Chilli Chicken One-Pot

This recipe was chosen after a need to use up some left over chorizo and what a great choice it was 🙂

As a big fan of one-pot dishes, they come into their element when having guests over for dinner, as you can spend time with them, instead of slaving away in the kitchen, while the aroma fills the house.

Definitely make sure you have some zingy chorizo to go with this, as the flavours really seep into the chicken. A warming hearty dish to try and make the rain and floods of the British winter go away!

Ingredients:
2 large onions, halved and sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
265g chorizo ring, peeled and thickly sliced
4 red peppers, deseeded and cut into large chunks
2 x 400g/14oz can chopped tomato
2 chicken stock cubes
½-1 tsp dried chilli flakes
2 tsp dried oregano
16 boneless skinless chicken thighs
3 x 410g/14oz cans red kidney beans, drained

To serve:
15g pack coriander, chopped
2-3 avocado, skinned and sliced
good squeeze lime juice


1. Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Fry the onions in the oil for 5 mins until they become soft and start to colour. Add the chorizo and fry for a few mins more. Stir in the peppers, then pour in the tomatoes, followed by a can of water, the stock cubes, chilli and oregano.

2. Arrange the chicken thighs on top of the sauce, pushing them under the liquid. Bring to a simmer, cover, then cook in the oven for 40 mins. Add the beans, stir, then cook for 20 mins more. You can make this up to 2 days ahead and keep chilled.

3. To serve, reheat on the top of the stove or in the oven at 190C/fan 170C/gas 5 for 1 hr 10 mins until piping hot. Stir in most of the coriander, toss the rest with the avocado, lime and a little salt, then pile this on top. Serve with Garlic & oregano bread (below) and a bag of green salad tossed with olives, cherry tomatoes and finely sliced red onion.

Recipe from Good Food magazine, May 2008

Enjoy!

Pollo alla Cacciatora

I hadn’t bought a cook book for a very long time and it was only because I was feeling sorry for Jamie, seeing his cook books on the shelf of a shop in town, going for a very low price, that I didn’t want to see him falling on hard times 😉

It was then a case of what am I going to cook first from it? It was cold and wet and I didn’t exactly want to go out for hours shopping just cook something for supper. So after returning from a local butcher and off licence with the chicken and wine, I was able to get back home in the warm to start preparing. Setting up the chicken to marinade in the wine etc. was good but I think I would have preferred to leave it in the fridge overnight to really infuse the flavours.

When it came to cooking this finally, the kitchen looked like a bomb site, with the amount of bowls and pans used to prepare and cook this recipe but it was well worth it 🙂 I made enough to last the following day and it was well worth letting it reheat again slowly, as I reckon it tasted even better second time round!

According to Jamie Oliver in his Italian book,

Chicken cacciatora seems to be reasonably well known in Britain because it’s the classic pre-packed dish you find in Italian food ranges in supermarkets (which, to be honest, never taste of much). When you get the real deal cooked at home with love and passion it’s a totally different experience. It’s a simple combination of flavours that just works really well. Cacciatore means ‘hunter’, so this is obviously the type of food that a hunter’s wife cooks for her fella when he gets home from a hard morning spent in the countryside. This is also a great dish for big parties, as it looks after itself in the oven.

Ingredients:
2 kg higher-welfare chicken, jointed, or use the equivalent amount of chicken pieces
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
8 bay leaves
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
3 cloves garlic, peeled (1 crushed, 2 sliced)
½ bottle Chianti
flour, for dusting (gluten free or plain)
extra virgin olive oil
6 anchovy fillets
1 handful green or black olives, stoned
2 x 400 g good-quality tinned plum tomatoes


1. Season the chicken pieces with salt and freshly ground black pepper and put them into a bowl. Add the bay leaves and rosemary sprigs and the crushed clove of garlic and cover with the wine. Leave to marinate for at least an hour, but preferably overnight in the fridge.

2. Preheat your oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Drain the chicken, reserving the marinade, and pat dry with kitchen paper. Dust the chicken pieces with flour and shake off any excess. Heat an ovenproof pan, add a splash of olive oil, fry the chicken pieces until browned lightly all over and put to one side.

3. Place the pan back on the heat and add the sliced garlic. Fry gently until golden brown, then add the anchovies, olives, tomatoes (broken up with a wooden spoon) and the chicken pieces with their reserved marinade. Bring to the boil, cover with a lid or a double thickness layer of foil and bake in the preheated oven for 1½ hours.

4. Skim off any oil that’s collected on top of the sauce, then stir, taste and add a little salt and pepper if necessary. Remove the bay leaves and rosemary sprigs, and serve with a salad and plenty of Chianti.

Enjoy!

The One-Pan Roast

After coming home with a chicken the other weekend (as you do), neither of us were in the mood to cook a full blown roast dinner, after a long week. Trying to work out what to do with it, we saw a copy of delicious magazine on the coffee table with a huge roasted chicken plastered on the front cover with the tag line “The one-pan roast”. Now that sounded ideal and looked ideal, once we opened it up to the recipe page – not much prep to do but looked great and only took 75 minutes to cook. Result!

After spending about 10 to 15 minutes getting it ready and letting the oven heat up, in it went and that was that. I have to say, the smells of the various ingredients cooking away, were lovely and actually made us want to eat it sooner rather than later.

According to the recipe creator Donal Skehan:

Home cooking starts and ends with a good roast chicken recipe. It’s the food I was brought up on. Every Sunday we had a roast chicken, without fail. The bones were turned into stock and the leftovers would be made into sandwiches for school.

And guess what… the leftovers were made for sandwiches, instead for work the following day!

If you want a quick win roast dinner without all the fuss, then this is a perfect recipe for you to try.

One-tray roast chicken with white wine, zesty potatoes and asparagus.

Serves 4.

Ingredients:
800g baby new potatoes, halved
1 garlic bulb, cloves separated
1 lemon, sliced
Handful fresh thyme sprigs
3 tbsp rapeseed oil
1.5kg free-range chicken
Large knob of butter
1 large bunch of asparagus, woody ends snapped off
1 125ml glass white wine
Handful of flatleaf parsley, finely chopped


1. Preheat the oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Put the new potatoes . garlic cloves and lemon slices into a large roasting tin. Scatter with the thyme sprigs and drizzle with the oil. Season well and toss to combine.

2. Remove the string trussing the chicken. Gently loosen the skin on the chicken’s breasts to form a pocket, being careful not to tear it. Push a little butter under the skin, then spread more over the outside. Season with salt and pepper. Put the chicken on top of the potatoes, then roast for 45 minutes.

3. Remove the chicken to a plate, add the asparagus and pour the win into the roasting tin. Mix everything together so the asparagus is coated in the wine and chicken juices.

4. Sit the chicken back on the veg. Return to the oven and roast for 30 minutes more, until the chicken is cooked and the potatoes are tender. Rest the chicken and veg somewhere warm for 10 minutes, covered with foil, then stir through the parsley and serve.

The juices are amazing!

Enjoy!

Coronation Salad of Chicken, Mango and Avocado

Coronation chicken is the sort of British dish that makes the French laugh (it is after all, a mixture of meat and fruit, something they find alien). This recipe takes Coronation Chicken to a new level, making it into a respectable salad. The sauce is stronger than the traditional recipe and it is brought upt to date by a hit of chilli, the sweetness of mangoes and the avocado and lime.

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 6

Ingredients:
1kg/2lb 4oz Chicken breast fillets
2 tbsp Groundnut Oil
2 ripe Mangoes
2 ripe Avocados
1 bunch of Asparagus tips, baked in advance
Juice of 2 Limes
275g/10oz Watercress or Baby Spinach
1 Red Chilli, cut into shreds
2 tbsp Olive Oil
15g/½oz Flaked Almonds, toasted

For the dressing:
350g/12oz Mayonnaise
125ml/4fl oz Plain Greek Yogurt
3 tsp Curry Powder
½ tsp Ground Ginger
7 tbsp Mango Chutney
A little Milk
Leaves from 7 sprigs mint, chopped

1 Season the chicken and heat the oil in a large pan.

2 Saute the breasts until golden all over, then throw in 50ml/2fl oz water, cover and leave the chicken to cook in the steam.

3 Once cooked, leave the chicken to cool completely then use a fine-bladed sharp knife to cut it into neat slices. Season all over.

4 Gently mix together all the ingredients for the dressing except the mint. It should be the thickness of double cream. Taste for seasoning and adjust. Stir in the mint.

5 Peel the mongo and cut the ‘cheeks’ off each side; cut close to the stone so that you remove the plumpest bit of the mango. Cut the cheeks into neat slices.

6 Halve the avocadoes, remove the stones and cut into slices. Carefully peel off the skin. Spoon over some of the lime juice to keep them from discolouring. Season.

7 Gently toss the salad leaves with the mango and avocado, the chilli, the rest of the lime juice, the olive oil and some seasoning.

8 Arrange on a big platter or shallow bowl and add the chicken. Drizzle the dressing over the top and scatter on the almonds.

Serve the rest of the dressing in a jug and serve with a bowl of wild and brown rice, either warm or dressed with vinaigrette and left to cool to room temperature.

Enjoy!

Classic Chicken Chasseur

I always enjoy cooking recipes that have great preparations to them, like all the wonderful curries I have cooked recently, with their amazing herbs and spices (I love opening the cumin spice pot every single time just for the smell). But what is always one step better, is making a recipe like this Chicken Chasseur, where you even have to prepare fruit/vegetables like the tomatoes used here, in such a precise way, to use them as the Chef, who wrote it, intended!

As with any recipe I try and hopefully enjoy, it’s the smells in the kitchen that first let you know whether you are going to enjoy it or not. As this recipe was cooking, all I can say is that the smells that started coming out, had me salivating until the food hit the plate! It’s hard to describe online how something smells followed by the reaction it causes to the senses but this was something else – whether it was the caramelised shallots, or the tarragon, or the tomato purée with the stock, or simply all the ingredients cooking together, this had my girlfriend and I counting down the minutes till I could plate it up.

All I can say is that it tasted as good as it looked. Nothing was left on either of our plates. I used chicken thighs for my version and all six pieces I used, were eaten up. This will become a personal favourite and one that I hope to make again and again.

As per normal, I was making it for the two of us, so I halved all the ingredients.

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4

Ingredients:
4 Plum Tomatoes
50g/2oz Plain Flour
1.5Kg/3lb 4oz Chicken cut into 8 pieces
2 tbsp Olive Oil
110g/4oz Butter
175g/6oz Brown Cap Mushrooms
10 Baby Shallots, peeled and halved
20g/¾oz Caster Sugar
175ml/6fl oz White Wine
450ml/16fl oz Chicken Stock
3 tbsp Tomato Purée
15g/½oz Tarragon, chopped
2 tbsp Parsley, chopped
Salt and Black Pepper

1 Score a cross on each tomato, place in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for 45 seconds, then drain and peel off the skin. Cut the tomatoes into quarters, remove the seeds and chop the flesh.

2 Place the flour in another bowl and season with salt and pepper. Roll the chicken pieces in the flour, to coat, shaking off the excess.

3 Set a deep frying pan over a medium heat and add the oil and a third of the butter. When the butter foams, add the chicken, skin side down if you have left the skin on, and cook for 3 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

4 Heat another third of the butter in a second frying pan, fry the mushrooms until golden brown and then add them to the pan with the chicken.

5 Place the remainder of the butter in the second pan used for the mushrooms, add the shallots and sugar and fry for 3 minutes until the shallots are golden brown and caramelised.

6 Add the wine, bring to the boil, then pour over the chicken.

7 Return the pan with the chicken to the heat, adding the stock, tomato purée and two-thirds of the tarragon. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook uncovered for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the chicken is cooked through.

8 Add the prepared tomatoes, parsley and the rest of the tarragon, and season with salt and pepper.

Serve two pieces of chicken on each plate and spoon over all the sauce.

Enjoy!

“Giles Chicken”

This is one recipe that I will let my mum explain…

“Giles Chicken” is a family favourite that we have been enjoying for many years. I dont know where Giles came up with the recipe but it is a quick and delicious dish that everyone seems to really like. It was cooked for us all on a canal holiday in France in 1991 when I decided to go on ‘strike’ and asked the children to cook one meal each. Fortunately we were able to stop at little villages along the route both to explore and to buy food and drink. Giles bought the ingredients listed below and cooked this lovely dish. This is why we call it Giles Chicken! We ate this sat on the deck of a boat on a deserted canal in the middle of France with the sun going down. Every time I make this dish it reminds of that very happy holiday.

(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients:
4 Free-range or organic chicken breasts – cut into bite-size pieces
4/6 Rashers of streaky bacon - chopped
Juice of a lemon
1 Lettuce shredded
Dressing of choice – usually walnut oil and balsamic vinegar
1tblsp Olive or Rapeseed oil

1 In a large pan heat 1 tablespoon of oil add the bacon and fry until it just colours.

2 Add the chicken and cook for 5 minutes.

3 Add the juice of the lemon and continue cooking until the chicken is coloured, the bacon crisp and the lemon juice absorbed.

4 While that is happening shred the lettuce and put into a large bowl and toss in the dressing.

5 Once the chicken is ready tip it onto the top of the lettuce and serve with crusty bread and a tomato salad.

Summer on a plate at any time of the year!

This can be made for two people or more. Just allow a chicken breast and a bacon rasher per person and adjust the rest of the ingredients.

I try to use organic or free-range ingredients in every recipe.

Enjoy!

Thai Green Chicken Curry

This New Year’s Eve was a big family and friends celebration and so we decided on making it a curry night. While I made a usual Korma favourite, my mum made her Thai Green Chicken Curry which always goes down well. While stuck at their home in the snow, my mum made it again and this is what she sent me…

I always enjoy making a Thai Green Curry and did just that for New Year’s Eve when we had eighteen friends for a meal to celebrate the New Year 2010. They all helped out by bringing starters, puddings, cheese etc. and another friend brought an Indian curry to go with this and the Korma too. I’ve used the same recipe since 1998 when my daughter returned from her year and a half stay in Australia. She and her housemates used to make this as an easy meal and fed friends as well. She always used vegetables to add flavour and another dimension to the curry but I’ve noticed that some cooks only use meat or shellfish. If you are a vegetarian the meat and shellfish can just be left out.

I normally make my own green curry paste with lemongrass, chillies, garlic, ginger etc (and nearly everyone has their own recipe). Today I’m stuck at home with the snow so I used a good green paste from a jar. I hope you find it easy to make and enjoyable to eat.

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4

Ingredients:
5 Chicken thighs or breasts – cut into bite-size pieces
Thai green curry paste - homemade or from a jar
Green vegetables – I use a combination of beans, mange-tout, green pepper, asparagus or whatever is around.
1 x 400ml coconut milk
1-2tbsp Fish sauce
½-1tbsp unrefined caster sugar
Chopped coriander
Jasmine or long-grain rice

1 Put a little oil in a wok and cook the chicken until lightly browned, removed from pan.

2 Heat the wok until very hot and add 1 heaped tsp of green curry paste and cook for a minute.

3 Return the chicken to the pan and coat with the paste, stirring all the time.

4 Then add the coconut milk and cook on a low heat for 15 minutes until the mixture begins to thicken a little.

5 Add the fish sauce and sugar to your taste, finally adding the green vegetables.

6 Cook for 5 minutes until the vegetable and hot but still have a bite (it may depend how you like your vegetable as to how long you cook them).

Serve with chopped coriander and Jasmine rice.
If using ordinary rice squeeze some lime juice over the cooked rice and fork through before serving.

NB the curry can be made in advance or even the day before, and kept in the fridge, so long as it is heated through properly before serving.

Enjoy!

Farewell Floyd Event – A Winning Recipe: Coq au Vin

Having waited just over a week for the judges, Julia and James, to choose their winning top 3 entries to the Farewell Floyd Food Blogging Event, I received an email from them yesterday morning, letting me know that my blog post Coq au Vin – A Tribute to Keith Floyd had been chosen as one of their Top 3 Winners, therefore winning myself a copy of ‘Floyd’s Food’ from Absolute Press. It was lovely to receive their email and kind words about my dish, first thing on a Monday morning and it made my day!

I had such great fun creating my tribute to Keith Floyd, for me and my family, and several glasses were consumed on his behalf during the cooking and eating, true Floyd style!

I was astounded by the lovely dishes the other winners and entrants had made and realised that there are other big Floyd fans out there that will miss him.

The other 2 winners were:
Going With My Gut: Kenyan Goat Feast — For Farewell Floyd: Food Blogging Event
Foodycat: Farewell Floyd – Jambalaya
both of which are fantastic recipes.

I cant wait to cook up my first dish from Floyds first publication and blog about too.

For the announcements and round-up from the judges please read the following posts:

Farewell Floyd: The Round-up
Farewell Floyd: Round-up and Winners Announced

FoodCandy Featured Blog Post – Coq Au Vin

Having had a busy week at work, I have been playing catch up on all my emails, tweets and blog posts. One nice email to receive was from the new Food Social Network – FoodCandy.

They featured my blog post “Coq au Vin – A Tribute to Keith Floyd” on the front page of their site with the following note – ‘Enjoy the celebrity!’

Coq au Vin – A Tribute to Keith Floyd

My version

Keith's version

(See also “Farewell Floyd Event – A Winning Recipe: Coq au Vin”)

After not being able to take part in the ‘Farewell Floyd Food Blogging Event’ last weekend due to feeling ill, I was so happy to read that the deadline for the competition had been extended to the 25th October, meaning I was able to take part after all!

The idea of the event is that we all cook a meal in tribute to this much-loved chef either by cooking up a classic Keith Floyd recipe, an adapted Keith Floyd recipe or a recipe of our own design inspired by, and in tribute to Keith Floyd.

Having been lucky enough to borrow my mum’s original copy of ‘Floyd on France’, I spent an evening trawling all the delicious recipes to find a true classic that I could attempt to cook for this event. I ended up deciding to cook his Coq au Vin recipe which is translated in his book as ‘Cockerel in Red Wine’.

So I set about getting all the ingredients including a decent bottle of red Burgundy as Floyd uses it specifically in his recipe and mentions that “Burgundy is supposed to be famous for Coq au Vin”.

As for my own take on this recipe, I decided to use free-range chicken from Somerset as well as local cider brandy.

Now for my gluten free twist, I used cornflour to make my Beurre Manié and gluten free bread for my Garlic Croutons. This meant that my whole family could enjoy this fantastic dish, as I cooked it in Somerset on a weekend visit home.

I hope everyone that had taken part in this event has had as much fun creating their dishes as I have with mine and I hope that others try this fantastic Coq au Vin recipe. I also hope the late, great Keith Floyd would appreciate my twist of his recipe, as he was born and raised in Somerset too!

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:
4lb (2kg) Free-range chicken joints (from Somerset preferably)
5ozs (150g) Green streaky bacon, cut in cubes
20 Small Onions
4ozs (125g) Butter
1/2 Glass Brandy (Somerset Cider Brandy)
2 pints (1ltr) Red Burgundy
1 Bouquet Garni (made with fresh Thyme, Parsley and Bay Leaves)
2 Cloves Garlic
Salt and Pepper
1tbsp Sugar
7ozs (200g) Button Mushrooms
1tbsp Cornflour
Garlic Croutons (Gluten Free)

1 Fry the chicken, bacon and onions in about 2.5ozs (65g) of butter in a large pan.

2 When they have started to brown, chuck in the brandy and flame.

3 Pour on the red wine and add in your bouquet garni, garlic, salt and pepper.

4 Bring to the boil, add the sugar, cover and simmer for approximately 2 to 3 hours or until the chicken is cooked.

5 At the end of the cooking time, heat the mushrooms in some butter.

6 Remove the chicken from the pan when it is done, putting it into a deep platter to keep warm.

7 Discard the garlic and bouquet garni, then add the mushrooms to the sauce and simmer for 5 minutes.

8 Make a Beurre Manié with the remaining butter and cornflour and add it to the sauce little by little.

9 Stir it well until the sauce had thickened.

10 Arrange the chicken pieces in the platter and pour the sauce over, garnishing with the garlic croutons.

Serve with potatoes of your choice, or crusty bread, green vegetables and/or a green salad.

Enjoy!

Competition Links:
Back to the Chopping Board: Farewell Floyd: Food Blogging Event

A Slice of Cherry Pie: Farewell Floyd: Food Blogging Event