Yes, a delicious chicken rubbed in za’atar, stuffed with a lemon and roasted with onion and perfect potatoes cooked in goose fat. So what? I hear you say, nothing special about that. Well, a roast chicken can mean only one thing – AN OVEN!!
Yes, although the full refurb of our new home is still only in the planning stages, the dismal cooking arrangements have moved into the slightly more modern era with the purchase of a very nice, temporary, second-hand oven.
Hurrah, almost normal service will be resumed. If I don’t smoke us out (no extractor) in the meantime…
So, you know how the cobbler’s children historically had no shoes? Well, the property developing, building and renovating couple currently have a crappy kitchen with no oven in their new home. Can you imagine how that makes me feel? It’s a bit weird though as in Spain I often go the whole summer without turning on the oven, but when you don’t have something all you can think about is that one thing. Here’s a quick glimpse of my current cooking arrangements.
I am making do for the moment with a small camping sized electric hob, my now well-loved giant slow cooker and an electric plancha. All I want to do is bake cakes and oven roast meat but it’s not to be, for a while at least.
And just to explain the even more dreadful than usual photos of the finished dish, you can see that I am hardly “blinded by the light” in the kitchen. Boo hoo. But hopefully all this explains why I am posting less recipes than usual!
A perfect dish to get rid of cooking frustrations is a slow cooked pot of lamb shanks. This can be done just as easily in a low oven, reducing the cooking time to 3-4 hours. You will be rewarded for your patience, whichever method you choose!
Ingredients (serves 2 generously)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 lamb shanks
2 onions, sliced
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp harissa paste
400g can chopped tomatoes
500ml chicken or vegetable stock
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses (or black treacle)
4 dried apricots, chopped
Salt and pepper to season
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan (or in an ovenproof dish if you are going to oven cook) and brown the lamb shanks all over, then transfer to your slow cooker (or put onto a plate).
Gently fry the onions and garlic until softened then add the spices and tomato and bring to a simmer. Pour in the stock, add the molasses, apricots and season. When it’s bubbling again pour over the lamb shanks in the slow cooker (or add the lamb shanks to the pot), cover and cook on low for about 10 hours until the meat is tender and falling off the bones.
When you are ready to serve (with mashed potato is a good idea), take the meat out and keep warm, pour the sauce into a pan and reduce on a medium heat until thickened to your liking. Pour over the meat and enjoy!
Any leftover sauce is wonderful served over pasta and easily heated up on your camping stove (but do feel free to use a regular one too)!
(Inspired by a recipe from the BBC Good Food site)
I was thinking of Confit of Duck, as you do, as I had a couple of duck legs planned for dinner. Of course, all the decent recipes wanted really long slow cooking, preferably a day or so in advance. I also didn’t have any duck fat to hand so had to think of an alternative. An “aha” moment came to me, not the Norwegian band from the 1980s you understand, although they did have their charm, but a turning on of a little light deep within the little grey cells. Patatas a lo Pobre, poor man’s potatoes. They are slow cooked in olive oil so there was no reason why the same process couldn’t work for my duck legs.
For those of you who are now digging deep within their own little grey cells to think of an A-ha song, here’s one to hum along to.
Now, back to the cooking.
Ingredients (to serve 2)
2 duck legs, seasoned with salt and pepper
2 very large potatoes peeled and thinly sliced
1 onion thinly sliced
½ a red pepper cut into thin strips
4-6 cloves of garlic (peeled or unpeeled)
About ¼ cup of olive oil and ¼ cup of white wine
Salt and pepper
Heat the oven to low (Gas 3 or about 130 degrees C)
Pour the oil and wine over the potatoes, onions, garlic and peppers, season and mix. Place the potato mix into the bottom of an ovenproof dish then place the seasoned duck legs on top. Cover with foil and put into the oven for about 3 hours.
When the juices of the duck legs runs clear, remove the foil and turn the oven up to the highest setting, remove the foil, drain off any liquid and cook for a further 20 minutes or until the duck legs are browned and the potatoes and peppers start to char.
Leave to stand for 5 minutes before tucking into meltingly tender duck and potatoes. Fight using your fork with your loved one for any crispy bits in the pot.
If you fancy an oriental influenced duck dish, take a look here.
Well, it’s been quiet around the blog for the last week or so. But for good reason. We’re in England with family visiting from Spain and we’ve been having a wonderful time doing family and tourist things, walking our feet off, talking our heads off and eating and drinking far more than is probably necessary…but such fun! As a little reminder of Spain, here’s a Spanish dish which is equally good for an informal meal or a special event, Chicken with Garlic.
Ajo (the “j” is pronounced like the “ch” in the Scottish word Loch) means garlic and ajillo translates as “little garlic” which is ironic as this dish contains plenty of garlic! It’s a simple cooking technique which is used with various meats in Spain and is served as both a main dish and as a tapas (usually with the meat cut into bite sized pieces). Don’t let the simplicity of this dish trick you into believing it doesn’t taste special, it packs a lot of flavour and because it can be prepared ahead and in large quantities, it’s a fantastic dish for entertaining.
To serve 6 people
1 whole chicken cut into joints (or use individual joints)
1 head of garlic, about a third of the cloves peeled and cut into thin slices, the rest left in their paper skins
Olive oil
A glass of fino or white wine
A few sprigs of rosemary (optional)
Seasoning
Season the chicken then fry in a little oil until browned all over. Now add all the garlic, the rosemary and the wine, reduce to a gentle bubble and cover with a lid. Cook for about an hour (turning a couple of times during cooking) until the chicken is cooked through). Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary. Sprinkle with some chopped parsley and serve with plenty of bread to mop up the juices.
For another, more elaborate, chicken dish, why not take a look at my recipe for Pollo en Pepitoria?
Oh my, the rain, the wind. It’s getting us down. But do we complain? Well…yes…we do a little bit if I’m honest. What we also do is draw up plans for building an ark and cook some comfort food. This was last weekend’s Sunday lunch and if this weather continues we may have a repeat performance again tomorrow!
I don’t think I can really claim this to be a recipe, as it just involves chopping, seasoning and putting something in the oven. But if you need inspiration for a family meal, or a meal for 2 with leftovers for another day (or two) then look no further.
This was lunch for a lazy Sunday. The sun finally came out for a few hours, after rain, storm and high winds. It was still blowing a bit of a gale so we headed to a nearby park instead of the beach where the pups could let off steam. We all got thoroughly muddy but returned home with “roses in our cheeks” and “the cobwebs well and truly blown away” (as my grandmother used to say of walks in the sunshiny cold of England). We also returned home to the delicious smell of roasting chicken and a toasty warm kitchen. Perfect!
Ingredients (to serve 4 hungry adults)
1 chicken weighing about 2kg
4 carrots, 2 parsnips, 1 red pepper, 1 yellow pepper, 1 large sweet potato, 2 sticks of celery, half a fennel, a red onion, a white onion – all vegetables peeled and chopped into large chunks
Put all the vegetables and the garlic into a deep oven tray (line it with foil to save having to scrub the pan). Season with salt and pepper and pour over 2 tablespoons of the oil and the glass of wine and mix with your hands.
Sit the chicken on top of the vegetables, massage the rest of the oil into the chicken then season and sprinkle the za’atar over. Rub the seasoning in all over the chicken and put the halved lemons into the chicken cavity.
Cover well with a tent of foil and cook in a medium oven (about 180 degrees C fan or 200 degrees C normal oven) for 2 hours. Uncover about half an hour before you have finished cooking to brown the skin.
Leave to rest for 10 minutes before serving and make sure to spoon all the lovely juices over the meat and vegetables when you eat.
Leftovers (you know how much I love having leftovers) went into sandwiches and a delicious chicken and vegetable soup.
I keep seeing gorgeous duck recipes over at Mad Dog’s blog, and then Rosemary taunted me with this. Then Chgo John started talking about fish talking to him at the fishmonger’s and before I knew it I was having a good chat to a pair of duck legs in the local butcher’s shop. “Go on Chica”, they said “you know it’s been ages since you cooked duck, and now that you have a decent oven and a great extractor fan in your kitchen, there’s no need to fear us”. So of course, they came home with me. I carried them though, I didn’t make them walk. Well, it was pouring with rain.
I had a bowl full of oranges and some lovely little red chilies at home, so I veered off in a slightly Asian direction with this dish. It was simple to pull together and the flavours really complimented the duck. I served them with noodles which I stir fried (after boiling) with garlic, ginger, mushrooms and pak choi with a final splash of soy sauce, a spoonful of hoi sin sauce and a squeeze of orange juice. I think the noodles like this would also make a great soup with some chicken or vegetable broth.
Ingredients (to serve 2)
2 duck legs and thighs
2 small red chilies, finely chopped (deseeded if you prefer)
The grated zest of one orange
A crushed clove of garlic
Coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Rub all the ingredients into the duck legs and roast in a medium oven for about an hour until the skin is crispy and the juices in the thigh run clear. Serve with rice or noodles and sprinkle some chopped spring onion over.
How many ways can you make Chicken Cacciatore? Quite a lot if you go by the recipes that pop up if you do an internet search. I imagine that the most authentic recipes rely on very few ingredients if they were cooked out doors by the hunters over an open fire. But perhaps they were cooked indoors by the hunters’ wives for their return. I imagine that when they went out hunting they were probably tracking wild boar or something that really offered a sporting challenge. I don’t think Chicken Hunting would provide much of an adrenalin rush to the boys out for a day of testosterone, alcohol and guns.
Enough wondering about hunters and authentic recipes, here’s my version which relies mostly on store cupboard ingredients (well, I did have to hunt out my smoked pimentón from the back of the cupboard so I think it counts).
Ingredients to feed 6 hungry hunters
1 large chicken jointed (I jointed mine into 14 pieces – 2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 wings, each breast cut in two, the rest of the carcass into 4 – all with the bone in)
About 2 cups of your favourite homemade tomato sauce or use tinned tomatoes
A tablespoon of tomato purée
3 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
An onion peeled, halved and cut into medium slices
About half a cup of olives
A large glass of red wine
Salt and Pepper
A teaspoon of smoked pimentón or paprika
A red pepper thinly sliced
About 6 rashers of smoked streaky bacon cut into small pieces (or use lardons)
A few sprigs of rosemary
Olive oil for frying
Start by heating a few tablespoons of oil in a large pan and (in batches) brown the chicken pieces and set aside. Add more oil if necessary. In the same pan gently fry the peppers, garlic and onions until soft then add the bacon and fry (on a higher heat) until the bacon starts to crisp.
Add the tomatoes, tomato purée, wine, rosemary, pimentón and seasoning and bring it up to a bubble. Add the wine, olives, chicken and rosemary and cover. Cook gently on the stove top for about an hour or in the oven on low for a couple of hours. Check every so often and if the sauce is starting to dry out, add a splash of water.
When ready to serve, cook for a few minutes on the hob to thicken up the sauce if necessary and serve with mashed potatoes or rice. Tastes even better if made the day before. Any leftovers are wonderful with pasta. And a little glass of that red wine…
Well, there was cooking too, but that doesn’t begin with “B”, although I could have added “Baking”, I suppose.
A recipe coming up soon, but a quick tour of the last 10 days in Bexhill. Oh, there you go, anther “B”.
Meetings with previously unmet, long distant cousins from New Zealand, gave us some happy meals together and a night out in Hastings to celebrate their annual Bonfire Festival (which has nothing to do with Firework Night, or Guy Fawkes Night).
Lots of loud noises, an enormous bonfire, spectacular fireworks and a very good evening with mulled wine.
Walks on the beach with the pups past the very typical seaside beach huts.
Building works continue with wallpaper stripping being my current job.
Time too for a little fun, and also some culture. Last night we went to watch the Moscow Ballet perform Swan Lake at the De La Warr Pavilion. It was Big Man’s first time at the ballet, so I was excited for him to see something spectacular, to have his breath taken away. Alas, it was not to be. A rather lacklustre performance with some seriously out of time ballet.
Some of the swans looked suspiciously duck-like with their thick thighs and broad shoulders and the White Swan and Black Swan were so very different I felt like yelling out to the Prince “Oi Mate, you need to get to Specsavers…she’s The Wrong Bird”.
All the way through I was distracted with thoughts of a very funny sketch by two female comedians French & Saunders and the world famous ballet dancer, Darcey Bussell…or Barcey Dussell as they call her. If you have 15 minutes to spare, pour yourself a glass of wine or make a cup of coffee and have a giggle with me.
And then over the weekend, the forecast of great winds in the south of England. Time to batten down the hatches and prepare. An enormous tree in a neighbour’s garden has been slowly pushing down our back garden wall.
Finally the local council gave permission for it to come down and fortunately the tree surgeons saw how dangerous it was and came round to start work before the “Great Storm” hit.
So, it’s been a busy time for us. We have been cooking up some good food too, and I promise you a lovely recipe of Chicken Cacciatore (sort of) next.
What I am sure of though, is that Ballerinas don’t eat food like this and that Builders like Big Man and Chica (whilst unlikely to ever sport tights with a cod piece or a sticky out tutu) need hearty dishes to see them through the hard work and the gale force winds.
I’m not an expert on poetry, I can’t even claim to get immense pleasure from reading it regularly, but there are some poems that stick in my head. One such poem is “If” by Rudyard Kipling. Different lines from it seem appropriate at different times.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
That seems to be the part that resonates right now, and I wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to you all for your kind words of support and encouragement while Big Man and I deal with the highs of a wonderful year of hard work behind us, and the lows of the ill health of loved ones in the here and now.
However, life really does go on. We live, we laugh, we cry and of course, we cook and eat. Cooking soothes the soul, eating does too. Well, we all knew that didn’t we?! Today I have another beautiful Ottolenghi recipe that is stunningly simple and simply stunning. I followed the recipe almost exactly, which is rare, and I wouldn’t change a thing. When we ate this dish, I found myself thinking what beautiful Arab flavours it contained. As I looked up the recipe again to pull this post together, Yotam Ottolenghi says that he was influenced by a recipe from Claudia Roden’s book, Tamarind and Saffron. Aha, now I need to buy that one too!
Serves 4
1 large (organic, free range if possible) chicken cut into portions
2 onions roughly chopped
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp each of ground ginger and ground cinnamon
A generous pinch of saffron strands (but use turmeric if you don’t have saffron)
Juice of 1 lemon
4 tbsp cold water
2 tsp coarse sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
100g hazelnuts (actually, I did change this, he says unskinned, mine were skinned!)
70g honey
2 tbsp rosewater
In a large bowl mix the chicken pieces with the onions, olive oil, spices, saffron, lemon juice, water, salt and pepper and leave to marinate (from 1 hour to overnight in the fridge)
Heat the oven to 190 degrees (Gas 5). Brown the hazelnuts on an oven tray for 10 mins (I dry fried mine in a pan), cool slightly, roughly chop the nuts and set aside.
Transfer the chicken and marinade to a large tray or oven dish (you want to spread it all out) and bake for about 35 minutes.
Meanwhile mix the honey, nuts and rose water to make a rough paste and spread it over the almost cooked chicken. Return the meat to the oven for about 10 minutes (or until cooked) and it is all golden brown.
This dish looks so beautiful (well, less so in my photo!) and is good even when cold.
I’ve been reluctant to embrace Facebook or Twitter. I did set up a Facebook account but can’t figure out how to link it to my WordPress blog and vice versa. People have suggested I do this to increase readership and subscribers to the blog. But despite this, and ever so quietly, over the last few months, so many lovely new folk have been joining us either Down by the Sea or Up the Mountain. It’s been wonderful to see new comments and to hear new “voices” as well as those of old friends on the blog. So I say, thank you to you all for sticking with me and welcome to all our new friends. And any advice on the Facebook button would be gratefully accepted….
So, back to the food today. It’s been a while since my good friend Mr Ottolenghi made an appearance (at least, recipe wise) in my kitchen. A freezer full of chicken breasts (our least favourite part of the bird and what always seems to be left until last from our chicken despatch sessions) needs to be dealt with. “Flavour, flavour and more flavour”, I say and this easy recipe (which I adapted a little due to lack of ingredients) really did the job.
I have given both my version and Mr O’s version below.
Ingredients (to serve 2)
2 chicken breasts cut into bite sized chunks (he uses a whole chicken, jointed)
1 onion, halved and thinly sliced (2 red onions in original recipe)
2 crushed garlic cloves
About 2 tbsp olive oil (4 tbsp in original recipe)
½ tsp all spice (1 ½ tsp in original recipe)
½ tsp ground cinnamon (1 tsp in original recipe)
1 tbsp sumac (I didn’t have this so put ½ tsp of hot pimentón which is not at all similar but worked well – you could use lemon juice or zest for the lemony flavour of sumac)
Mix the chicken with all the ingredients and leave to marinate for a few hours (which I did) or overnight. Bring to room temperature and cook in a hot oven in a dish which allows you to spread everything out. Mine took about 40 minutes to cook, allow longer for a whole chicken.
In the original recipe, the za’atar is sprinkled over just before cooking and it is served sprinkled with pine nuts fried in butter and chopped parsley.
I served it with rice cooked with pepper and peas and the taste was beautiful, the chicken juicy and very similar in taste to a Spanish “pinchito” or little kebab and the lemon was sweet and caramelised. Definitely a dish to make again!
So in 2016 I turned 50. I was in Italy for my 21st, 30th and 40th. To keep this birthday tradition going I always knew I'd be in Italy for my 50! This blog starts with my 5 week adventure in Puglia but my love affair with Italy continues.....
Chica Andaluza 