Category: Chicken


Mar
2017

Balinese Chicken Satay Skewers – Repost from 2017

categories: Bali, Chicken, Travel

Okay, so I was planing on giving you the next instalment of The A-Z of Cooking this week.  But, my plans went awry in much the same way as my life seems to be going awry. So Balinese Chicken Satay Skewers it is!  Not that I’m complaining (and nor should you be) because I know what is coming  up next from the A-Z and believe me, even though I haven’t made it yet?   I strongly feel that we are onto a winner, winner chicken dinner with the Balinese Chicken Skewers.

Chicken Satay2I love chicken satay skewers and have been making these regularly since my return.  The recipe provided below is based on the one we learned at Ketut’s Bali Cooking Class in Ubud.  Sadly it is not as good.  Possibly because it is not cooked in an open air kitchen overlooking rice paddies and cooked over coconut shells:

Chicken Satay7Nor were the spices hand ground in the traditional way:

Chicken Satay9Also, the Balinese have about forty types of ginger and here, we have one. However, whilst these won’t absolutely transport you to Bali, they are utterly delicious! How could it not be?  I am a big fan of pretty much any meat on a stick.  Here, the marinated chicken remains tender and juicy after grilling

Balinese Chicken Satay SkewersAnd the spicy peanut sauce is a perfect accompaniment.  I bought a tiny terracotta Balinese grill, however, I cooked these in the oven.  I really like my terracotta friend though!

chicken Satay6Here he is again!

Chicken Satay3

Ketut suggested that you serve your chicken satay skewers with white or yellow rice.  In the first photo above, I served mine the way my Malaysian friend Aiden serves his – with a very simple salad of cucumber and red onion.  Simply stab the tip of the skewer into the cubes of cucumber and onion and then into the sauce.   So good!

My favourite way of eating these is in a wrap (more traditionally a roti) with some tomato, cucumber, onion and coriander salad and sprinkled with extra peanuts!

Chicken Satay4Just looking at these photos is making me want to make them again, right now!  So, here’s the recipe!

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Balinese Chicken Satay Skewers

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Perfectly grilled chicken and a spicy peanut sauce is a match made in heaven!

Ingredients

Scale

For The Skewers

  • 500g chicken breast

For The Marinade

  • 3 tbsp chopped shallots
  • 2 tbsp chopped garlic
  • 1 tbsp lime juice
  • 4 tbsp sweet soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 5 tbsp coconut oil
  • Salt and pepper to taste

For The Peanut Sauce

  • 300g peanuts
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 4 shallot cloves
  • 2 tbsp palm sugar
  • 1 tbsp red chilli (more / less to taste)
  • 1 tbsp fresh lime juice
  • 1 tbsp sweet soy sauce
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 2 tbsp coconut milk
  • 1 tbsp ginger

Instructions

For The Chicken

  1. Mix the marinade ingredients together.
  2. If using wooden skewers, soak these in water to prevent them burning.
  3. Cut the chicken into cubes and marinate 15 minutes.
  4. Thread onto skewers.
  5. Grill until browned and cooked through, basting with the leftover marinade.

For The Peanut Sauce

  1. Fry the peanuts until golden brown. Remove from the pan and allow to cool. Drain off most but not all of the oil.
  2. Grind the chillies, garlic, shallots, palm sugar and ginger in a food processor or mortar and pestle until they form a paste. Add the peanuts and grind to a paste again.
  3. Place the peanut paste into a pan. Add the chicken stock and coconut milk.
  4. Add the sweet soy to taste.
  5. Bring to the boil.
  6. Simmer until thick and season with salt and pepper.
  7. Add the lime juice to taste.

Chicken Satay5

Have a wonderful week!  I’ll be back, next week possibly with something quixotic and quaint  that hopefully will not leave me feeling too queasy!

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Jan
2016

REPOST – Two Ways With Leftover Chicken

categories: A Moveable Feast, Avocado, Chicken, Chipotle, Leftovers, Lunch, Starters, Vol Au Vent

Happy New Year!

I hope the festivities were wonderful and the champagne was flowing freely!!!  The only downside to all the partying is that invariably you end up with a fridge full of leftovers.  This year we were inundated with leftover chicken so, if you ever find yourself in the same situation, here are two ways to use it up.

 

My first leftover chicken recipe uses one of my favourite retro ingredients, the vol au vent shell. (Sorry Glenda, still store-bought!)

Chicken And Tarragon Vol Au Vents3And it’s simples – mix up a white sauce add some tarragon, stir in your chicken, fill your vol au vent cups, sprinkle on some cheese and in a couple of minutes you have a super cute little appetizer with which to kick off your next party!

My Chicken and Tarragon Vol Au Vents are based on a recipe I found in a Feast Magazine but can also be found here.

C‪hicken and Tarragon Vol Au Vents 1

My next take on leftover chicken is a more modern Chicken, Avocado and Chipotle Tortilla which you can serve two ways.

I got this recipe from A Moveable Feast by Katy Holder where it was originally conceived of as a wrap.  I made one of these and took it to work (yes, sadly I worked between Christmas and New Year).  It was tasty but I am not a fan of the taste of cooked avocado and even putting the wrap into the sandwich press was enough to turn the taste from delicious to awful.  If you like cooked avocado, or you want this all to yourself, this could be just the thing for you!

Chicken, Avocado and Chipotle TortillaIf however, like me you do not like the taste of cooked avocado, or you want to share the deliciousness, turn it into a “pizza”

Heat the tortilla until crispy, sprinkle the chicken, avocado and the chipotle salsa over the top, cut into slices and serve immediately to your guests as an appetizer. (Or eat it all by yourself!  I won’t judge you.

Chicken, Avocado and Chipotle Tortilla2

 

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Chicken, Avocado & Chipotle Tortillas

Chicken, Avocado and Chipotle Tortilla2
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Two delicious ways with chicken tortillas

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 tortilla
  • 1/4 cup chopped leftover chicken
  • 1/4 avocado, roughly chopped
  • 1 small tomato, chopped
  • 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
  • 1/4–1/2 chipotle chilli in adobo sauce (or to taste)
  • 1 sprig of coriander (cilantro), finely chopped
  • 1 tsp lime juice
  • Salt and Pepper
  • Toothpick

Instructions

  1. At least one hour before serving, make your salsa.
  2. Discard the seeds from the tomato, mix with the onion, chilli, coriander and lime juice. Season to taste.
  3. Set aside to allow the flavours to blend.
  4. Just before serving, drain the salsa, neither of these recipes needs soggy tortilla!

For The Pizza

  1. Heat the tortilla under the grill until it gets crispy.
  2. Once the tortilla is crispy, take it out of the oven and top with the chicken, avocado and salsa.
  3. Cut into slices and serve immediately.
  4. Perfect with an ice cold beer!

For the Wrap

  1. Warm the tortilla according to packet instructions, to soften.
  2. Spread a line of chicken, a line of avocado and a line of salsa in the middle of the tortilla, leaving a 2 cm gap on all sides.
  3. Fold in the bottom, rotate 90* and fold over one side then the other.
  4. Tuck the remaining side of tortilla, securing with a toothpick.
  5. Place into your sandwich press or under your grill and heat until the outside of the tortilla is golden and crispy.
  6. Don’t forget to remove the toothpick before eating!

I wish you all the very best for 2016 and may it be the year all your dreams come true!  Thank you for reading and commenting and being a part of my teeny corner of the internet.  It’s a New Year – Let’s make it wonderful!

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Nov
2015

Vincent Price’s Chicken in Champagne Sauce

categories: 1960's recipes, Champagne, Chicken, Cook A Long

When the opening sentence of a blog post is:

“I am drinking champagne alone, on a Monday night, in bed”

I know I am reading the words of a  kindred spirit.

So began Jenny’s blog post on Vincent Price’s Poularde Pavillon aka Chicken in Champagne Sauce.  I was therefore delighted to see that this was one of the recipes that Jenny had chosen for us to cook as part of the Vincent Price Cookalong.

So, if you’d read my last post you’d know I’d brunched like the King of the Grand Guignol himself on a Buckingham Eggs Jaffle.    A few hours later, on what turned into Vincent Price Sunday,  I was ready to take on the main event.  Here ’tis:

Vincent Price Chicken in Champagne Sauce1If my chicken looks a bit weird it’s because it was a butterflied one I had in the freezer.  It tasted lovely but just did not have the classic appearance of a normal roast chicken. The recipe calls for the chicken to be trussed and, in a moment of dumbarseness I got out my kitchen twine ready to do the necessary. Then paused.  How do you truss a chicken with no bones?  Short answer you don’t.

Vincent Price Chicken in Champagne Sauce 2To tell the truth, I was a bit narky with this recipe when making it.  Basically because I am terribly lazy and Doctor Who was on the telly.  Walking the maybe ten steps from the couch to the oven (voice of the pedant – 9 steps) every 8 minutes to baste the chicken seemed like a bit of a palaver at the time.  In retrospect those 56 steps were utterly worth it. The chicken was beautifully tender and cooked to perfection. And the champagne sauce went perfectly with the sides of steamed asparagus and roasted potatoes.

Vincent Price Chicken in Champagne Sauce3The sauce, as also noted by Jenny is much more than what you need for the chicken.  She was going to try freezing hers.  I had mine over pasta with the leftover veg and some steamed broccoli and beans the following night and it was…..

Just kidding, it was deeeelicious.

The Chicken in Champagne Sauce was a lovely classic, and elegant, way to finish the weekend!  If the two recipes I have cooked are any reflection on the rest of the book, then I totally understand why Jenny sings its praises so highly.

So, although it is not Monday and I am not in bed, I am alone and drinking a little champagne toast to Jenny and, of course, to Vincent and Mary Price and their fabulous book. (And in an “it’s all about me”  side note, OMG!!!!!  You have no idea how long it took to get an even half way decent photo of me trying to concurrently do a wink like the little girl in my sign off logo and raise the champagne glass and take a selfie.  Half of them looked like I was heavily sedated on anti-pyschotics and the other half looked like I needed to be.  In the end I gave up and took a picture of the glass by my “movie star” mirror!

PicMonkey CollageIf your idea of a good time involves doing a bit more than poncing round your bedroom for HOURS looking more and more deranged with every click of the camera, there are a host of events to celebrate the release of the 50th edition of A Treasury of Great Recipes.  To find out the wheres and whens, click on the links below:

Vincent Price Treasury Cookalong with Silver Screen Suppers
Vincent Price Legacy Tour – for details of celebratory events in the UK
Amazon Page for the 50th Edition of A Treasury of Great Recipes
Treasury of Great Recipes Facebook page
Silver Screen Suppers Facebook page
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Vincent Price’s Chicken in Champagne Sauce

Vincent Price Chicken in Champagne Sauce1
Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale

For The Chicken

  • 1 x 3lb chicken
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 cups dry French champagne

For The Sauce:

  • 4 cups cream
  • 3 shallots, finely chopped
  • 4 mushrooms crushed with a bottle or rolling pin
  • 1 sprig parsley chopped
  • 2 bay leaves
  • pinch of thyme
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 1 glass dry champagne

Instructions

For The Chicken:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C / Gas mark 4.
  2. Season the chicken with the salt.
  3. Truss it and place in a small casserole with the butter and the two cups of Champagne.
  4. Cook in a moderate oven about 45 minutes.
  5. Baste every eight minutes and turn until the chicken is an even golden brown on all sides.
  6. Remove chicken, cut off string and keep warm on a hot platter.

For The Sauce:

  1. Add to the juices in the casserole the cream, shallots, mushrooms, parsley, bay leaves and thyme.
  2. Simmer on top of stove until the sauce has reduced to two thirds of the original amount.
  3. Strain through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan.
  4. Place over a medium heat and swirl in the butter.
  5. Add the glass of champagne

For The Presentation

  1. Spoon some of the sauce over the chicken. Serve the rest separately.
  2. This recipe is originally from Le Pavillon in New York. To serve the chicken as per Le Pavillon take the chicken to the table whole and carve it there.
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Aug
2015

The Margaret Fulton Cookbook 12 – Sunday Roast Chicken

categories: 1970's food, 1970's recipes, Chicken, Margaret Fulton Cookbook

Margaret Fulton - ChickenMargaret’s Mediterranean Chicken from 1977 fits the bill of being big and fat and crisp and brown.  Not to mention utterly delicious.

Mediterranean Chicken - Then
Mediterranean Chicken – Then

And when you’re onto a good thing? Stick to it:

Mediterranean Chicken - Now
Mediterranean Chicken – Now

if only the modern picture had a glass of wine in it, it would be perfect! But both of these are pretty superb pictures, you can almost taste and smell that lovely roast chicken!

I liked this so much I made one myself:

Mediterranean ChickenI think it is such a genius idea of Margaret’s to change the vegetables from the traditional roast – the tomatoes, mushrooms and olives were delicious, although I did throw in a few potatoes too.

Here’s the recipe so you can make it too:

French Roast Chicken1French Roast Chicken2Mediterranean Chicken - RecipeHave a great week!

 

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Apr
2015

Feel Good Libyan Chicken Soup

categories: Chicken, Libya, Soup

So, this is the day I had.

Libyan Chicken Soup
Libyan Chicken Soup

The morning was humid and windy. Otherwise known as hell for allergies. My train was cancelled so I had to stand on the platform for 20 minutes waiting for the next one. In the humidity and wind. By the time the train finally came we were crammed in like sardines, my hair was frizzy from the humidity and my nose and eyes were streaming from the wind and the pollen / dust / mad air of Melbourne. Plus I’d left my book at home and someone had turned my charger off overnight so when I turned my phone on for entertainment it lasted about ten seconds before shutting down.  No reading.  No candy crush.  Did I mention this was a Monday?

Libyan Chicken Soup3
Libyan Chicken Soup3

So I was jammed into the train, nose streaming.  And I had no tissues.  I always have tissues.  Except when I don’t.  I became one of those really annoying people who sniffle and snuffle on public transport.  I hate those people. I think the only reason someone didn’t yell at me to “Stop that goddamn sniffing” was because my eyes were also streaming like mad and people probably thought I was crying.

Which I did later in the day when I dropped my lunch box and my delicious salad fell all over the ground.  So, out to buy lunch and it was no longer hot and humid.  It was pouring with rain.  So I got  soaked to the skin because, of course, I had no coat and no umbrella.  I spent the afternoon shivering.  By the time I got home, I was cold and grumpy and yes, still sniffing and all I wanted to do was get my dinner on, do my yoga podcast and collapse in front of My Kitchen Rules.

Libyan Chicken Soup4
Libyan Chicken Soup4

Harrrummmppphhhh…my soup calls for tomato paste. We always have tomato paste. Except when we don’t.  I felt like crying again but subbed in some hefty swearing and a can of tomatoes and a couple of sun-dried tomatoes.  And then I put my soup on and went upstairs to do my yoga pod.

It was now 7:02pm.  MKR starts at 7:30. Which is fine. I do the YogaMazing podcast routines which are all about 20 minutes. So perfect timing really.  Is it possible that one thing is going to work out for me today?  I switch on the computer.

7:02        Windows is updating your computer.

7:10        Windows is still updating your computer

7:20        Windows is unfuckingbelievably still updating your computer.

The update finally finished at 7:28. I swear, it was as if they had timed it for maximum annoyance.

By now my little bit of grumpiness had turned into a full scale funk and a full blown cold.  I stomped downstairs to turn on the telly and the twitter because that is now my default mechanism for watching My Kitchen Rules. Bravo MKR tweeters, you are the funniest and the best!!!

Not that I was thinking that then because I was in a pique with the world.

And then I got to the bottom step and thought “What is that gorgeous smell?”

And no, it was not the neighbour’s cooking something delish but MY chicken soup. My Libyan Chicken Soup with Thyme, or to be exact my Sharba Libiya bil Dajaj wa Alzatar.  Or as I like to call it, the chicken soup of awesomeness.

This smelled wonderful. Exotic and fragrant with spices, it was instantly warming and uplifting.  And it tasted amazing.  Both soothing to my frayed nerves and bad temper and exciting and spicy to my tastebuds.

Libyan Chicken Soup2
Libyan Chicken Soup2

Talk about chicken soup for the soul.  This was life affirming.  One bowl of this and my fit of pique was lifted.

This was as easy as hell to cook.   And all of the ingredients should be readily available.   The recipe called for “orzo” which I also didn’t have so as well as the tomatoes I subbed in risoni.  I have since found out these are the same thing. Who knew? Personally, I am going to start calling it by it’s Libyan name of Bird Tongues which manages to be both incredibly poetic, a perfect description and also, a teeny bit creepy. Oh, and the thyme featured below?  Straight from my garden!!!

Birds Tongues and herbs

I found this recipe via a group I joined called MENA, the Middle East and North African cooking club. Every month the host chooses a soup, a main and a dessert from a country in the region and members can cook any or all of them.   I have been loving cooking from Persiana, and was very keen to learn more about this region’s food and ingredients. And if this was anything to go by, bring it on.

The recipe except for the tweaks mentioned above is here:

Sharba Libiya bil Dajaj wa Alzatar (Libyan Chicken Soup With Thyme)

Gah…because I was sick I missed the cut off for MENA this month but never fear, hear are some of the other entries in for this month:

Have a fabulous week, and the next time you feel a little bit sniffly or at odds with the world, try this soup!!!

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