Roasted chicken drumsticks with sausage, olives and tomatoes

Ahh, two kinds of meat. Mediterranean veggies. One pot meal. I got to use my Le Creuset. There are so many things I love about this dish. I adapted it from Jamie Oliver's version here. 

Roasted chicken drumsticks with sausage, tomatoes and olives
10 chicken drumsticks
1 cooked sweet Italian sausage, sliced into thick 1/2-inch coins
2 handfuls of red and yellow cherry and cocktail tomatoes, whole
4 garlic cloves, crushed, skin still on
quarter cup of kalamata olives, pitted
a pinch of red pepper flakes
one can of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
six fingerling potatoes, cut in half lengthwise
1 bunch fresh basil, leaves picked, stalks finely chopped
olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Season the chicken drumsticks with salt and pepper on all sides. In a casserole pan, scatter the basil, fingerling potatoes olives, cannellini beans, tomatoes and garlic cloves. Drizzle with olive oil and red pepper flakes. Mix together to be evenly coated. Tuck the chicken legs and sausage slices in and around the vegetables, making sure the vegetables are mostly on the bottom. Cook for 1½ hours until the chicken is falling off the bone and the skin is crispy. 

Cashew chicken korma with coriander, peas and rice

This is my take on the great Indian classic that is chicken korma. The coriander, peas, cashews and raisins make it a sweet and fresh dinner for summer.

Cashew chicken korma

1 package boneless skinless chicken thighs, chopped into 2-inch pieces
1 onion, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
1-inch piece ginger, grated or finely minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/4 cup plain yoghurt
2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 black cardamom pod (optional)
pinch green cardamom seeds (optional)
canola oil for frying
fresh coriander leaves for garnish (optional)
1 cup toasted cashews for garnish (optional)

In a large soup pot, heat the oil and brown the chicken pieces until golden. They do not have to be cooked all the way. Lift the chicken pieces out of the pot, leaving the oil behind, and set them aside.

Toast the spices in a frying pan until aromatic and slightly "tanned." Grind them in a food processor or spice grinder. If you do not have whole spices, just use equivalent amounts of ground spices and don't toast them.

In the same pot in the same oil, saute the onion and tomato for five minutes or until they form a thick paste. Add the ginger, garlic and spices, and stir for another three minutes. Add half of the yoghurt, stirring in a tablespoon at a time. Do not allow to boil.

Return the chicken pieces to the pot. At this point, try not to bring the curry to a rolling boil because the yoghurt will curdle. Cover and simmer slowly for six minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Add the rest of the yoghurt. Simmer again for another six minutes.

Garnish with fresh coriander leaves and toasted cashews, if you have them.

Coriander, peas and rice

1.5 cups jasmine rice
1 Tbsp butter
2 star anise
handful chopped coriander
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup peas

Pour the rice into your rice cooker and rinse it in cold water four times or until the water runs clear. Add the butter and star anise. Turn the rice cooker on.

While the rice is cooking, boil the peas for five minutes and soak the raisins in hot water for 10 minutes to plump up. Drain both and mix the peas and raisins into the rice once the rice is cooked.

Garnish with raisins and coriander.

Slow cooker chicken tacos

This is such a nice, quick no-fuss recipe that Ceri Marsh and Laura Keogh of Sweet Potato Chronicles did for Cityline. I've mentally filed it under "workweek dinner ideas" for when I go back to work full-time. It inspired me to pull out my slow cooker that I really only use for two recipes — pulled pork and French onion soup. Now I'm happy to add a third to my repertoire :) I just love the fresh coriander and lime juice in it. I added more toasted whole spices that just cumin — one teaspoon of whole coriander seeds and half a teaspoon of whole fennel seeds. I'm going to keep adapting the recipe to my tastes and will keep you posted.

Chicken fried rice

This is a dish from my childhood. My mom used to make it for dinner all the time when I was growing up. I didn't appreciate it enough back then, but now I crave it. Here's our family recipe, which is simple and delicious. I try to remember to make extra rice with the previous day's meal in order to have some cold cooked rice ready to be crumbled in.

A note on the amounts — these are really approximate. Feel free to increase the chicken, mushrooms and rice if you want to feed more people.

Chicken fried rice with egg on top
serves two

1 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 green onions, sliced on the diagonal
a few leaves of Napa cabbage, chopped into small strips (optional)
4 mushrooms, sliced
1 cup of shredded cooked chicken
soy sauce
hot sauce (my mom uses Louisiana; I use Sriracha)
a few handfuls of cooked rice
olive oil for frying
fried egg for topping (optional)

Heat oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Fry garlic and onion until glassy. Add the hot sauce and chicken and stir. Add cabbage and/or green onion and stir. Add mushrooms and stir. Crumble in the rice and stir. Turn the heat down (around 3.5). Add soy sauce, salt and pepper and stir. Serve topped with a fried egg.

Thai coconut chicken soup

One rotisserie chicken goes a long way. I bought one last weekend and we had it four ways: a Friday night dinner of drumsticks and fries with Swiss Chalet sauce from a package, then chicken breast and arugula baguette sandwiches for lunches, then homemade chicken stock and the rest of the meat to make this soup!

Thai coconut chicken soup

4 cups chicken stock
1 400-ml can unsweetened coconut milk
2 small red chiles, finely sliced and no seeds
1 lemongrass stalk, cut into long pieces
3 Tbsp fish sauce (or soy sauce, but then omit the salt)
1 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
pinch of salt
6 cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded 
juice of half a lime
3/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves

Bring the chicken stock and coconut milk to a boil in a stock pot.

Reduce heat and add the chiles, lemongrass, fish sauce, ginger and salt. Simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Add in the mushrooms, chicken and lime juice. Simmer for five minutes. Remove the lemongrass and sprinkle with cilantro before serving.

Chicken salad with arugula, oranges and almonds

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The chicken in this salad is deliciously crispy and caramelized because of the skin. We deboned chicken thighs prior to cooking, but kept the skin on. For some reason I cannot find thighs with skin but no bones - they seem to come either with or without both. If anyone knows where to get them deboned/skin on, please let me know! Until then I'll continue to do it this way - deboning's a bit of work, but well worth it for the flavour and crispiness.  

Chicken salad with arugula, oranges and almonds
Serves two
a couple of handfuls of arugula
one orange
a few artichokes from a jar
handful of almonds
two chicken thighs
dijon mustard
ponzu sauce (a Japanese citrus dressing)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Prepare the chicken by deboning the thighs, but leaving the skin on. Turn skin side up on the cutting board, and season the skin side with salt and pepper. Heat a frying pan on medium heat. Do not add oil because you will be frying the chicken in the fat from its own skin. When the pan is hot, add the chicken thighs skin side down. Let them cook about two-thirds of the way up, until they curl up and start to brown and crisp up. While they are cooking, season the other side of the thighs now facing up in the pan.

When the skin side is cooked, turn the thighs over and cook the other side for another five minutes or so. When cooked, remove from pan and place on a plate to rest. Slice each thigh into pieces that you put on top of the salad.  

Prepare the salad by washing and drying the arugula, peeling and slicing the orange, and halving the artichoke quarters. Roughly chop the almonds and lightly toast in a frying pan. Tip the almonds onto a cutting board to cool as soon as they have finished to prevent them from browning further in the pan. Put all of these ingredients in a big salad bowl.

 Prepare the dressing by mixing a little bit of Dijon mustard with a couple Tablespoons of ponzu sauce, and add olive oil to make into a dressing consistency. Pour over salad and toss. Top with chicken slices and serve.

Roasted chicken and veg tray bake

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I like tray bakes. I just like to plop ingredients into a pan and walk away, and in an hour discover a cooked feast with very little work done on my part. This tray bake was very nice, so let me share with you what I did.

I put four chicken thighs (skin on and bone in), a few whole cloves of garlic, three tomatoes cut in half, a handful each of whole red and white new potatoes, and some onions, peeled and quartered, in a roasting pan. Then I made a dressing of balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil in my trusty glass measuring cup, and poured it all over the ingredients.

For good food, one must get one's hands dirty, so I mixed everything up with my hands and rubbed the dressing in everywhere so that all of the ingredients were coated.

Lastly, I tucked a couple of springs of fresh thyme in strategic places. You could also add dried herbs or some chili peppers or chili flakes for some extra pizzazz.

I baked this in a 400 oven for 45 minutes to an hour, although if you are cooking boneless meat it should be done much faster than that. The chicken was nicely browned and crispy skinned, but I upped that delicious ante by browning it up even more under the broiler. I hope you try this recipe sometime. Your house will smell fantastic and your tummy will love you :)

Chicken tray bake with vegetables and cheese

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According to Canada's Food Guide, meals are healthiest when half of the plate is fruit and vegetables, a quarter is meat or equivalent, and the remaining quarter, grain product.

A typical Asha meal is often half pasta, a quarter meat and vegetable, and the remaining quarter, cheese. Not exactly Canada's Food Guide-approved.

However, I am confident the authors would have been proud of me for cooking this recent meal: three quarters potatoes, tomatoes, onions and broccoli, and the remaining quarter a yummy roasted chicken thigh. Oh, and did I mention that broccoli was parmesan-encrusted? (I can always find ways to have my cheese and eat it too ;)

Recipes to come later this week.

Coq au Riesling

Coq au Riesling, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

This is recipe # 68 in the little green notebook where I scribble recipes while watching Food Network Canada. It's Laura Calder's take on the French classic coq au vin, except that she uses white wine instead of red. I made this on Monday night for some friends and we ate it with roasted multi-coloured carrots from the market, and multi-coloured baby potatoes from SuperStore.

Coq au Riesling
adapted from Laura Calder's French Food at Home

I varied her recipe in the following ways: I used 10 pieces of drumsticks and thighs instead of 12, two cloves of garlic instead of one, ¾ cup of chicken stock instead of 1/2, two tablespoons of brandy instead of cognac. I used sour cream because I can never find crème fraîche and I added 1 tsp of dried thyme.

Roasted Multi-Coloured Carrots

Roasted heirloom multi-coloured carrots and balsamic chicken, originally uploaded by beFOODled.

There is a mouthwatering episode of Jamie at Home called "Carrots and beets," where he tosses each root vegetable with a different acid and different fresh, woody herb like rosemary, thyme or sage. Then he lines up alternating veggie bunches in a big roasting pan, and cooks them in his beautiful wood-burning outdoor oven.

When Squeaky and I went to the market on Sunday, we found the amazing multi-coloured carrots that Jamie used in his recipe. For the first time in my life, I tasted a purple carrot, and it was delicious. I made the carrots with S's help, and we modified the recipe by cooking them in the pan juices of the roasted balsamic chicken that I had made earlier.

Boil the carrots for 10 minutes. Toss them with olive oil, salt, pepper, smashed garlic cloves, an acid like red or white wine vinegar (we used orange juice), and pan juices from roasting chicken (optional). After tossing, roast the carrots in a 350 F oven until they are lightly golden, about half an hour.

Roasted Balsamic Chicken

Over the Christmas break I was the lucky recipient of three cookbooks. This recipe for roasted chicken with balsamic vinaigrette comes from one of them - the famous and the original Everyday Italian by Giada de Laurentiis, courtesy of my brother. It's the first recipe that I have tried, and judging by the fabulous taste, I think I picked the best - and simplest! - one in the book.

This is a five-ingredient recipe (not counting olive oil and salt and pepper, of course). Giada recommends that you enjoy the leftovers all week, so I took her advice and prepared a bunch of accompaniments on Sunday. Every morning this week I have taken a drumstick from the fridge, shredded the meat off the bone, and made a salad for lunch with chicken, arugula, a hard boiled egg cut into quarters and cold cooked potatoes. Then, come noon, I drizzle over a vinaigrette of balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper. It's perfick!

Roasted Balsamic Chicken

5 to 6 pieces of chicken (I used 5 drumsticks with the bone in and skin on)
olive oil
1 lemon
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
3 garlic cloves, minced
parsley (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Juice the lemon and grate the zest (keep these separate). In a plastic bag or bowl, mix and blend the lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard and garlic. Marinate the chicken pieces in the fridge in a plastic bag for at least 2 hours or up to one day.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Place the chicken pieces in a casserole dish and discard the marinade. Roast the chicken uncovered until cooked through, about 45 minutes. Serve hot with lemon zest and parsley (if you have it) sprinkled over top or let cool and keep in the fridge for use in sandwiches and salads.

Chicken Vesuvio

Chicken vesuvio on Flickr by beFOODled.

Tonight S and I made chicken vesuvio. It's a recipe adapted from Giada's Family Dinners by Giada De Laurentiis. We used some of the chicken stock I made last week to make it. Chicken vesuvio smells divine when cooking in the oven. The sauce alone is a nectar for the gods. Plus it's a one-pot meal, which means cleanup's not so bad.

Chicken Vesuvio

olive oil
4 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on
salt and pepper
4 large red-skinned potatoes, cubed
6 large garlic cloves, minced
3/4 C cooking sherry/mirin wine combination
3/4 C chicken stock
1 spring fresh rosemary
5 sprigs fresh thyme
6 marinated artichoke hearts
a couple of knobs of unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 400 C.

Brown both sides of the chicken in some olive oil in a saucepan (about 10 minutes). Drain the chicken and set aside.

Add some more olive oil and fry the potatoes in the same pan until golden and crispy on at least two sides.

Add the garlic and stir for a couple of minutes. Add the alcohol (I used a combo of sherry and wine, but you could also use white wine, which is what the recipe called for). Scrape the bottom of the pan to deglaze any brown crispy bits. Add the stock and fresh herbs and stir. Return the chicken to the pan and bring back to a boil over medium-high heat.

Cover the pan with foil and then transfer to the oven. I transferred everything to a casserole dish at this point, because I don't yet own the kind of pot that can go from element to oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Take out the pan and add the artichoke hearts and the butter. Dissolve the butter around the pan. Serve the chicken and potatoes with the sauce and enjoy!

Roast Chicken With Garlicky Yoghurt Sauce

Here's a nice supper for two that combines lots of different flavours and textures: crispy lemon chicken, soft caramelized onions, a smooth garlicky yoghurt sauce and a marinated tomato salad.

It might seem like a lot to coordinate, but each building block is just a few easy-to-combine ingredients. I had help in the form of S who cooked the chicken part (he's a whiz with meats).

This recipe is adapted from Australian chef Bill Granger's cookbook called bills: breakfast, lunch + dinner. Actually, it's his cover recipe :). The "sublimely delicious caramelized onions" are aptly named (they rock) and are from Dana McCauley's Pantry Raid.

Yoghurt Sauce
1 cup plain yoghurt
2 cloves garlic, minced
sea salt, just a pinch
Mix together and leave for one hour in the fridge.

Marinated Tomato Salad
two small ripe tomatoes, cubed
sea salt
red wine vinegar
olive oil
Mix together and marinate for one hour before draining. Drain and mix with more olive oil and chopped parsely.

Caramelized Onions
one large sweet onion, sliced
butter
thyme, fresh or dried
salt and pepper
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 C cooking sherry
1 tsp worcestershire sauce
Fry the onions, thyme, salt and pepper in butter until they have turned translucent, about 10 minutes. Add sugar and cook another 5 -10 minutes until the onions have browned a bit. Add the sherry and worcestershire and reduce until the onions have absorbed most of the liquids. Use as a building block in the roasted chicken recipe.

Roasted Chicken
4 chicken thighs, skin left on, deboned
sea salt
pepper
lemon, sliced into rounds
1 Tbsp oregano
5 Tbsp olive oil


Lightly oil the bottom of a casserole dish and cover with a single layer of lemon rounds. Spread the caramelized onions over the lemons. Fry the chicken on both sides in a frypan until the sides are browned and crispy. Place the chicken skin side up on the bed of onions. Sprinkle with oregano and olive oil. Cook in a 350 C oven for 20-25 minutes.

Serve with the garlic yoghurt sauce and tomato salad.

Chicken Stock

Whenever I am sick, I just crave soups. Nutritious, brothy, spicy ones, like a lemony dhal or a hot and sour Thai soup (like the one at Siam Bistro, yum). Sometimes I make a chicken stock from scratch, which takes almost all day, and make soup with it the next day. I usually buy four pounds of chicken bones from my butcher, freeze half of it and use the remaining two pounds for a stock-making session. There are lots of ways to make stock, but I always follow the recipe from the Joy of Cooking.

(makes 5-6 cups)

2 lb. chicken bones
cold water to cover

Cover the bones with cold water, put the lid on the pan and slowly bring to a boil. When the water boils, immediately turn down the heat to a barely-there simmer. For this next half hour it's important to constanty skim off the heavy scum that will form. If you don't, all those impurities will become incorporated into the stock and it will be cloudy instead of clear.

1 onion, unpeeled and quartered
1 stalk celery
1 carrot
1 leek, white part only
1 bouquet garni - half a bay leaf, two sprigs of thyme and a few sprigs of parsely
2 cloves
8 whole black peppercorns

Add these other ingredients after the half hour of skimming. Continue to simmer and skim. You'll need to skim less often now. Cook this way for three to four hours. Sieve the liquid and throw out the solids. Let the stock cool on the counter for a while. Keep it overnight in the fridge. The next day, spoon off the layer of fat that has accumulated. You should have five or six cups of stock. I always end up with lots more than that, so I simmer the sieved stock down again the next day until I have the right amount.

A good tip from Nigella Lawson - buy a bunch of plastic measuring cups and line them with plastic baggies. Then pour one cup of stock into each measuring cup and freeze. When the liquid has frozen you can just pop off the cup and the baggie will contain one measured cup, ready for use whenever you need it.

Yakitori Skewers and Rice

Here's a nice Japanese recipe from a few weekends ago, when S and I made a yakitori plate. I adapted this recipe from Jane Lawson's Yoshoku and a really fantastic website called VideoJug. It has video how-tos on all kinds of recipes and other hilarious things from how to get out of a car without showing your knickers and how to be the perfect boyfriend. To all that I say, it's never to late to learn!

But anyways, for the yakitori, the first thing to do is to marinate chicken thighs (whatever you have from 300 - 500 grams) in the following sauce recipe courtesy of VideoJug's How to Make Yakitori.

Marinade for chicken:
100 ml soy sauce
50 ml sake
50 ml mirin
2 Tbsp sugar

The VideoJug recipe recommends marinating for at least 5 hours, but I did it for one, used teriyaki sauce instead of the sake, and it turned out fine. (If I cooked this again and was sakeless once more, I would add more mirin instead of teriyaki, as mirin is more like sake by virtue of being an alcohol).

Mise en place:
Bamboo skewers, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes.
For chicken skewers:

• marinated chicken thigh fillets, on fillet cut into three pieces
• 2 baby leeks or fat spring onions, white part only, cut into eight short pieces

For asparagus skewers:

• 4 thin bacon rashers, pre-cooked for a few minutes and cut in half
• 8 5-cm lengths of asparagus

Thread 5 morsels on the chicken skewers starting with chicken, then leek or onion, then chicken, then leek or onion and ending with chicken. Thread two asparagus bundles wrapped in bacon per skewer. Arrange skewers on foil on a baking sheet, and fold the edge of the foil over the bare ends of the wooden skewers to keep them from blackening.

Cook in a hot oven (I did it under the broiler) for about 15 minutes, turning and marinating from time to time with a commercial teriyaki sauce. Serve with rice.

A Mediterranean Menu in February

Without further ado, here's the scoop on my first dinner party in a long long time. Some friends and I get together every so often and this time it was my turn to entertain. It was mid-February and pretty cold and snowy, so to warm things up I cooked a bunch of Moroccan and Mediterranean dishes. On the menu: baba ganoush, hummus, bread and pita triangles to start; Moroccan chicken and a Tuscan green bean salad as the main; and maple-poached pears for dessert.

I made this baba ganoush using a delicious recipe of my boyfriend's mother, and it goes like this:



Baba Ganoush

1 large eggplant
2 teaspoons tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic, minced
salt
EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)

Peel the eggplant and quarter it. Salt the quarters and let them sit for an hour until the water comes out. Rinse the quarters. Slice thinly and lay in one layer on a baking sheet. Brush with EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) and bake in oven for half an hour at 375 F (or you could microwave for about five minutes). Mash with a fork and serve on a plate (more authentic) with olive oil drizzled on top and toasted nuts and chopped parsely.

This next picture is of the moroccan chicken with tomatoes and saffron-honey jam, a recipe I found on Chubby Hubby's website, originally published in Diana Henry's Crazy Water Pickled Lemons. It goes well with couscous, but I served it with a similar grain called quinoa (pronounced "keenwa") because one of my guests had a wheat allergy:



I served it with a Tuscan green bean salad, from Dana McCauley's Pantry Raid. I use this book a lot because most of the recipes are less than 10 ingredients - and they are all really tasty!

1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
juice of half a lemon
1 garlic clove, minced
2 Tbsp EVOO
1/3 C diced pecorino or asiago cheese
1/2 lb green beans
salt and pepper

Whisk lemon peel with juice, garlic, salt and pepper, EVOO and cheese. Wash, trim and cut green beans in half. Blanch in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking process and keep the bright green colour. Combing with cheese mixture.

The best thing about these recipes is that I made them all in advance! I made the chicken a week in advance and froze it. The baba ganoush and the maple-poached pears I made the night before and the green bean salad I made a couple of hours before my guests came.