Tag: Chicken

Huli Huli Chicken Wings

Aloha friends and welcome to 2024! Whilst most of us are looking ahead, I am reflecting on the last “20 Years Ago Today” post I wrote. In that post, I said, “couscous is the only food I can think of where the same letters are repeated”. The very next day, I was searching through my file of blog-worthy recipes.  And, found a recipe for Huli Huli Chicken Wings. So, we are taking a little trip back to 1950’s Hawaii for a taste test! Never let it be said that I am not happy to prove myself wrong in the search for delicious food.  

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If someone else hadn’t already come up with the catchphrase of “finger licking good” I’d be using it right now to describe these wings. The Huli Huli sauce is so good!  It’s sweet and sour and full of umami and sticky and just plain delicious.  I made these a little while ago and as I am writing this now my mouth is watering thinking about them!  Guess what’s going back on the menu for next week! 

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Huli Huli Huh?

Ernest Morgado, the founder of the Pacific Poultry Co served his mum’s teriyaki-style chicken to a group of farmers back in 1955.  They loved it and he decided to market it as Huli Huli Chicken.  Huli means “turn” in Hawaiian.  The original way of cooking this was to place the chicken between two racks and to grill it, preferably over charcoal.  It was turned during cooking hence, huli huli! 

Schools and other charities often sold Huli Huli chicken as a fundraising item.  In Australia, outside every Bunnings (large hardware store) we also have fundraising food stalls.  We get the cheapest sausages imaginable, slapped into usually dry and equally cheap white bread, some BBQ’ed onions if you want them, and some sauce.  It is usually revolting but there is something about that BBQ aroma that draws you in, even though you know it you will regret it as soon as you take that first bite.  

I think Australian fundraisers could learn a lot from the Hawaiian way of doing things.  I mean, why have this?

When you could have this?

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Huli Huli Chicken Recipe

My recipe comes directly from the Australian Women’s Weekly website.  You can find it here  but I have noticed that many websites are now blocking links from blogs.  So I have also copied it out below:

Huli Huli Chicken 1

 

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I can also heartily recommend the pineapple salad that accompanies the Huli Huli chicken wings in the above recipe.  To me, it was the perfect fresh and zesty offset to the sweetness of the chicken.  And that hit of chilli in the salad somehow brought everything together!

Well, if this is the standard of cooking I get when I prove myself wrong, I am willing to be proved wrong again and again! Please let me know if you can think of any others! Otherwise, have a great week!

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Savoury Upside Down Pie

Hello friends! On the menu today is a savoury upside down pie (say what?) which comes from a new book to the blog, 250 Quick and Easy Recipes by Woman’s Day from 1986.  It’s actually from Let me tell you , if the savoury upside pie was anything to go by, I am looking forward seeing what the rest of this book has to offer.  This was delicious! I made this back in February and looking back at the photos now is really making me want to make it again!

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I chose this recipe because of its unusual cooking method.  You line your pie dish with bacon (yum) then spoon a mix of minced chicken, creamed corn, and some herbs on top of the bacon.  Finally, almost like a tarte tatin, you top the lot with pastry.  The end result is great, the bacon and the pastry turn crispy and the chicken mix stays succulent!  You will see below that the recipe below calls for green capsicum. I can’t bear them.  They also tend to repeat on me for hours afterward so instead of the capsicum, I added some additional herbs from the garden being sage and oregano along with the parsley and mint the recipe called for. 

Herbs

I have been featuring a lot of “posh” food recently.  This is definitely not that.  This is mid-week budget-style cooking.  I think it would be a great family meal.  I served my pie with shop-bought sweet chilli sauce, some zucchini pickles made from homegrown zucchini and a watercress and orange salad which will feature in an upcoming post. 

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Savoury Upside Down Pie – The Recipe

Savoury Upside Down Pie recipe

The sweet chilli was the perfect accompaniment to the pie – they really worked well together.  The pickles also bought a nice tang.  And it all looked lovely and colourful.  

The pie was also good cold the following day when I had some for my lunch!  I was going to reheat it but couldn’t wait!

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250 Quick and Easy recipes really delivered on its title with the Savoury Upside Down Pie!  Add in that it was also really tasty and you have a winner, winner chicken dinner!  There are a few more recipes which sound like they might be worth a try so I’m sure this will not be the last time we see this book!

Have a great week!

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Chicken Chanteclair

I am not doing a Best of April post as the very sad and sudden passing of our beloved boy Oscar at the end of the month has muted pretty much everything that was good.  We are still working through our grief which for me personally has meant a great lethargy.  I have barely been motivated to cook and not at all motivated to write until today.  Baby steps are enough at the moment.  But one of the things I made just before Oscar passed away was the recipe for Chicken Chanteclair from the Creole section of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery which was so tasty and comforting that I had to share it.

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What on Earth is Chicken Chanteclair?

The name Chanteclair comes from the French words chanter meaning to sing and clair meaning clearly.  So, to my mind this is a dish that will inspire you to sing its praises loud and strong.

Chicken Chanteclair is a Coq Au Vin by another name.  I can’t see any particular Creole influences in this dish –  to me this is purely French.  Indeed one of my notes from when I made this was that it made the house “smell like France”.  And, just to be clear, I didn’t mean that in the way I mean it when I talk about our trip to Toulouse.  There, it smelt like every male in the town was using the streets as his own personal urinal.   Chicken Chanteclair made the house smell of herbs and wine and meat cooking low and slow.  It smelled like family and comfort.  One of my other notes on this recipe was “this is the kind of dish you cook for people you love”

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Here’s The Recipe: Chicken Chanteclair

The actual recipe wasn’t much so here are my notes:

  • 1 kilo of chicken thighs on the bone.
  • I added 3 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay leaves to the marinade
  • For the marinade I used 3/4 bottle of wine (Just enough left over for a glass with the meal)
  • I threw in 12 fresh mushrooms as well as the dried mushrooms
  • I wasn’t sure about the tarragon at the end but it really worked
  • I served mine with mashed potatoes to soak up that luxurious sauce.  Crusty bread would also be a great option!

Apart from those changes, the rest was easy.  Marinade the ingredients overnight, pop them in the oven and voila – Chicken Chanteclair!

Chicken Chanteclaire Recipe (2)

The leftovers were also delicious in some cheddar and jalapeno biscuits I made!

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This is so easy to make but it feels like a much more complex dish.  It is delicious, reheats well and is comfort food at its best.  This will go on high rotation at my house!

I really hope you cook this for someone or someones you love very soon!

I am away a training course all of  next week so will not be posting anything.  The following week I will be back with a Dining with the Dame.  It is a Poirot and our very first Ariadne Oliver novel!

Have a wonderful week!

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A Man’s Barbecued Chicken?

When I first saw the recipe for A Man’s Barbecued Chicken, I assumed it was so called because it had a hefty slug of booze, most likely Bourbon, in the barbecue sauce.  Because God forbid that the women of 1973 were getting sozzled on Maker’s Mark while cooking chicken.  Then I read the recipe and there is no alcohol at all in it.  So that theory went down the gurgler. I am actually baffled as to why this would specifically be a man’s barbecued chicken.

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This was really delicious.  I particularly liked the sauce.  I find a lot of barbecue sauces far too sweet for my palate but this had a lovely balance of sweet and sour.  The recipe does contain that mysterious ingredient “piquant table sauce”  which a couple of readers have suggested will likely be A1 steak sauce.  I still don’t have any of that so I used Worchestershire Sauce.

I used skin-on thigh cutlets instead of quarter chickens and tomato passata instead of the tomato juice in the recipe.

The sauce really did become finger-licking good!  Hmmm…Is that why it’s A Man’s Barbecued Chicken?  Maybe the women of the 1970’s didn’t lick their fingers?

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The method of cooking the chicken was weird, you put it in the dish skin side down for the first half an hour then turned it over.  The chicken stayed very moist – I am not sure if that was this method of cooking or the frequent basting with the sauce that did that but either way, it worked!!!

I served this with a very simple potato and watercress salad and some of the additional sauce on the side.  Corn would also be a great accompaniment as would a green salad.

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A Man’s Barbecued Chicken – The Recipe

We here at Retro Food for Modern Times believe that one of the joys of food is the sharing of it with our friends and fam.  So, today we are changing the game on A Man’s Barbecue Chicken by changing the name.

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Cook it, eat it with people you love, or share it with strangers.  Either way, you and everyone else who eats it will be happier, even just for a few sticky-fingered moments.

Have a great week!

And if you have any insight into the original name, drop me a note in the comments!

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Barbecued Chicken with Spiced Ketchup

Hello friends!  Today I am sharing a recipe for Barbecued Chicken with Spiced Ketchup which comes from the  Malaya, Siam and Indonesia chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery (1972).  From the name,  I thought this recipe was going to be for chicken in a spicy tomato sauce.  Which would have been fine.  This, however, was so much better!  This. is ketchup, Jim but not as we know it!Chicken with Spiced Ketchup1

This “ketchup” is made out of  garlic, onions, sambal oelek (a chilli paste) soy sauce and lemon.  Not a tomato in sight! Which lead me down a rabbit hole into the origins of ketchup.  Turns out this may be closer to the original than what we commonly recognise today as ketchup or as we in Australia call it, tomato sauce.  The tomato version has been around for a long time – just look at this ad from 1933!

And just to show that Heinz can patronise men as well as women, how about this add for He-Ketchup.

 

The History of Ketchup

Fascinating as these ads are, let’s head even further back into the past to look at the history of ketchup.  There are a few theories but ketchup most likely originated in  Asia.  The word either derives from the Hokkien word ke-tsiap or from the Malay word kecap.  Kecap Manis is a Malysian sweet soy sauce which could be a distant relation to the original which was a fermented fish sauce.  Possibly like the one still used in Vietnamese cooking.

And don’t let those ads from the 1930’s fool you.  According to no less than history.com

The 18th century was a golden age for ketchup

Who knew?  Anyway, the short version is the fermented fish sauce made its way to England.  And the Brits went mad for all sorts of ketchups.  Lemons, oysters, mushrooms, walnuts, fruit – you name it there was probably ketchup made out of it! And then in 1812 (somebody cue up that overture), James Mease from Philadelphia developed a recipe for tomato ketchup.  And apart from a few artisan brands, all those other kinds of ketchup have gone the way of the dinosaur.

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Barbecued Chicken with Spiced Ketchup – The Recipe

The Barbecued Chicken with Spiced Ketchup or to give it its non-English name Ajam Panggang Boemboe Ketjap was delicious and very easy to make! As you can see from the picture, I served it with plain boiled rice as the recipe suggested.  If I was to add anything, I would have added a little tomato, red onion and coriander salad maybe with some fresh green chilli to add a fresh element but it was fine without.  It would be very nice comfort food on a cold winter evening!

Also, I used chicken thighs for my recipe, not a whole chicken as suggested.

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Have a wonderful week, friends, stay safe and look after yourselves and others!

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