DINNER FOR THE EXTENDED FAMILY

The Szlams really enjoy Easter with the CT family, luckily for us! They spent a week with us and a little tradition has started that Dave cooks supper one night, with me as sous chef and voyeur.  Regular readers will laugh, he decided to do chicken!

OK, I'll grant you that it does not look like any chicken I have ever served up, but it really has a lot to do with the presentation.  The tower is make up of:
Sauted and roasted slices of potato.
Sauted and roasted chicken thighs in a lemon and thyme butter.
Garnish is sauted scallions and mushrooms.
The piece de la resistance was the sauce, Pea and spinach and here is the recipe:

Blanche half a bag of baby spinach. Remove to an ice bath and reserve the water.  Once cooled remove the spinach and squeeze out as much water as possible.  saute/sweat a couple of cloves of chopped garlic in a splash of olive oil, then add about 3 inch part of the middle of the scallions. Add the liquid from the spinach and bring to a boil.  Put about half a pound of peas in a blender add the garlic/scallion water til it just covers peas and blend til smooth.  Add the spinach and blend again.  Put into small saucepan to reheat before serving, season to taste and add at least 2 TBSPS of butter.

I did this a couple of weeks later with salmon, it was delicious and looked wonderful of course, the pink fish with the bright green sauce - sadly didn't photograph it - next time!

CHICKEN TAGINE

The current request from Alan is to cook something at the weekend that will keep well for at least one more meal during the week, probably by about Thursday.  Found this in my clippings from NYT and it checked all the boxes, new and interesting for me to try as well as re-heatable! CHICKEN TAGINE WITH EGGPLANT AND OLIVES.  I have not eating Tagine often but always really enjoyed it when I have so pretty keen to try this.
Verdict was pretty good, Alan and I enjoyed, Joseph not so much. I thought the flavours were excellent and I could have done with a bit more juices, might increase the chicken stock next time I do this.
Some notes - I clearly do not have a Tagine, I cooked it in a deep frying pan with a lid and finished it in the oven for the final 40 minutes at 350 degrees.  I will definitely do this again, suppose when Joseph is not home for dinner!

One hundred and one ways to roast a chicken!

Well, that's how it feels sometimes........  Alan would have preferred the regular old roast chicken but I was in the mood for something a little different. Alan bought me a boxed set of the Barefoot Contessa's cookbooks for my birthday, so that is where I am going for inspiration these days.  Came across Indonesian Ginger Chicken, 

Sounded worth a try, and it really was. "MMMM - mmmmmm" was Joseph's comment!  Pretty easy, basically you marinate 4 chicken quarters in honey, soy sauce, garlic and ginger then roast it, still covered in the marinade, first covered with foil then open so it browns.   The marinade becomes a pretty good sauce, I put it through a sieve as I had chopped the ginger rather than grated it, so the pieces were a little big and I thought would be unpleasant.
Probably a good one to marinate 2 chickens and put one in the freezer, maybe next time!

A RIGHT ROYAL DISH!

Have to admit I starting watching at about 5.45 on Friday morning, I thought it was all spectacular - the Brits know how to do this!  Katherine looked stunning, as did her sister and most of the guests.  The only stand outs for me were Eugenie and Beatrice - what were they thinking??? They looked like the ugly step-sisters...  but back to me.  My good friend Julia hosted the wedding party today and we all had to bring an 'appropriate' dish.  I decided on a version of Coronation chicken.  This dish was invented for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and there is some story about there being an ingredient from each Colony at the time.  More important to me is that my first foodie friend, Jock Lawson, used to make this often for parties, but she substituted the chicken with shrimp.  I had her tell me the recipe, must have been about 25 years ago (gulp, can that be true?).  I cannot remember when I made it last, but it did make me smile looking at my very neat handwriting in my first ever recipe book!

• 1 small onion pureed
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 heaped tsp flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 cup Mayonaise (roughly, I did a conversion, start with a bit less and taste!)
• 2 Tbsps curry powder
• 8oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1Tbsp mango chutney pureed (can use apricot jam)
• 2 Tbsps heavy/double cream
• juice of about half a juicy lemon
• tabasco to taste
• 2 pounds of shrimp/prawns or shredded meat from one chicken.

Melt butter over medium heat, soften onion for about 5 mins, do not brown. Add flour & curry powder and cook for few mins more. Add tomatoes, chutney, sugar and season with S & P.  Cook over gentle heat for about half an hour.  Cool then add other ingredients.

I found it did not need any tabasco and I served with some melba toasts and peppery water biscuits which was all fabulous!  Sorry I forgot to take a pic before it was devoured.

YOUR CHICKEN MY CHICKEN!

It has been a stormy weekend!  My good friends were without power and we discovered that we both had a chicken in the fridge, planning to do a Sunday roast chicken.
I was going to do the standard sage and sausage meat stuffing, not sure what Julia was planning with hers.  As we were prepping we (she would say 'I'!) starting talking about my chicken vs your chicken! MINE was a Bell & Evans and HERS was a Stop &Shop, Natures Choice.
Turned a routine Sunday into fun almost dinner party,  relaxed, family style.
Here are the equally delicious chickens, photo does not do them justice, sorry! Let me know if you need 'recipe'.  Few roast veggies to go with, of course!

CHELSEY'S FAVOURITE DISH

MUSTARD CHICKEN ORZO CASSEROLE WITH DILL & CAPERS

Have done this a few times and still like it! Crowd pleaser, thought mainly for girls but the boys go for it too. This time realised too late I did not have enough orzo and so substituted mini penne and actually really liked it - gave a bit more texture and also looked pretty good, I thought. Click on recipe title for recipe.

SUMMER VERSION OF SUNDAY ROAST CHICKEN

Finally some warm weather so we decided to dust off the rotisserie for our weber. Made a rosemary and garlic butter to put under the skin on the breast of the chicken. Julia taught me how to do this, just melt some butter and add whatever chopped herb you would like and some garlic. Then let set in fridge or freezer, depending on how much time you have. You loosen the skin over the breast of the chicken and put pats of the butter all over the breast. I also put a medium, halved onion in the cavity, with some more garlic and rosemary sprigs. Chicken takes just over an hour, but varies of course depending on the weight and heat of your coals. It was pretty good. Oh yes, and Alan has a pretty interesting way of trussing the chicken, but, hey, it works!

WELCOME HOME CHELSEY DINNER!

Always pressure when cooking for the chef, Dave. Self imposed, of course, he is always very complimentary and appreciative. So, time to reach for the tried and tested, a few simple ingredients found in Ligurian Braised Chicken. Cut this out of NY Times Dining In/Out a few years ago and have enjoyed it often. Another advantage was I could pre-cook on Sunday as I was working on Tuesday the day they arrived. It was good, served with SMASHED NEW POTATOES and roasted green and yelllow squash. Not bad, Dave had seconds and the left overs for lunch the next day - clearly it was edible! Dessert was a Pavlova variation that I found in this month's Gourmet, Pavlova with Lemon Curd and Berries. Again, made the meringue and lemon curd on Sunday and put it together very quickly after dinner. It was great, not sure I will do a regular pavlova ever again! Finished the evening with some epoisse, we introduced Dave to this cheese and he is as big a fan as us.

SUNDAY ROAST......

Roast chicken - again - after complaints last week for the different stuffing had to promise to do our 'usual', sausagemeat and sage stuffing for the chicken. Did the usual veg with it. Had one complaint that we are having this too often and one very happy customer. Recipes to follow once I figure out how to do them when they are not links or picutres!

22 March continued - Dinner

Alan bought the chicken on Friday, he does love roast chicken on Sunday! I do too, but we have had the same old with sage & onion stuffing so often lately I decided to do something different.
My sister Dixie ( she calls herself Dee these days but she will always be Dixie to me) had given me a cookbook about 4 years ago. It is Tamasin Day Lewis and to be honest I don't think I have cooked anything from it. Caught my attention a little while ago and I regretted not using it, lots of things look great. Found Roast Chicken with Sweetcorn and ginger stuffing. Can't find a link to the recipe but here's the book its in:
Tamasin's Weekend Food
I thought it was pretty good but had major complaints from Alan & Joseph, just not the same.........
Did roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots and cauliflower cheese, they were appreciated.