Half Scottish, Half Japanese. Tempura Mars bar?

My photo
I began writing this blog in October 2010 as a new father documenting food in his family. Before I knew it, I was in the final of MasterChef 2012. Now cooking is no longer just a hobby.

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Saturday 30 June 2012

Fridgevention risotto


We were stuck in traffic on the A4 into London at 7.30pm on a Saturday evening after a day of cookery demos at the CGA Festival of Food at Barbury Castle Horse Trials.

There were three priorities. First, it was past Hector’s bed time. Second the Murray v Bagdhatis match was about to start on Centre Court. Third, we were hungry. Sadly, there was little in the fridge and time was not on our side – I was sorely tempted to get a take-away and although I could have justified it as I can’t remember the last time we had one, I remembered why that was. It costs at least £20 with none of the leisure of eating out and you’re left feelingt unhealthy even though you’ve not been able to finish it all.

The bottom of my fridge was a sorry sight.

A few scraps of butternut squash
The last two stalks of a head of celery
Half a tray of button mushrooms
The core of a small fennel bulb
Half a dozen spring onions
A handful of chives
Some parmesan
A ball of mozzarella
Risotto rice

I classify this as a free meal as it was all left overs and it took only 3 minutes of my time because I let my new Thermomix do all the work, while I put Hector to bed and poured myself a shandy to watch the Murray match.

Butternut squash, mushroom and sage risotto with chives and mozzarella

  1. Chop fennel, celery and spring onions and sweat in a little oil.
  2. Add the sage and squash and fry gently.
  3. Quarter the mushrooms and pop them in.
  4. Add half a glass of white wine and reduce it down completely.
  5. Add the risotto rice (50g per person), twice the amount of water or stock and cook for 15 minutes stirring constantly.
  6. Check that the rice is cooked then season with parmesan (or salt if you are vegetarian).
  7. Folded in diced mozzarella so that it starts to melt in the residual heat.
  8. Serve in a shallow bowl, topped with chopped chives and basil.

From such dismal prospects in the fridge, it was a pleasing result, especially given how little time was needed for either preparation or cooking.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Soba noodles with grilled quail, broadbeans and radishes

On Saturday, I completed my first ever triathlon in the beautiful setting of Blenheim Palace. Although I chose the shortest distance (Super Sprint: 400m swim, 10k bike, 3k run), I was proud of the achievement because a month ago, I could hardly swim one length, let alone two, without stopping and gasping for breath. All it took was two very good lessons with a personal trainer who taught himself to swim by analysing others (ralph-hydes.com).

A few hours after completing the triathlon, I had the privilege of meeting and cooking with some of Great Britain's Olympic triathlon medal prospects, the Brownlee brothers, Alistair and Jonathan and Helen Jenkins and her husband and trainer, Marc, who himself competed in the triathlon in the Olympic Games in Athens. Helen and Marc helped me cook a Japanese noodle dish that I had come up with, while the Brownlee brothers joined fellow Yorkshireman Tom Rennolds, who is my friend and fellow finalist from MasterChef.

I wanted my dish to be quick to prepare, light and fresh with a good balance of carbohydrates, vegetables and protein.

Ingredients (serves 2-3)
2 quail
1/2 red onion
1 stick celery
1 carrot
1 orange

1 spring onion
200g broad beans, shelled
50g spinach
50g watercress
1/4 red onion, finely sliced
1 spring onion, finely sliced
5-6 French breakfast radishes, finely sliced
Handful of celery leaves

1 tbsp Sesame oil
2 tbsp Soy sauce (reduced salt, preferably)
2 tbsp Mirin 200g soba (buckwheat) noodles

Method
1. Remove any string from the quail. Slice off the breasts and reserve. You can also remove the legs if you wish, but I used them to make a quail broth. You can always grill them later, after they have been poached in the broth.
2. Place the quail carcasses into water and bring to the boil. As the water is boiling, roughly chop the red onion, carrot, spring onion and celery. Plave them in the water with the quail. I leave the skin on the onion as it helps give the broth a deep reddy-brown colour. Once the water is boiling, reduce to a low simmer - you want the flavours of the quail and vegetables to infuse into the water gently. If it boils too vigorously, the fatwand impurities will emulsify into the water, resulting in a cloudy stock. You want a fresh, light consomme.
3. Marinade the quail breasts in the sesame oil, soy sauce and mirin. It's best and easiest in a plastic freezer bag.
4. Boil the soba noodles according to the instructions on the packet. Err on the side of al dente, as you'll serve them in the hot quail broth later. Rinse and drain the noodles, then portion them into bowls. We'll reheat them later by pouring over the hot quail broth.
5. Prepare the vegetables. I like to serve them all raw, as it helps with the lightness of the dish while adding texture as some of the vegetables will wilt more than others in the broth. I prefer to shell the broadbeans - it is a little fiddly, but Marc and Heen both found it therapeutic! The beans inside have a much brighter green that looks better in the finished soup and the whitish shells are slightly bitter. Scatter the shelled broadbeans on top of the noodles, along with a handful of watercress, spinach, red onion, spring onion and radishes.
6. Once the quail broth has been brewing for 15-20 minutes, drain the stock into a new pan. You can remove the legs at this point if you wish - they will be poached and will just need to be tossed into the marinade and grilled. The stock should be a light golden colour, mainly from the carrot and red onion, but it will taste oand smell of quail. Season it with soy sauce instead of salt, to make it a richer, darker colour. Add a tablespoon of mirin for an extra bit of sweet acidity and perfume it by adding the zest of 1/2 an orange (use a peeler).
7. Remove the quail meat from the marinade and grill quickly over a high heat for 1-2 minutes on each side. Be careful not to overcook it as quail can become dry quickly.
8. Pour the quail broth over the noodles (without the orange peel), then place the grilled quail meat on top, with a large pinch of sesame seeds.

Friday 11 May 2012

Live Below The Line Part 5

Day 3 (pronounced in a Geordie accent) of Live Below The Line. We have left: 2 chicken drumsticks, two chicken wings, 300g of split peas, 500g of pearl barley, one tin of chopped tomatoes and lots of long grain rice.

Lunch on Wednesday
Soup was always going to be one of our lunch options and I hoped there'd be enough left in the fridge in case we got hungry. I was going to make two types, but for simplicity, I decided to make one and make it as good as I could manage. I took the chicken stock, discarded the bones, set aside the vegetables and passed it through a fine sieve. I set aside 1 litre for cooking and used the remaining 2 litres or so for making soup.

Curried soup with chicken and split peas (about 5-6 portions)
2 litres of chicken stock
200g of yellow split peas
1/2 tin of chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp curry powder
Pinch of salt

1. Rinse the split peas and bring them to the boil in the chicken stock.
2. Add the chopped tomatoes and a large teaspoon of curry powder and simmer for 30-40 minutes until the split peas are cooked.
3. Blitz in a jug blender. This is a good time to season the soup, with salt and cayenne pepper for more heat, if desired.
4. Pass through a sieve, if you want a smoother texture. Personally I'm happy with it being coarse this weeks - it makes it feel a bit more substantial! You could even add some cooked pearl barley to the soup before serving.

Supper on Wednesday
So far we've had chicken risotto and 'jerk chicken' (it wasn't really but we served it with rice and peas!) for suppers. On Wednesday, we had a mulligatawny style pearl barley stew. I love pearl barley. It's partly a nostalgia thing - my mum made lovely Scotch broth - but also because I love the bitey texture. It's very satisfying (and equally distressing if you overcook it into a gelatinous mush, as I did on one occasion). This recipe uses a British ingredient, cooked using the same technique as risotto, with Asian flavours. I did, however, overlook that pearl barley takes a while to cook - probably twice as long as  rice, so it's not great if you want to rustle something up in ten minutes. I served it with the chicken legs, which I boned, partly to help them cook quicker, partly for presentation. Don't get me wrong, drumsticks have their place, but with something like barley, I think it's nicer for the diner to be able to eat everything on the plate, instead of having a forkful of barley then gnawing away at a bone!

Chicken legs with curried pearl barley (serves 2)
2 chicken legs (preferably boned)
Veg oil
Salt
Cayenne pepper
100g pearl barley
200g chicken stock
Large pinch of salt
1 tsp curry powder
Water from the kettle

1. Preheat the oven to 190c and boil a kettle.
2. Coat the chicken legs in veg oil, sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. Use the grill at the end, if necessary to get the skin to crisp up.
3. Bring the barley, chicken stock, salt and curry powder to the boil then reduce to a lively simmer.
4. Add water from the kettle when required and cook for at least 40 minutes.


Day 4, here we come. What's left with two more days to go? The chicken wings, half a tin of chopped tomatoes, 100g of split peas, 400g of pearl barley and lots of long grain rice. Although, Live Below The Line is a tough challenge and exactly why it's such a good awareness raising campaign, it's the kind of challenge I like from a cooking perspective. The tough thing about Invention Tests on MasterChef was being spoilt for choice and having to narrow your choices. For me, a true invention test is when the cupboard is bare and you have to create something out of very little.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Live Below The Line Part 4

Well, I can confirm it only gets tougher. It was hard enough working out how to spend just £5 per head on food, but now comes the reality. My first observation is that with a limited budget and a limited range of ingredients, food becomes about sustenance. Eating becomes as mundane as having a shower, putting your clothes and going to the loo. There is no great pleasure in it, no breaks in the day to look forward to.

On Monday, I did two main jobs to prepare us for the week ahead. First, I portioned a chicken and made a stock out of the bones. Second, I made a hummus, by cooking and pureeing yellow split peas. As I blitzed it in the blender, I added a little rapeseed oil, some salt, the juice of a lemon and some cayenne pepper for kick. It looks like hummus and it is certainly edible, but it doesn't have garlic, olive oil and tahini (ground sesame seed paste).

Yellow split pea hummus (serves lots)
200g yellow split peas
1-2 tbsp rapeseed oil
1 tsp salt
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1. Rinse the split peas, cover with plenty of water and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, or until cooked.
2. Blitz the peas with the oil, salt, lemon and cayenne pepper in a smoothie maker. You can make it as coarse or smooth as you like. I like coarse. You could add some curry powder or some garlic salt if you have them, but I quite like it lemony.

Lunch on Monday
Lunch on Monday was particularly challenging because we went to Foodies Festival at Hampton Court and couldn't try any of the delicious smelling food. We were pleased it was raining because we had an excuse to go home and make chicken sandwiches! I had removed the mini fillets from the chicken breasts and gently poached them in the chicken stock for a couple of minutes. It was pretty bland, so I added some very thinly sliced onion and a few turns of the black pepper grinder.

Supper on Monday
On Monday evening we made a version of jerk chicken with rice and peas, inspired by one of the stalls at the Foodies Festival. I'm sure it wasn't nearly as good and we didn't have jerk seasoning, but we made do with cayenne pepper and ras el hanout.


Crispy spicy chicken thighs with rice and peas (serves 2)
2 chicken thighs, boned (put the bones in the chicken stock)
1 tsp veg oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ras el hanout (or other spice mix)
Dash of cayenne pepper
1/2 onion, sliced
1 tbsp veg oil
2 large pinches of salt
120g rice
150g tinned peas
200ml chicken stock
500ml boiling water

1. Preheat the oven to 200c and boil the kettle.
2. For the crispy chicken, rub the veg oil over the thighs, then sprinkle with salt, spice mix and dust with cayenne pepper. Roast the chicken for about 20 minutes while you cook the rice. I turned the grill on for the last couple of minutes to get the skin to crisp up.
3. Fry the onion slices in veg oil and salt until they have some colour to get flavour into the rice. Add the rice and the chicken stock and cook until all the liquid has been absorbed. Keep adding boiling water as required and check frequently for seasoning and bite. Add some spice powder if you want some extra flavour. Don't stir too much as its cooking - you want to keep the rice separate and you'll also probably leave rice on the side of the pan where it won't be able to absorb water. When the rice is just cooked, add the peas and warm them through.



Lunch on Tuesday

While the mini fillets made sandwiches for 2, one of the chicken breasts (poached in the chicken stock) provided enough meat for 5 or even 6 sandwiches (when sliced very thinly!). I enlivened them by rehydrating 10g of Paxo stuffing (about 4p from my store cupboard budget).

Supper on Tuesday
We actually made Tuesday's supper on Monday evening since it used many of the same ingredients but cooked with slightly different techniques. I also wanted to make sure the other chicken breast was cooked, so that we didn't find that it had gone off later in the week. While we made rice and peas in a frying pan so that they were quite spread out, I like to make risotto in a pot. Because of budget constraints, we were using long grain rice, which is less starchy than arborio or carnarolli rice. To try and mimic  risotto rice, we cooked it in a pot and stirred it continuously, to encourage the grains to rub against each other and become creamy. A bit like casseroles (some even say pizza!), it benefited from spending a day in the fridge. It tasted better and the texture was stickier, more like risotto rice and less like long grain rice.


Chicken and pea risotto (serves 2)
1/2 onion, diced
1 tbsp veg oil
2 large pinches of salt
140g rice (preferably risotto rice!)
750g chicken stock, hot
1 chicken breast, diced into 2-3cm cubes

1. Sweat the onion in a small pot with veg oil and salt.
2. When the onions are on the verge of browning, add the rice and coat all the grains in the oil.
3. Add a couple of ladles of chicken stock and stir gently. Keep stirring as frequently as you can, adding stock as you go. Stirring the rice helps give it a creamy consistency without adding cream.
Keep the stock hot so you don't keep reducing the cooking temperature of the rice.
4. After about 10 minutes taste the rice for seasoning and bite. When it is a bit too al dente, add the chicken with another ladle of stock.
5. For the last minute or so of cooking, add the peas and a large pinch of spice mix, if you still find it too bland.


Tuesday 8 May 2012

Live Below The Line Part 3



Last week I gave some advice to a radio presenter who was taking the Live Below The Line challenge a week earlier than most participants. Here is a summary of that advice:

1. Team up with at least one other person. There are economies of scale when you purchase things like a bag of rice or pasta and by pooling resources, you can have a much more varied diet during the 5 day challenge.

2. You have probably bought some ingredients that are fairly bland on their own (rice, porridge, pasta, potatoes) but don't have much left to buy other ingredients. Remember to keep a little money left over so you can dip into things in your dry store. This week, spices and cayenne pepper are your friend. Don't forget you'll also need veg oil (I use rapeseed) and salt, but you won't need a whole bottle or a whole tub, so you take some from your stores and charge a prorated amount to your budget. When it comes to spice mixes, I tend to keep Garam Masala, Curry Powder and Ras el hanout in my cupboard.

3. Colour = flavour. That's what someone taught me and it's what I told John and Gregg if I burnt something on MasterChef! One of my old colleagues would make us all hungry by making toast at about 4pm in the afternoon. There's a reason that the smell of toast is so enticing - the bread is already cooked but toasting it caramelises the surface. The same is true of onions - when I have a hotdog, I like the onions sticky and brown so they are caramelised and sweet, edging towards bitter. I hate it when the onions look like they've been poached in water. No colour, no flavour.


4. If you're using a chicken, don't throw away the carcass - use it to make a stock which will give more flavour to rice or vegetables than cooking them in water. Chop the carcass with a cleaver and rinse to remove any blood and guts which can make the stock cloudy and bitter. I made a brown chicken stock rather than a white one because it smells and tastes more of roast chicken. Fry the chopped bones until well browned then add a carrot and an onion (both quartered) and brown them slightly. I leave the skin on the onion for extra colour. Then add three litres of water, salt and a bay leaf and bring it to the boil. Reduce immediately to a very gentle simmer so you can skim it. Simmer for at least 2 hours, with a lid to minimise water loss and maximise flavour extraction.

My next blog will include recipes.

Monday 7 May 2012

Live Below The Line Part 2



In my previous blog (Part 1), I outlined the shopping list for Live Below The Line and what I planned to do with it. One of the major advantages of taking this challenge with a friend is that you can pool the £5 budgets and get more variety into the food. When I first agreed to the challenge, I assumed that our diet would be exclusively vegetarian, but our biggest extravagance this week is a chicken.

Chicken is generally cheaper than other meat (often worryingly cheap) and I'm sure we all eat far too much of it. But this particular blog isn't about the ethics of eating chicken or meat. There are many other people who research and write on this topic far better than me. This blog is about Live Below The Line, a campaign to raise awareness about the 1.4 billion people in the world that live on less than £1 a day.

The reason that the chicken is an extravagance is that it occupies 40% of our weekly budget, so I have been very conscious about getting the most out of it. On the way home from Scotland, we stopped at Westmorland Farm Shop in Cumbria and bought a local chicken for £4.00 exactly. It weighed in at just under 1.4kg (i.e. £3 per kilo).

By jointing the chicken myself, I reckon I have managed to get 12 portions out of it (that's about 30p per portion), before including the portions of soup that I will make from the stock. Admittedly, the portions are not particularly generous.

2x 170g chicken breast fillets
2x 30g chicken breast mini-fillets
2x 150g chicken thighs
2x 100g chicken drumsticks
2x 80g chicken wings
1 chicken carcass, about 400g



I compared how much this would cost if the supermarket did the butchery for you.

2 chicken breasts, £6.16 for 400g
2 chicken thighs, £1.43 for 300g
2 chicken legs, £0.85 for 200g
2 chicken wings, £0.65 for 160g
Chicken stock, £2.69 for 500g

That works out at almost £12 per kilo, butchered, compared to the £3 per kilo for the whole chicken. The most expensive cut is the breast, which at more than £15 per kilo, is more expensive than some cuts of beef!



I'll save some of the details of what I did with the chicken for a subsequent blog. 




Monday 30 April 2012

Live Below The Line Part 1

When I accepted the challenge to Live Below The Line, I didn't appreciate how hard it is to live on £1 a day. Live Below The Line is a challenge being taken by around 20,000 people across three continents (in the UK, USA and Australia) to raise awareness and funds to support the 1.4 billion people around the world that live below the poverty line.

The challenge is to feed yourself for £1 a day, for 5 days. You could fill yourself up on toast, but the real challenge is to come up with a diet that is nutritious and varied. My wife and I are teaming up to pool our £5 budgets, which helps on this front. The shopping list is as follows:

2 loaves of wholemeal bread, £0.94
5 bananas, £0.60
1 chicken (approx. 1.5kg), £4.00
1kg of rice, £0.40
500g of pearl barley, £0.49
500g of split green peas, £0.49
1 tin of chopped tomatoes, £0.29
6 carrots, £0.50
3 onions, £0.48
5 apples, £0.68
1 tin of peas, £0.21
1 lemon, £0.25



That comes to £9.33, which leaves us 67p to dip into various store cupboards, such as oil, salt and spices. We were expecting to live vegetarian for the week, but reckon that we can be thrifty with a whole chicken. The first job will be to joint the chicken into 2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks, 2 wings and oysters and 1 carcass for chicken stock.

Fortunately, the first Monday is a bank holiday which should give us a little more cooking time than usual. I will write full recipes and a plan for the week, but here's the rough plan, per person:

Daily breakfast
2 pieces of toast, with half a mashed banana

Daily snacks
Half an apple, half a carrot, glass of water

Lunch
1. Soup: Chicken and barley
2. Salad: Chicken and rice
3. Soup: Chicken and split green peas
4. Sandwich: Chicken and split green pea hummus
5. Sandwich: Split green pea hummus and grated carrot

Dinner:
1. Chicken risotto
2. Jerk chicken legs, rice and peas
3. Chicken thighs, barley, spiced carrot mash
4. Barley biryani with curried chicken wings
5. Split green pea curry and rice

Do you think you are up for taking the challenge?



Tuesday 10 April 2012

St Peters















One of the hardest bits about being on MasterChef was keeping everything secret - not just my participation but also how far I had got. One of the most difficult questions to handle was whether I knew who had won. Since I was one of only three contestants who did know, just answering this question would have given away that I had made it to the final.

At last, however, over four months after the final was filmed, I was reunited in a kitchen with my fellow finalists Tom and Shelina. I had agreed to cater for a guest night at my local church and was delighted when Tom and Shelina both agreed to help me in the kitchen - in particular given we were catering for 80 people.

Cooking for 80 not only means a lot of prep time, but also designing dishes that can be plated up quickly so that the food stays hot and the last table is served as soon as possible after the first. I faced issues of both budgets and logistics. Fortunately, we had decided to host the dinner in the church itself, leaving the church hall as our kitchen, but we would be unable to use it during the morning because of a kids' club that was running during the Easter holiday. Furthermore, the facilities in the small church hall kitchen wouldn't be up to catering for 80 people so we would have to rent industrial equipment, such as gas burners, ovens, plate warmers and a lamp heated pass.

We spent £400 on equipment hire (or £5 a head). I estimate that if we'd had to pay minimum wage for labour, overhead costs would have been increased by £1,000 (another £12.50 per head). Fortunately, everyone front of house and in the kitchen was volunteering their time, which meant that we had a decent budget for ingredients. We set ticket prices at £20 per head for three courses to make it accessible to as many people as possible.

For the starter, I wanted something cold plated. It was a little too early for English asparagus, but Jersey royal potatoes were in season. They are grown by the sea and fertilised with sea weed, so the flavour goes naturally with seafood. I chose mackerel as it is inexpensive and reasonably easy to fillet. I dry cured it the Japanese way, first for an hour in sugar, then for an hour in salt. At the end of the process, a lot of water has been drawn out of the flesh and the fish becomes much firmer, as if it has been cooked. It remains quite an oily fish though, which is why it pairs well with horseradish, to give the overall dish a light zinginess. I kept the dressing for the potatoes light by using rapeseed oil instead of butter and adding fresh chives and parsley. You occasionally see apple with mackerel, so I used cider vinegar for the dressing to help counterbalance the oiliness. This dish worked out at around £3 per portion. For vegetarians and those who prefer their fish cooked with heat, I substituted salt baked beetroot for the mackerel - it goes well with both the herbs and the horseradish.

Cured mackerel, Jersey royals, herbs, horseradish

For the main course, I wanted a braised meat as it can be prepared a day or two in advance and will retain its heat well during service. For beef bourgignon, I usually use shin of beef, but I chose ox cheek, as it is inexpensive and easy to portion, once the meat has cooled - one cheek serves two. I ordered 20 kilograms of ox cheek to arrive on Saturday and spent 2 hours trimming off the sinew. I then placed it in a marinade of wine, port and dark bitter for 24 hours, with mirepoix (onions, carrots, celery and leeks) and hard herbs (rosemary, thyme and bay leaf). The following day, I set up 3 frying pans and browned off the cheeks - the caramelisation of the meat provides flavour - called the Maillard effect. I placed the meat in large gastros, with the marinade and some gelatinous chicken stock, then braised it at 100 celcius overnight for 12 hours. It took 4 hours to cool so that I could put it in a fridge and pass the braising liquor through a fine sieve to make the sauce. We served it with parsnip puree, potato rosti topped with a porcini butter, Chantenay carrots and discs of Savoy cabbage.

Browning the ox cheek

The ox cheek before braising

Braised ox cheek, parsnip, porcini rosti, Savoy, Chantenay

For dessert, we served poached pears, with chocolate, walnuts and Dolcelatte (an Italian blue cheese). I find that Williams pears are the best for poaching - the more common Conference pears tend to be too powdery and disintegrate. Fortunately I had volunteers to help, but it still took the best part of 2 hours to peel them. We poached them in white wine, sugar syrup, bay leaves and cinnamon. When they were cool, we removed the core and filled it with a slightly salty cream, made from Dolcelatte, double cream and icing sugar. We then drizzled them with dark chocolate and placed them on a bed of ground, toasted walnuts.

Poached pear, chocolate, walnuts, Dolcelatte

Sunday 5 February 2012

Sunday Chicken Part 2

Hector eating fish fingers on the beach

Hector is a texture fiend - he loves anything crunchy or with a crispy coating. He particularly loves fish fingers, but I do worry how much salt and other things are added, when we are away from home. When I made Chicken Kiev, I was left with the inner fillets from the chicken breast and some extra breadcrumbs, so I made chicken patties, with just five ingredients.

Ingredients (makes about 4 small patties)
250g chicken meat
1 egg
1 tbsp coriander
1 tbsp polenta
1 tbsp bread crumbs

Method
1. Place the chicken meat and coriander in a food processor and pulse for 10 seconds. Scrape the sides down and pulse further if necessary, but keep the texture rough.
2. Add the egg and pulse for 5 seconds. The pattie mix will be quite runny.
3. Add the polenta until the pattie mix is stiff but remains sticky.
4. Take 2 tbsp of mix and form it into a pattie.
5. Flatten the patty and dip both sides in the breadcrumbs.
6. Fry on both sides for 3 minutes (depends how thick the patties are).

If you don't have a food processor, you can chop the chicken by hand and mix in the egg and polenta with a spoon and mixing bowl.

Tuesday 31 January 2012

Sunday Chicken Part 1



Last week, I recalled the childhood story of Stone Soup, which MiMi remembers as Nail Soup. I have since discovered that it is also known as Axe Soup in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe. This week, childhood nostalgia also took me to Eastern Europe. Chicken Kiev, may have originated in Moscow in the early 1900s but takes its name from the capital city of Ukraine. It was popularised in Britain in the late 1970s by Marks and Spencer as what they called a 'recipe dish', or a 'ready meal' in other words. By the 1980s, it was a dinner party favourite.

The first thing you will need to do for this dish is make a compound butter. "Beurre composé," by its French culinary term in Larousse, is just butter with other ingredients mixed through it; garlic, lemon and parsley in this case, but you can make Asian compound butters with chilli and spices. You might as well take a whole pack of butter, since you can freeze it and use it for other dishes. Soften the butter in a bowl. You can use a microwave on a low setting but don't melt it as the ingredients will sink to the bottom if it is not still semi-solid. Peel 3 or 4 garlic cloves and mince them finely with a knife or use a garlic press. Fold the garlic into the softened butter, along with the zest of a lemon and a handful of chopped flat leaf parsley (or coriander, if you prefer). Spoon the compound butter back into the packet or onto some foil and roll it into a log. Put it in the freezer for 20 minutes.



Garlic compound butter
1x 250g pack of salted butter
4 cloves of garlic
Zest of 1 lemon
Large handful of flat leaf parsley (2 tbsp once chopped)

Once the compound butter has set hard, preheat the oven to 180 Celsius and start making the Chicken Kiev. Take 2 chicken breasts and trim off the mini-fillets and any rough edges. Set these aside to make chicken burgers for the children. There are two approaches to filling the chicken breast with the compound butter. I went for the incision approach. Take a sharp, but narrow bladed knife and insert it into the middle of the chicken breast. Swivel it a little to form a pocket but be careful not to go through the fillet. Slice the frozen compound butter into shards and stuff them into the pocket. When you make the incisions, try and make them so that they face upwards when you place the chicken fillet on a baking tray. This way, when the garlic butter melts, it will have a more difficult job leaking out.

Make an incision but go in from a higher angle than this

The alternative method is to butterfly the chicken breast first and flatten it. The advantage of this method is that the finished cutlet will cook more evenly. The disadvantage is that it is a little more work and breading it may be more fiddly. Furthermore, if you don't have a meat mallet, you may have to use a saucepan.

Jay using his initiative. If you don't have a meat mallet, improvise.
If you go for the flattened approach, you will have to fold the chicken breast carefully around the frozen butter. Next, set up a pané station (pané is French for breaded).

Breadcrumbs, seasoned flour, egg
Chicken Kiev ingredients
1 chicken breast per portion
Garlic compound butter, above
1 egg, beaten
3 tbsp plain flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
4 tbsp of breadcrumbs (make your own in a food processor or buy ready made) 

Dip the chicken in the flour first, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs. If you want  thicker crust, repeat the "egg-flour" stage. The chicken breast on the right has an unfortunate bald patch - this is where I was holding it with my thumb.



Shallow fry the chicken breast in vegetable oil on both sides, then transfer to a baking tray. Use one with sides, in case the butter melts and makes a mess in the oven. Bake in the oven at 180 Celsius for about 15 minutes. By then the butter will be molten, but basting the chicken from the inside to keep it from being dry. Personally, to complete the nostalgia effect, I would serve it with fries; potato wants to soak up the garlicky juices but retains its crispness. However, on this occasion, I served it with lentils and cabbage, both of which I wanted to use up. I simmered the lentils in chicken stock for about 15 minutes, while the Kiev was in the oven, then added shredded cabbage for the last couple of minutes.

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Stone soup

Dtom Yam gung (Tom Yum soup)


As a child I loved the folk tale of stone soup. It is the story of a hungry tramp who knocks on the door of an old lady asking for some food. She turns him away, so he pulls out a large, polished stone and sets off to make stone soup in a pot over a fire. The old lady is curious and comes to see how he is getting on. The tramp persuades the old lady to add vegetables and garnishes one by one until he has created a delicious potage.

Yesterday, Jemma was upset with me because I trumped her pasta, pesto and roast vegetables with a Thai version of stone soup. I have monopolised the kitchen for the past several months while I've been practising for Masterchef and it is fair to say that her cooking has got a little rusty.

When I arrived back last night, she had carefully cut up red onions, mushrooms, carrots and bell peppers, dressed them in olive oil, herbs and salt and was about to put them in to roast. There is nothing wrong with pasta, pesto and roast vegetables on a Monday night and I do like to have one or two vegetarian dinners each week, but on this occasion, I had other plans. It was a little mean of me, then, to pull out some ingredients and invite her brother James, who is staying with us, to make Thai stone soup in the time that it took to roast the vegetables (about 10-15 minutes).

This Thai stone soup I speak of, is in fact, just Tom Yum soup. 'Dtom' means 'boil' and 'yam' means 'mix together'. It is a wonderful soup to make in January, especially if you are on a post-Christmas diet, because it is healthy but surprisingly filling, detoxifying but pleasantly invigorating! And it's very quick - only the speed of your chopping will hold you back. If it's all chopped and ready to go, it can be ready in less than 10 minutes.

Dtom yam gung (Hot and sour soup)
Serves 2

1. Take 2 bowls that you are going to serve the soup in.
2. Fill them full with water and pour them into a saucepan. Switch the heat on full.
3. Add a thumb of fresh ginger or galangal (peeled, preferably).
4. Add a stalk of lemongrass (bruised and chopped into 4 pieces). You're essentially making a ginger and lemongrass tea, so bring it to the boil and then reduce to a simmer.
5. Add one small onion or a leek (sliced).
6. Add one red birds eye chilli (sliced, with seeds).
7. Add three mushrooms (sliced).
8. Add three cherry tomatoes (sliced in half).
9. Add one large handful of raw, peeled prawns (about 75g). You could also add one small chicken breast (sliced into thin strips) instead of, or as well as the prawns.
10. Add 100ml of coconut milk and switch off the heat. Now it is time to season it so that it is SWEET, SOUR, SALTY and HOT!
11. Add one teaspoon of palm sugar - SWEET!
12. Add one teaspoon of tamarind paste (optional) and the juice of one lime - SOUR!
13. Add one teaspoon of fish sauce (nam pla) and a large pinch of salt - SALTY!
14. Add one teaspoon of red chilli paste and stir in well - HOT!
15. Thai stone soup. Delicious, healthy and quick. But it will taste even better with a handful of roughly chopped coriander, sweet basil and spring onions.

One technique is to put the raw prawns in the bottom of the serving bowl and marinade them quickly in the sugar, lime juice, fish sauce and chilli paste. The prawns will cook with the heat from the soup and the seasonings retain their vibrancy. And remember the golden rule of seasoning - you can always add more.

If this takes your fancy, here is the ingredient list.

2 full bowls of water
1 thumb of ginger, peeled
1 stalk of lemongrass, bruised then chopped roughly
3-4 kaffir lime leaves (optional)
1/2 leek or onion, sliced thinly
1/2 red birds eye chilli, sliced thinly (leave the seeds in)
2 mushrooms, sliced
1 chicken breast, sliced into thin strips
50g of raw prawns, peeled back to the tail
3 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
100ml of coconut milk (optional)
1 tsp of palm sugar (though any sugar will do)
1 tsp of tamarind paste (optional)
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp of red chilli paste
1 tsp of fish sauce (nam pla)
1/2 tsp of salt

Thursday 19 January 2012

Baby MasterChef

Tasting and stirring


To celebrate his daddy getting an apron as one of the Final 12 contestants in Masterchef, Hector's nanna (my mum) made him an Masterchef apron from a pillow case! She even did the embroidery herself - it's a little bit wonky, but it's brilliant all the same. Thank you, Nanna! Here he is at his cooking station!