempted by a couple of the dishes on the Armenian Cuisine website, but having stuffed vine leaves for Lebanon and not knowing where to get soujouk, I decided on chicken.

I actually felt like a contestant on The Great British Bake Off.  I had a list of ingredients but it felt like half of the cooking instructions were missing.  I did what all of the best contestants do and made it up as I went along. 

The juice of three lemons, three large garlic cloves, allspice, salt and some harissa as a pepper paste substitute, were all blended together with olive oil and poured over the chicken.  This was then baked for half an hour covered and half an hour more uncovered, basting all the while.  The finished result was some of the juiciest chicken I have eaten in a long time.  We served it with crushed new potatoes with olives and green beans.

Armenia won a silver and two bronze medals in the Olympics but neither of their Paralympians have picked up a win. This baked chicken dish was well worth a gold medal though.  We will be cooking it again but possibly with a whole spatchcocked chicken.

Olympic Food Challenge: Dominica - Caribbean Reef Chicken

Researching a meal for tonight's Olympic Food Challenge proved to be quite tricky.  Almost all of the recipes from Dominica that I found were in fact from the Dominican Republic and not Dominica.  They are not a million miles away from each other in the Caribbean, but there are always regional variations.

The Dominican recipe that I settled on was Caribbean Reef Chicken.  The chicken is baked with a marinade of brown sugar, dark rum, lime juice and spices.  The smells coming out of the kitchen were reminiscent of Christmas, but that could have been the cloves in the sauce.  After forty five minutes the chicken is coated in a mixture of mango chutney and more rum creating an even stickier glaze delicious on the chicken skin.

We served the chicken legs with Caribbean spinach and rice which, although not necessarily from Dominica, was a really nice, fresh accompaniment to the sweet chicken.  Z had a little moment when she had a nice chew on one of the whole chillis that were cooked with the rice but other than that the meal was a success. 

Dominica's Olympic team of two athletes failed to take home any medals and they have no athletes taking part in the Paralympics, so for them London 2012 is over.  Caribbean Reef Chicken lives on however.  We will be using this recipe again but not for roast chicken portions.  We both decided that the marinade and glaze would make great finger licking chicken wings.  All we need now is the excuse to cook some.

Chicken Tortillas and Mexican Ribs

Today could have gone one of two ways.  We were scheduled to have a trip over the Pennines to Wilmslow for a barbecue at a Uni friend's house.  This was still the plan until last night when good sense and an accurate weather forecast changed our plans.  It was decided that, in the best interests of R, our mates would come over the tops to Leeds and we'd do the cooking.

Pabs has made this trip plenty of times since we moved here from Leicester and each time we manage to squeeze in a bit of a pub crawl.  In the past the Otley Run has been attempted* and we have even braved some of the less welcoming pubs of the city centre**.  Today we showed our age and only had a few cheeky pints before going back home to cook.  I had a couple of pubs/bars that I hadn't been to before, and this visit was the perfect excuse.  We took in The Town Hall Tavern and The Bierkeller before heading to the highlight of the day: Friends of Ham

I very much doubt that I'll be going back to The Bierkeller.  There was nothing intrinsically wrong with it and there was a good choice of draft German beers, but it just didn't feel welcoming.  I can see myself going back to The Town Hall Tavern, if only for the food.  I am a fan of Timothy Taylor's beers and having a choice of their brews made a nice change from seeing Landlord as a guest ale.  The food looked superb, but as we were eating at home we didn't try any of it.

If you haven't yet ventured into Friends of Ham then please do yourself a favour and do so.  I am under no obligation to say this.  I am on talking friends with the owners and no more, I have no financial link to the bar, apart from the money that I have spent there on beer and meat.  It is just too good to miss out on.  The ever rotating beer selection means that I am yet to have the same beer twice.  Again, because we were heading home to cook, we didn't have any of the fine salamis or hams that were on offer but that means that I'll just have to go back again.

By the time the mini pub crawl was over Z had already returned home from her shopping trip with R.  She had also knocked up a batch of corn tortillas and poached some chicken as the base for their filling.  The shredded chicken was added to rice, which was cooked in a tin of tomatoes with ground cloves and oregano.

I had decided earlier on that I wanted ribs but, as much as I like gnawing at pork bones, I'm not a fan of BBQ sauce.  A bit of judicious research later threw up Tomasina Miers' Mexican barbecue ribs.  I'll admit to not following the recipe to the letter, mainly because I was fresh out of Ancho and Chipotle chillies.  Instead I used a variety of fresh, dried and powdered chilli for heat and included a roasted red pepper for bulk.  In all honesty I overcooked the ribs, but they still tasted good.  The citrus flavours from Thomasina's marinade still came through and they made a very welcome change from BBQ ribs.

*without the fancy dress.
**Hoagy's and The Vine spring to mind.

Olympic Food Challenge: Philippines - Chicken Adobo

After last night's horror show of pigs trotters, I needed something a little less interesting for tonight's Olympic Food Challenge meal.  The first thing I noticed when researching Filipino food was that every list of food contained Chicken Adobo.  As it topped the list of their national dishes and didn't contain pigs trotters, I decided to give it a go.

Chicken is marinated in vinegar and soy sauce for a couple of hours and then poached in the marinade.  Once the chicken is cooked, it is removed and the remaining liquid is reduced to leave an intense sauce.  I served the Adobo with stir fried noodles and vegetables because I have started to crave light and healthy food.

The Filipino team only consists of a handful of people for the Olympics this year.  Even though they have been competing since 1924 they have only won nine medals, but they can go home safe in the knowledge that they have left a firm favourite behind in Chicken Adobo.  The sauce is so intense, salty and sharp.  After the heavy food we have eaten recently it was like manna from Manila.

Olympic Food Challenge: Afghanistan - Lawang with Qorma e Sabzi

I was having a whale of a time when I was carrying out the draw for the Olympic Food Challenge.  That was until I drew Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan for myself.  All I knew about these countries was what is reported in the news and a smattering of their histories.  Sadly most of my knowledge was all war related and in no way culinary.

More time was spent researching these countries than any of the others.  A lot of websites seem to have exactly the same recipies with the same spelling mistakes and the same lack of inspiration.  Finally I stumbled on the blog of Humaira, an Afghanistani living in America.  Humaira and her friend Katie have spent a long time recreating the dishes of Humaira's birthplace and have even won awards for their dumplings.

Having read through most of the food pages on their blog* I decided to pair a couple of the dishes for tonight's meal.  Lawang is a braised chicken curry with turmeric as the lead flavour.  I thought it would go very well with Qorma e Sabzi.  Qormas (korma) are at the heart of Afghani cookery.  I was really taken by the idea of a huge pile of this aromatic spiced spinach curry, even though the ingredient list included frozen spinach.  I can only assume that this is an american twist on the original recipe.  Both dishes were superb, the spinach was really fresh and balanced wonderfully with the earthy tones of the chicken.  I was dubious about the frozen spinach but it worked and was a cheap way of generating a lot of tasty food so who am I to argue?

I'm certainly not going to argue with Afghanistan's Rohullah Nikpai.  Rohullah is aiming to get a second Olympic medal when he atempts to better his bronze medal from Bejing and win gold in taekwondo.  The taekwondo doesn't start until next week but until then I'll have happy memories of two new dishes that we'll definitely be cooking again.

*it is really well written and I kind of got drawn in to the stories as well as the recipies.

Oregano Chicken with Black-Eye Beans

I do love a nice surprise, who doesn't, so when I got home a couple of days ago, to discover that Z had bought me a new cookery book, I was delighted.  The book in question is a copy of Meze Cooking by Sarah Maxwell and dates back to 1992, a few years before I caught the cooking bug.

Z found the book in our local charity shop and it is clearly from the home of somebody that doesn't/didn't cook but does/did smoke.  Not one crease or sticky page anywhere and the unmistakeable aroma of tobacco on every page.  I was excited enough to see past the nasal assault and in no time at all inspiration had leapt from the page.

I was going to cook Tandoori Chicken as a Friday Night Take-away for this evening's meal, but all that has now changed.  The chicken that was destined for Indian spices was now marinating in olive oil, white wine, garlic and industrial quantities of dried oregano*.  The marinated chicken was then simply grilled, turned and basted until golden.  I also cooked black-eye beans with spinach from the same book.  This is such a simple and versatile side dish of greens, cooked, seasoned and mixed with a pulse of your choice, that I think we will be doing similar things again.  We will definitely be cooking the chicken again, it will be perfect for a barbecue when summer comes.

*We use a lot of oregano and we have recently been given a kilo bag of it, by a friend returning from their holidays.  If you're using supermarket bought dried spices this may not be the recipe for you as you'll need a couple of jars just for the marinade.

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.

Pasta con pollo

Last night's kedjenou was a roaring success.  The chicken was perfectly cooked and there was so much flavour in the vegetables that, for once, there was no need to add herbs and spices to the couscous.  The one slight problem was the portion size.  Put simply, I had cooked far too much! 

I had cooked two chicken legs, one each for Z and I, but I hadn't taken into account their size until I dished up.  The legs were huge.  I wouldn't have liked to bump into the chicken that they'd belonged to.  It would have been like something from Family Guy, only I'm not quite as portly as Peter Griffin and the chicken wouldn't have been the same height as me.  Between us Z and I only managed to eat one leg, which left us with another meal worth of chicken.

For tonight's meal Z raided the fridge and found some tinned tomatoes, mushrooms and a pepper that wanted eating.  Everything was simmered together for a couple of hours until it turned into a rich ragu and finished with lots of fresh thyme.  The sauce was served with pasta and plenty of parmesan cheese and was delicious.

Kedjenou

Two years ago, instead of Euro 2012, the telly was full of Africa 2010.  The World Cup.  Another disappointing football tournament for England and another football tournament that Scotland and Wales had failed to qualify for.  One thing makes the World Cup in Africa stand out for me.  It isn't Shakira's official song and it certainly isn't the vuvuzela.

I didn't have a blog at the time.  In fact at the time, I was ridiculing a good friend for having a food blog.  Paul at How Not to do a Food Blog is far from an inspiration*, but he is a top bloke, loves food, writes well, and chucks together a great roast pork belly.  Anyway, for reasons that I cannot explain, I decided to eat meals based upon the teams playing in the evening football matches.  One evening USA were playing, so we had hotdogs.  Another night Chilli were playing so I found a traditional bean stew recipe.  Then came the Ivory Coast.

I don't know who they were playing that night.  I couldn't tell you if it was a European team and I fancied a challenge.  It could well have been that I couldn't find a recipe for the opposition at all.  What I can tell you is that what I did find was this recipe for Kedjenou.

Its simplicity belies the full flavour that the dish delivers.  The lack of liquid in the ingredients list also makes you wonder what you are going to end up with.  The fact that two years on, I'm still cooking this one pot, no effort wonder should tell you all you need to know.  After a couple of hours the chicken is perfectly cooked and the vegetables have collapsed and created a fantastic sauce.

Tonight, we have cooked some couscous to have with the chicken and vegetables, but you could easily have some pita bread on the side.  This one dish, as well as being delicious, is the reason behind the Olympic Food Challenge.  If I had made it through the world cup without finding a stand-out meal I probably wouldn't have thought twice about eating the Olympics.  I can't wait to discover my next kedjenou.


*I'm more than capable than making my own stupid bed and lying in it.

Chicken Fajitas

There has been a distinctly Chistmassy feel in the air this week.  It's not the lack of snow.  I've not had a huge pile of presents to open.  I've not started drinking at breakfast time.  I've not even eaten my own bodyweight in chocolate.  The Christmassy feel has been provided by the leftovers from Sunday's roast chicken.  As with the Christmas turkey, we have been eating the chicken for days.  Not only did it appear in a risotto, but it has also been in salads and sandwiches for our lunches.

Tonight's meal was a triumph of leftovers.  Not only did it contain the end of the roast chicken, but it also used the leftover sauce from last night's meatballs.  Z reheated the chicken in the tomato sauce before adding a third leftover, the end of a jar of The Chilli Jam Man's Chocolate Orange Chilli Jam.  Z also managed to find that rarest of things, a ripe avocado.  This was turned into a creamy guacamole which was perfect alongside a fresh tomato salsa.  The composite parts of the meal were then stuffed into corn tortillas and devoured.

Chicken Risotto

Another week of late finishes is stretching out in front of me.  It's not too bad, apart from listening to the Zumba class two times a week.  Z is taking the real impact.  Her evenings include; rushing our of the office, picking R up from nursery, getting him home, fed, washed and in bed.  All before starting to sort out our evening meals.  Tonight she excelled herself.  Not only did she cook Tonight's Menu but she also made a huge in-road into tomorrow's.

Tonight, using some of the leftovers from yesterdays roast chicken, she knocked up a great risotto.  Bacon, onions, celery and white wine at its base.  The rice was then slowly cooked as stock was added, ladle at a time, before the risotto was finished with butter and parmesan cheese.  With all of that cooking* and the start of tomorrows meal** Z really had her chef's head on.  She even fried some sage leaves to garnish the plates.

*you never really leave the pan when cooking risotto.
**no spoilers

Sunday - Roast chicken with all the trimmings

This afternoon we had the Fosters around for a bit of a play and a slap-up Sunday lunch with all the trimmings.  The Fosters have a little girl who is a bit older than R but they are of a similar enough age to get on and not scream when they both want a go on the scooter.

While Z and Mrs Foster played with the kiddies in the living room, Mr Foster and I busied ourselves in the kitchen (beer may have been involved).  The chicken was from our Swillington Farm meat box that was delivered on Thursday.  I would normally joint the chicken and freeze the portions until we needed them, but with guests coming we decided to keep it whole.  I covered it in bacon, put an onion and a lemon in the cavity and let it cook.

One of the good things about getting the chicken from Swillington is that the giblets are always with the bird.  I used these to make a stock that eventually turned into gravy.  Parboiled potatoes were roasted in goose fat alongside a tray of stuffing balls.  Carrots and broccoli were steamed and all that was left was to carve the bird.

Because we hadn't roasted one of Swillington's free range chickens before I was in for a treat.  I have never carved such a succulent, moist chicken.  It was also very tasty and we have a little left over for the rest of the week.  To round off the meal Z had cooked a rice pudding but that was eaten so fast that no photos were taken, which is a shame because it was great too.

Chicken Kiev

A couple of weeks ago, Z challenged me to make her a Chicken Kiev for tea.  We used to eat shop bought Kievs regularly but, since we've stopped buying ready meals, they have fallen off the menu.  I love a challenge but this one had me worried.  What if all of the garlic butter came out of the chicken?  What if I burned the breadcrumbs making sure the chicken was cooked through?  I was running scared.  Then last weekend we stumbled on a field of wild garlic and the challenge was on.

Z had already made a block of wild garlic butter so I didn't have to mess around with that.  All I had to do was gently butcher a couple of chicken breasts to create a pocket for the butter, preferably a pocket that would close and keep the butter inside.  I made my incision behind the mini fillet, hoping to use it as a seal for the hole.

With the chicken stuffed with the butter I coated them in seasoned flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fried them in a couple of tablespoons of oil.  I then transferred them to the oven for about half an hour in an attempt to make sure that nothing was burnt or raw.  When the cooking time was up I presented Z with the results of the challenge and it was declared a success.  A bit more care with the original butchery and they would have been perfect but for a first attempt, I'm happy.

Moroccan Chicken

The last time we cooked Moroccan Chicken was on the 6th March and a lot has happened during the passing two months.  So much in fact, that I have had to go back and re-read the post to see what we had done that day.  What we had done, was to deviate off a tried and tested recipe.  I even stated that I would be annotating the recipe so that we cooked it that way again.

Needless to say, I didn't annotate the recipe.  I knew that we had cooked it previously for Tonight's Menu but I couldn't have told you that we had substituted black eye peas for the traditional chick peas, or that we had cooked carrots instead of courgettes.  If I had done my research, I would have realised that tonight was the first time that we had cooked this meal for the blog.

To give credit where it is due, Z did the cooking, following the same recipe as before, only this time with the correct ingredients.  All I did was joint a chicken and buy some pitta bread to mop the juices up with.

Harissa Chicken

Last month we ventured out of our LS11 enclave and took a trip to Kirkstall Abbey.  The reason for the adventure was Kirkstall Deli Market.  Wandering around food stalls laid out in the cloisters of an Abbey is my idea of a fun way to spend an afternoon.  That day we took home venison for the evening meal but we also picked up a few additional items.

One gem was a jar of fresh harissa paste from Asharun Spices.  I've only ever found Asharun at Kirkstall Deli Market but I'm glad they are usually there.  There is always something new to try from their range and the fact that they wrap their wares in recipe cards takes the pain away from trying new things.

In the time that has elapsed from our trip to Kirkstall to tonight I've mislaid the recipe card but no matter.  I decided to rub some of the paste, with a little oil, into two chicken legs and let them marinate for a couple of hours before roasting them until the meat fell off the bone.  I served this with a couscous and roasted vegetable salad a little later than planned, but it was worth the wait.

Chicken Stir-Fry

Another late night at the office has meant that Z is at the stove again.  I honestly think that she's enjoying all of this cooking.  I tend to dominate in the kitchen.  It's not that I am any better at cooking than she is, or that I have any particular mastery of cooking techniques.  It's just I find that after a day at work cooking a meal helps me to unwind so I crack on with the kitchen chores while Z busies herself around the house.

By the time I got home from work this evening, Z had prepared a cracking stir fry of chicken and vegetables.  Chicken, peppers, carrot, red onion, garlic and pickled ginger were all fried together.  Soy and garlic oyster sauce were then added before the whole lot was served with noodles.  Z also managed to make four pints of chicken stock to put in the freezer, such was her excitement at being let loose in the kitchen.  Perhaps, I should back away from the stove more often?