Tag Archives: recipe

Chicken Onna Beer Can

Posted on
1

Our Thanksgiving Chook. No turkey for us; we’re having turkey for WinterPaganFestival, and I don’t eat turkey more than once a year.

The Chicken - Front

Recipe in brief:

  1. Dry rub of brown sugar, salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper, random couscousesque spices slathered all over washed and dried chicken.
  2. 12oz can of beer opened, and taste tested. Important, that… More spices added to remaining beer in can (~10 fl oz). Chicken delicately placed onto beer can (as photo shows).
  3. Grill prepared. Ashy charcoal pushed to sides of pit, medium sized foil baking tray placed in middle. Cup of water poured into tray. Chicken with beer can up its bum placed on tray.
  4. Chicken grilled in closed pit for ~80 to 90 min. (A few more chunks of charcoal added at 45 min, lid left open until charcoal flames died down again.)
  5. Chicken and can taken out of pit (taking care not to spill hot beer) and allowed to rest for 10-15 min.
  6. Chicken devoured by wolves.
  7. Carcass devoured by wolves.
  8. Humans devoured by wolves.
  9. Photographer obviously survived.

Subarashi Sukiyaki

Posted on
Reply

Sukiyaki in preparation

I’ve jabbered on about sukiyaki before, so here’s a quick run-down of the “how to”:

  1. Prepare the ingredients. This dish needs to be cooked at the dining table, and it’s best to have everything ready. We buy the beef pre-sliced. The flower-shaped gluten-thingy² needs to be rehydrated (soak briefly, a few min, and squeeze lightly). Slice the negi (spring onion, but a lot bigger than the regular spring onion) and yaki-tofu (broil some firm tofu if you can’t buy pre-grilled tofu), and cut the shirataki (noodle form of konnyaku) into bite-sized pieces. There’s some enokitake under the flower-shaped gluten-thingy too, but looking too bedraggled to be photographed; shiitake works too.  If you can get a hold of shungiku (edible chrysanthemum leaves), all the better since they add a rather “fresh” taste to what is otherwise a pretty heavy dish. I’ve used “chinese/napa cabbage” and it works too; makes it sweeter. One day I’ll try dandelion leaves. Or not.
  2. After setting up the table with a portable gas stove and a sturdy pot (make sure the sake or tea are ready too!), start by frying a few slices of negi in some oil (beef fat if you want an even earlier heart attack) and add a few slices of beef. The aim is to cook just enough for everyone at the table to get a few mouthfuls before everything is over-cooked, so don’t stick the whole shebang in.
  3. And we cook it “Kansai”-style³ just because I’m too lazy to pre-mix a sauce. According to my trusty Japanese Home Cooking manual, 3 tbsp of mirin, 3 tbsp of sugar and 3 tbsp of soya sauce are added to the pan as the beef sizzles away. I shudder at the thought of so much sugar, and only ever add 1 tbsp at most. And maybe a little less soya sauce too. We usually add a dribble of water to compensate for the lower volume of soya sauce.
  4. Before the beef is fully-cooked (ie when it’s still a wee bitty red), add a bit of everything else (green veg last) and let it all simmer away while you…
  5. Fight for the beef! Dip in raw egg if you like.
  6. Repeat ad infinitum. Actually, don’t. You might explode.
¹ I’ve heard of folks slicing frozen steak to get it thin enough. We will explore this when Nijiya is no longer an option.

² I think it’s called “fu”, but don’t quote me on that one. I call it gluten-thingy. It’s not usually flower-shaped. I just bought that on a whim. I think the traditional style is tubular. The cookbook has “wheels” of fu. Or gluten-thingy.

³I will have to ask my Japanese colleagues about whether they really cook it Kanto vs Kansai style. But I know the answer will not be straight-forward. You know, it never is with scientists… We always have to give the objective answer.

Beef Stroggy

Posted on
4

Beef Strogakurimustew

Went a bit mad buying weekday lunch ingredients in the supermarket last week. Cooked pounds of chicken thigh, pounds of carrots, and pounds of ham and beans, leaving behind half a cow in the fridge. The critical question today was not whether I could get the RO1 edited in time, nor whether I’d remember to submit the internal mini grant, but: What to do with 2 lbs of beef that’s been in the fridge for 4 days and getting a wee bit oxidised?

Eh. Beef Stroganoff / Stroganov. Enough to feed a bleeding army.

  • 1.5 – 2 lb beef. I think the cut was round top. No doubt Stroganoff puritans are turning in their graves.
  • Crap loads of muchrooms. Equivalent to 3 times the volume of beef, weight undetermined.
  • 1 mega onion with a green shoot growing out the top. I think that makes it better, no?
  • Flour. Lots of flour. And then another few tablespoons.
  • Butter. A few tablespoons.
  • Mustard powder, Colemans will do.
  • Nutmeg. Do I hear more Stroganoffians turning in said graves?
  • Pepper
  • Stock of some sort. Had fresh ham stock, but decided on the milder chicken bouillon instead. About 2 cups.
  • Milk. About 1 cup.
  1. Sliced the crap loads of mushrooms and chopped onions. Ended up with 2 heaped dinner plates of muchrooms¹. Kept onions separate, natch.
  2. Sliced beef with a little more care. Mainly sliced along the grain, and then into thinner strips also along the grain. Went a bit gaga towards the end and sliced against the grain. Bloody obvious which slices those were when we finally ate.
  3. As was slicing beef, threw slices into gigantic dish with flour liberally sprinkled with mustard powder and grated nutmeg. Only a pinch of nutmeg, mind. Bloody loads of mustard powder though. About 3 tsp in ~half a cup of flour. Could have done with more.
  4. Heated up buckets of oil in large saute pan. Maybe not buckets, but enough to half-submerge the thinnish beef slices. Prob half an inch high.
  5. Over medium-high gas, fried the beef in small batches. SMALL BATCHES CRITICAL. Yes. Well. But took bloody ages, dinnit? Got bored, didn’t I? Fried the last batch crowded. Came out more blah. Very important to note here that I like my beef fried hard and fast. Otherwise the inside turns to stone. Like being stared at by Medussa.
  6. Set fried beef aside. Worked on onion next. In direct contrast to the way I like to cook beef, I sauteed the onions gently. They were babied.
  7. Set onions aside too. Got to work on the mushrooms. Filled surface of pan with mushrooms. Wondered what to do with the other bloody ton. As mushrooms shrank, added more, and more, and more, and more… Note to self: use all 4 burners next time and we’ll eat before midnight.
  8. Gave up on idea of using saute pan. Got soup pot out and unceremoniously dumped the fried onions, mushrooms and beef in there. But rinsed out pan with some stock first to get the lovely juices out.
  9. Made roux in separate pan. 3 tbsp butter, melted. 3 tbsp flour, whisked in. 1 cup milk, whisked in. And from there I sort of lost count of liquid that went it. It could have been 1 cup of stock or 2. My brain was truly starved of glucose by then.
  10. Dumped sloppy roux over beef, mushrooms and onions. It could have been prettier.
  11. Realized that I had to be a little more gentle, or the entire dinner-for-an-army could end up splattered all over the kitchen walls. Turned heat to v v low. Like less than simmer low.
  12. Splooshed some cream on. The whole point of this exercise was to get rid of stuff in the fridge. There was the half-a-cow. Done. There was the entire field of mushrooms. Gone. And then, there was this half pint of cream that we’ve been trying really really hard to get rid of. The surplus from a Christmas chocolate mousse. It’s gone in our tea, coffee, and even in Milo. At least we didn’t have it with our breakfast cereal². And still there’s more. It’s the never-ending half pint of cream. Anyway, it’s gone now.
  13. Served up over some gohan. Because we’re Fobby like that.
  14. Went a bit gaga and posted heinous, sacrilegious fake Beef Stroganoff recipe on blog.
  15. Gave up and had Milo. With cream³.
¹ Intended. Sorry.

² Someone I knew used to have Crunchy Nut Cornflakes with single cream. Wonder if he’s still alive.

³ There’s another unopened half pint still in the fridge. Best by the 15th. In need of way to use it up without leading to immediate arterial blockage.

French Toast

Posted on
Reply
French Toast

French Toast

An attempt to recreate the French Toast that my Grandma used to make for us when we were little kiddies. I’m pretty sure she didn’t use milk (almost everyone else in my family is lactose-intolerant), and it never took her very long to make. But I can’t remember how she made it at all, except that she used eggs and sugar, and fried it in a pan. And the bread was always white plastic¹ bread. OK, so it probably can’t be called “French” toast, but it’s a close approximation. The spices were added to fit our current tastebuds. I’m pretty sure Grandma didn’t even touch cinnamon in her lifetime. Nutmeg, on the other hand, was well-loved in our family, but eaten as preserved shredded fruit (buah pala²) and never used as a spice (although I’m sure my mother had a jar of nutmeg powder for her annual Christmas fruitcake).

Grandma’s “French” Toast, Test Recipe 1 (to feed 2 hungry peeps):

  • 3 eggs
  • 2 heaped teaspoons icing sugar (powdered sugar in America)
  • Pinch of nutmeg
  • Pinch of cinnamon powder
  • Butter (whatever it takes to line those arteries)
  1. Crack 3 eggs into a large dish. (I used an 8″ square casserole dish.)
  2. Lightly beat eggs with icing sugar and spices. (Note to self: next time, try separating eg, and beat sugar with egg whites first, followed by yolks so it’s not overbeaten.)
  3. Prepare frying pan with a smear of butter (sliver equivalent to less than 1 tsp).
  4. Dip both sides of bread in egg, allowing it to sit for about 30 sec on each side.
  5. Fry eggy bread over a medium heat; about 30-60 seconds per side. Flip when side starts to brown.
  6. Keep fried bread warm in a 350°F (180°C) oven.
  7. Serve with honey or maple syrup or just plain old jam.
  8. Take photo after realising it’d make a half-decent food post, even if it’s just an aide memoir.
  9. Polish the rest off before the man or the dog steal any.
¹ aka Supermarket sliced bread. Plastic because of the way it springs back when you press it.

² Our favourite thing on arrival in Penang would be to acquire the local speciality: nutmeg aka buah pala. My preference was for the sweet shredded pickled nutmeg. This could kick off an entire post reminiscing about the “unusual” and “exotic” food items of my childhood, but let’s leave that for another day.

Ginger biccies

Posted on
1

Ginger biccies

Made some ginger biscuits, recipe courtesy of BBC’s h2g2 pages. Three substitutions: used butter instead of margarine, raw crunchy brown turbinado sugar of forgotten name instead of demerara sugar, and maple syrup instead of golden syrup. Just because those were staple pantry items.

It worked pretty well. I plopped two different sizes of dough on the floured baking sheet since the original recipe called for “walnut”-sized pieces, and I wasn’t sure if they meant the two halves of the walnut interior or the entire walnut in shell. Both worked fine, but I’d improve it next time by squishing all with the back of a spoon. The centres of some of the biscuits weren’t biscuity and resembled soft cookie instead. The edges, however, were perfect ginger snap crispiness, just a minute short of being burnt. Another thing I might do is use molasses instead of maple syrup. And I definitely want to try it without the egg yolk to decrease the moisture content (which may have been increased by my use of turbinado sugar).

I’ll reproduce the recipe here with my modifications later. I just wanted to post something before it became too onerous a task to get it all down. Catch ya later, alligators. And here we go…

Ginger Biscuits
modified from h2g2 recipe

  • 125g butter, softened on “defrost” in microwave for 10 seconds
  • 125g turbinado sugar (sugar in the processing stages)
  • 1 tbsp (15ml) maple syrup
  • 1 egg yolk from a US large egg
  • 180g self-raising flour¹
  • 1 heaped tsp ground ginger

Method

(I pretty much followed the h2g2 protocol, but this is what I actually did)

  1. Pre-heated oven to 350°F / 180°C.
  2. Sprinkled some flour onto 2 baking sheets and smeared them around with my mucky paws. I shook the excess into the bin. Wasteful, no? Incidentally, I like this a whole lot more than greasing the sheets then flouring them. It actually worked this time.
  3. Prepared all the ingredients, taking care to WATCH the butter to prevent accidents like this happening again:

    melted butter 1

  4. Creamed the butter and sugar using my trusty hand-held beater. I have no idea what I did before inheriting this hand-held beater. I have wonderful memories of my mother’s Kenwood Chef/Professional standing mixers, then a almost blank period of painful recollections of hours spent whipping cream and mascarpone for tiramisu as a semi-impoverished, aspirational under- and post-graduate and postdoctorate in Edinburgh. I’m still semi-impoverished, but at least I inherited a hand-held beater from a friend who left the lab.
  5. Added the egg yolk and maple syrup, beating it in well. Saved the egg white for cocktails later because my impressionable mind had read in some fancy foody website that egg white-containing cocktails were da bomb these days. Is it still alright to say “da bomb”? OK, forget I said it.
  6. Mixed the flour and teaspoonful of ginger well, then sifted it into the creamed mix in batches (about 4). After each sifting, folded the flour/ginger mix into the creamed mix. Final product was considerably softer than shortbread, a little softer than American cookie dough, but still firm enough to form tight balls in my mucky paws.
  7. Formed tight balls in my mucky paws. h2g2 recipe suggests walnut-sized balls that will later double in spread. I agree. I tried walnut nut-sized balls, which made cute little biscuits you could serve for a teddy bear picnic, and walnut-with-shell-on-sized balls, which were far more satisfying in my grabby paws with a cuppa tea.
  8. Baked in oven for the suggested initial 12 minutes, after which I added 3 min for the smaller biscuits (total 15 min). The bigger biscuits were left in for 18 min, mainly because I kind of forgot to set the timer again. Their bottoms were a bit on the dark side, but still edible. 2 baking sheets would have been enough, but I split the dough into three because of the following troubleshooting help on the h2g2 page:

I don’t have biscuits! I have one biscuit, and it’s huge…
* You probably underestimated the space that you need to observe between each of the biscuits on the tray.

As he stuck this paws into the biscuit tin, P’s first question was: “Are they crunchy?”

I didn’t hear a word he said for the rest of the night…

¹ I make my own self-raising/rising flour to the tune of: 4 US cups flour, 2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp baking powder (not soda). I sift each ingredient into a plastic container and shake shake shake it all about. Makes life a little bit easier when making mini pancakes.

Almost oatcakes

Posted on
7

One of the things I missed the most on arrival in LA too-many-years-ago-now were oatcakes. Just plain old oatcakes.

[Backstory. Ignore and skip down a page for photo and recipe]

About 5 years ago, in a spurt of healthiness (i.e. I felt like creeaap and decided to do something about it), I caved in and consulted a nutritionist, who spotted a hole in my daily diet: the lack of regular breakfasts. This had been a perennial problem since childhood. There are only so many bowls of cereal and slices of toast I can stomach before the taste buds go into meltdown and my tongue seizes up and refuses to help me swallow any more. Growing up in Asia, there were options for the weekend: char siew bao, dao huey, dao suang, roti pratha, nasi lemak, kaya on plastic bread, dim sum; all usually eaten at our local wet market or kopi diam. These weekend breakfasts made jam on toast bearable for the other 5 days of the week; almost.

As an undergrad, I just never woke up early enough to have any breakfasts, and pretty much survived through lectures on water until that mid-morning pint. Ha! Only kidding; almost. As a post-grad, I lived on mid-morning ramen. The kind you stick in a bowl and pour hot water over. ‘Nuff said; I don’t eat that anymore; almost. And, more recently, as a post-doc, I’ve had a slightly more stable life with very slightly more regular hours (as in I get home before midnight almost 300-and-something days of the year), and hence have lost the ability to survive on one or two meals a day.

Oat porridge was what the nutritionist recommended. (Yes, the nostalgia tangent is finished with for now.) And failing porridge, at least 3 oatcakes, preferably slathered with some nut butter. Nairns and Patersons sales shot up that weekend. And we became regular customers of the cut-oats stall at Edinburgh’s twa-weekly Farmers Market. Nut butters since tried have included cashew (meh), hazelnut (not as good as Nutella), almond (ok, but not quite right) and peanut (it’s always the one worst for you that tastes the best). But I could eat oatcakes plain.

So, it was a bit of a shock to the system to find that oatcakes were not stocked in every corner shop, delicatessen and supermarket in LA. They’re endemic not just in Scotland; my parents find them with no problem in Singapore. The only places within walking distance or on a bus route that stocked Walkers oatcakes were Cost Plus World Market (one on Westwood Blvd) and Monsieur Marcel at the Third and Fairfax Farmers Market. Imagine going to a French store to buy Scottish oatcakes! At $6+ a box! Oh, the horror! Of course, now you can get blahdy Nairns oatcakes in Whole Foods, but that was nae use when I was going through cold turkey, now was it?

Anythehoo, the whole point of this blether was to announce that I’ve finally tried out a recipe for an oatcake-ish end-product that I can live with and not be constantly out of pocket to keep my stomach happy in the morning. It’s a classic back-of-packet recipe, off Arrowhead Mill’s Oat Flour. They’ve gone and called it a cheese bannock, which jars with my preconception of Selkirk bannocks, which are kind of like a giant fruit-but-unhealthy big bun thing from the Borders. Failing some misinterpretation of the recipe, I reckon the final product comes out more like cheesy oatcakes, or at least, the commercial oatcakes. Almost.

[/backstory. Sorry about the delay...]

Cheesy Almost-Oatcakes

Cheesy Oatcakes

Recipe (uses US cups)

  • 1 cup quick-cooking oats
  • 1 cup quick-cooking oats
  • 1 cup oat flour
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1/4 tsp mustard powder (substituted with paprika and cayenne in this instance ‘cos P threw out the ancient handed-down-through-2-postdocs Coleman’s mustard powder)
  • 1/4 cup (equivalent of 4 tbsp) softened butter
  • 1 cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese (used Parmesan cheese in this instance ‘cos that’s all the fridge yielded)
  • 1/2 cup warm water
  1. Preheat oven to 200ºC (400ºF).
  2. Mix the oats, flour, salt and spices well.
  3. Then cut in the softened butter (I cheat and microwave it on defrost for 10-20 seconds) using a fork or a pastry cutter if your kitchen drawers are well-equipped1.
  4. Stir in the cheese. Add 1/2 cup warm water and mix, kneading when the dough gets stiff2.
  5. Divide the dough in two and roll each half into circles that are 1/4 inch thick.
  6. Transfer to a lightly greased baking tray. Cut each circle into 4 wedges (made 8 in one which gave a more manageable farl to handle).
  7. Bake for 20min at 200ºC (400ºF).
  8. Hide from oatcake thief. If you don’t, as soon as the oatcakes are cool enough to handle, they’ll disappear off the tray, never to be seen again. I pounced and got a photo of the 3 remaining farls out of 8 (above) just in time. Just wait till I find that oatcake thief… It’ll be the spatula for him/her…


1 There’s innuendo there for anyone who wants to see it.

2 See 1.

Lamb and beans stew for the lazy

Posted on
4

Lamb stew and cranberry basmati

Lamb stew is possibly the only thing we can get away with when we have chunks of lamb in the freezer. Fortunately, it’s one of those easy dishes you can put on while you get on with the weekly chores of hoovering and the damn laundry. And doubly fortunately, it’s a very forgivable dish: you can throw anything you’ve got in the store cupboard in without too much guilt about not spending hours washing, blanching, cutting, prepping. The only prep step involved is remembering to get the lamb out of the freezer the night before. Left in the fridge, it defrosts better than in the microwave, where it tends to get cooked instead.

Brown the cubes of defrosted lamb over a high heat in some olive oil (or whatever oil you like; low sat fat is our preferred frying agent). Throw on a generous pinch of lamb-friendly spices when the lamb is browned all over. The North African/Middle Eastern baharat1 blends are always good for lamb stew (thanks to Phoenicia in Embra’s George Sq for that lesson), but since I’ve used up my home-made NA/ME baharat, I made do with some garam masala, which is almost the same thing except to purists I suspect. At any rate, whatever spice you want to use, it’s usually best to dry-fry it first to give it a slightly charred flavour like you’ve been slaving over a charcoal stove all day, or to release the aromas as most cooks would say. To be honest, I do it because it makes my flat smell good. And makes my neighbours think I’m a genius cook.

This is where the recipe gets a bit complicated. First, open the doors to your cupboard filled with dry goods and canned food that will last a nuclear blast. If it’s empty, resign yourself to fried spiced lamb. If you’re as crazy as I am, there’ll be countless cans and tetrapacks of a variety of tomatoes and beans in there. Depending on how lazy you’re feeling, get out the tin of plum tomatoes and chop them, or just snip open the pack of Parmalat chopped tomatoes, bought just for such occasions. Apply to lamb in oven-proof dish. When that’s done, open your choice of canned pre-cooked beans (haricot in this instance). Chickpeas (USA=garbanzo), haricot (USA=navy), cannellini, flageolet and borlotti are my faves for meat stews. Rinse and apply drained product to lamb.

If you’re all organised, you’ll have turned the oven on when you started browning the lamb. If we’d started this in the late afternoon instead of traipsing miles with the dog to get her monthly $100-worth of food and treats, we’d have stuck the oven on at 150ºC and left the lamb in there for ~3 hours. Being late, the lamb went in for 30 min at 180ºC (350ºF) just the get the whole thing hot and bubbly, and was later turned down to 150ºC (300ºF) for a further hour. Since the chores took longer, the lamb stew sat longer too: ~2 hours, and was probably better for it.

If we had potatoes, I’d have thrown some in for a one-pot meal. But they don’t keep so well here, so we keep rice, noods and pasta as the starchy standbys instead. Basmati rice was chosen to make fake “polo” with dried cranberries. These delightful cranberries were Trader Joe’s version infused with orange, which really helps to achieve that fruity polo effect.

And as you can see, I licked the plate clean:

Licked clean

The Wine2

Dithering about which wine to have, we eventually settled on the 2005 Paso Robles Barbera3 from Eberle. I say “we” because there was a bit of “discussion” as to which of our too-many wines would go well with the stew. It’s easier when you only have one red and one white in the house. At any rate, we were doubtful that the P.Noir (silly name) would live up to the strong lambiness of the stew, a Sangiovese would be too soon after its outing earlier this week, and the Zinfandels we had would be too spicy. A mildly-spicy Barbera would be able to hold its own against the tomato and lamb. Ah, there we were wrong,. The Barbera out-competed the lamb stew. It was, perhaps, too young, high in alcohol and left a very strong sensation of pepper in the mouth. We’d spiced the stew quite delicately and chosen an overly-spicy wine. Ah well. No matter. The Barbera was saved for after dinner, where it paired brilliantly with a square of Chocolate Negro con Avellana (61% cacao) by Valrhona. The cherriness of the wine was brought out much better after the cocoa fats took some room up on the tongue. Nice one.


1 As far as I can tell, bahar=spice. So it’s a bit of a tautology to say baharat spice.
2 I think it’s about time I start writing down which wines work with what food. Over the years, we’ve had fantastic wines that could have been great with food other than what we drank it with. And the converse. Problem is: we’re forgetful. It has to be stonkingly brilliant, like a Margaux with roast duck, to make it memorable.
3 55% Steinbek Vineyard, 45% Christian-Lazo Vineyard. Isn’t it cute how they put down which vineyard the grapes came from. I almost feel like I should have a mini-pilgrimage to each vineyard from which wines I have loved were birthed…

Chicken pie

Posted on
Reply

Pie innards

A brief hiatus in food blogging due to work getting in the way. I have eaten loads in the intervening period, but not much of note. Taking a few days off while my parents are in LA means that we finally have some time on our hands to cook. The chicken pie above was a result of directions from my parents, who make this on a regular basis.

It’s one that’s ideal for folk with little free time, using a few modern conveniences like concentrated soup, frozen mixed veg and pre-made puff pastry. Despite that, it’s quite tasty, and all the convenience food products can be substituted with homemade hard work.

Simply get yourself some chicken (free range and preferably organic too), cut into bite-size pieces and fry in some oil (olive oil is all we have right now and works fine). While the chicken is browning, dice yourself some onions and potatoes. Add those to the chicken when it’s golden brown, and stir in a few handfuls of frozen mixed veg (usually sweetcorn, peas, carrots, but sometimes with green beans and broad beans too). If being lazy, you should have gotten the premade, even pre-rolled, pasty out of the freezer much earlier so it doesn’t crack when unrolled. Line a pie tin with one sheet, trim the excess (save it to make cheesy twists) and pile on the chicken mix. Cover with the other sheet, brush with a beaten egg, and snip a few pretty holes to allow venting. Bake in a hot oven (190degC) for 45 minutes (or until the innards are hot and the pastry is golden brown). Serve piping hot, remembering to take a few snaps before it’s devoured by hungry people wondering why you didn’t just serve up the cooked chicken mix in the first place.

chickpeas in pitta bread

Posted on
Reply

Another photo-less post. Ach well. I couldn’t be bothered to get all the gear together to shoot a mere chickpea sandwich. (Gear consisting of 1. a small camera, and 2. the light switch.)

So, again, take my word for it: [image]ugly and poorly lit[/image].

Rinsed out some dried chickpeas on Sunday night and left them to soak overnight in the fridge. Boiled said soaked chickpeas for an hour on Monday night after getting home 2 hours after dinnertime (P’s fault this time, not mine… yay! oh, at work late. not yay. boo…). Drained off all the liquid before I realised that I normally save two ladles-worth in a bowl. Duh. Put that down to tiredness (or brainlessness). To save us from having to wash too many pans, used the same pan to saute some onions and a smidgen of garlic. Added some curry powder (again, lazy. otherwise would have heated some coriander and cumin seeds, and blitzed them with some ground turmeric and grated ginger) and dry fried for a couple of minutes until the whole place smelled nice. (Who needs Glade when you have curry?) Added some tomato paste (again, lazy. should have added some chopped plum tomatoes or something. Really. It makes a huge difference to taste and texture. But. Lazy.) and chickpeas. Should have added the reserved chickpea cooking liquid at this point, but brainless git here forgot to save some. So added some plain ol water instead. I tell you, it makes a difference. Simmered for another 30 minutes.

And finally, tonight, crisped up some frozen pitta bread and served it with warmed through spicy chickpeas. Not as good as previous versions of my spicy chickpeas. Think I’m losing my touch. Keep blaming the poky and not very well laid out kitchen, but suspect it’s because I’ve lost the will to live cook. Can one get S.A.D. in LA even though the weather is a million times better than in Scotland right now? Or am I carrying some residual SADness from many Northern winters? All the same, the chickpeas were not the same, and that made me quite sad.

chicken in lemon and milk

Posted on
Reply

No photos today. It’s strange how on some days we’re just trigger-happy, and on others the camera doesn’t even come out of its case. So you’ll just have to take my word for how good today’s chicken in milk was. Originally a Jamie recipe, modified (i.e. made easy for lazy people) by us.

Brown your chicken in a deep pan. Drain off the excess fat. Cut a lemon in two give it a wee squeeze before throwing in the whole thing anyway. Pour in about a (British) pint of milk (that’s just over 586ml in metric, but I usually just pour until I remember to stop, so I’ve never any idea just how much I’ve used). Throw in several cloves of garlic (we always start with three, but end up adding five or more. Needless to say, our breath honks after.) Stick in the oven at 190C for around 45 min. (There are rules of thumbs for gauging how long to cook a chicken by weight. If I’m being particular, I check them out and follow them. Otherwise, I guess. This was no spring chicken, but no gargantuan either, so 45 minutes seemed sufficient.) In the meantime, faff around and forget to prepare anything to go with the chicken. Remember at around the 45 minute mark, and grab some angel hair pasta from the store cupboard. Take the chicken out while the pasta is cooking. Let it rest. It’s a bit exhausted from being in the heat, you know. Don’t bin the curdled milk in the pan: reduce it! (um, technical term for boiling some of it away until it’s a bit thicker) Shred some of the tender breast into the pasta or noodles, pour over the reduced curdled milky jus, tuck the napkin in and attack with a fork. If being posh, don’t bother with all that and serve carved pieces of chicken with some mashed tatties and roasted veggies (yeah right, like we ever plan in advance and have everything in). Bitch about how significant other never takes photos of your cooking even though you’ve been slaving away over a hot TV watching Stargate. Blog about how crap you are at documenting your cooking.

Technorati tag: .