Bitter Chicken

You need to be in a certain type of mood to eat this. If you're not, add a teaspoon of brown sugar and half a cup of water to the sauce halfway through cooking time.

Bitter Chicken

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

3 chicken breasts

3 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup raisins

1/2 cup dried blueberries

500ml dry red wine

Seasoning

Chicken Saltimbocca

I was going to post a picture of my inspiration for this dish - which would have been a copy of Niki Segnit's The Flavour Thesaurus propped next to a flourishing sage plant - but I am completing the miraculous feat of posting a recipe the very night I cooked it, and it is too dark to take that particular photo right now. Saltimbocca is an Italian cooking style which uses pancetta and sage and sometimes lemon on a fillet of something (veal, plaice... or boring chicken). Most recipes require cocktail sticks to hold everything together, but I just swapped the placement of some ingredients round because I didn't like the idea of cooking or eating around a piece of wood. I also added a lot more sage than is typically called for, and am very happy I did so. I'm not sure how you would really taste one sage leaf per person.

But never mind, because here's a very simple and quick recipe which looks fancy just because of all the little sage leaves in it. Made with fresh herbs from my own balcony 'garden'!

Chicken Saltimbocca

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 chicken breasts

10 sage leaves

4 slices bacon

1 tablespoon flour

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 cup white wine

1/2 cup cream

Seasoning

Orange-Scented Chilli

Despite my only blogged recipe for chilli con carne, I am a firm believer in sweet potato in chilli. I hinted recently at a vegetarian version with sweet potato, but even the meaty ones should have some. Unfortunately, I didn't have any sweet potato when I decided to recreate this amazing recipe for orange-scented chilli so turned it into a meat-lover's fest. The orange truly does wonderful, wonderful things to it. Also, Tom had the leftovers on toast with a hard-boiled egg (of all things) the next day, and that was pretty spectacular too.

Orange-Scented Chilli

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

1 tablespoon oil

1/2 onion

1 clove garlic

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon chilli powder, plus more to taste

250g mince

1/2 cup red wine

2 cups tomato sauce

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 tin kidney beans

Juice and peel of 1 orange

Seasoning

Dinner in White

On Friday night, I threw as many tasty things as I could find into a roasting dish, put it in the oven, and served it with rice. It wasn't until I got to the picture-taking stage that I realized that everything was white. Chicken, mushrooms, onions, garlic, cream... oh well. It was nonetheless tasty. If blinding. I would have to add something else just for the colour if I were to do it again - and do it again I may, because this was a damn easy Friday night dinner.

Dinner in White

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

10 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon oil

3 chicken breasts

1 tablespoon seasoned flour

1 handful enokitake mushrooms

1/2 onion

1 teaspoon mixed herbs

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 cup cream

Seasoning

Balsamic Orange Chicken

Wow, this meal was easy to make. No chopping required - it's ready in the amount of time it takes to boil some rice. I made it because my co-teacher gave me seven or eight oranges, and because BBC Good Food suggested this.

I was surprised by how tender the chicken was, despite the comments on the recipe - I often cook chicken like this, by frying it before building a sauce around it and poaching it, but this meal really did make for very tender chicken.

Balsamic Orange Chicken

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

2 servings rice

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 large oranges

100ml chicken stock

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon butter

Seasoning

Strawberry Mustard Chicken with Roasted Cauliflower

I've joined another food-blog website, called Tasty Kitchen and headed by the indomitable Pioneer Woman. Browsing through the recipes, I found a raspberry dijon chicken, which sounded fascinating - but not quite right for me as it is. For one thing, it's not difficult enough. And I don't have a barbeque. And it doesn't have a sauce! What's wrong with the world? I had to fix this.

And so I thought for a day or so, and came up with: strawberry (I don't have raspberry jam) mustard chicken, roasted in the oven with cauliflower, with a red wine gravy made from the juices. The strawberry/mustard glaze risked being far too sweet, particularly as I originally conceived this dish as a summery take on shepherd's pie (which I may still do later in the year), so I needed something slightly bitter to balance everything out. And thank god for that cauliflower in the freezer. I enjoyed cooking this, though my camera battery died when I went to take a picture of the glazed chicken breasts nestled in a bed of blanched cauliflower pre-roasting, so there's no proof of how easy it was. Sorry!

I served ours with rice, and it was delicious. Tom wasn't a huge fan of roasting cauliflower, as he felt that it spoiled the usually-crunchy texture of the vegetable too much. If you dried the florets thoroughly after blanching, and roasted them in a pan on their own with more oil, they might have gone crispy to make up for this huge disappointment - but that's too much work for a 10pm meal. I, on the other hand, thought it was delicious. I love cauliflower even though I find it a hint too bitter sometimes, but the roasting seemed to draw out the flavour rather than the metallic sourness of the vegetable. It still balanced the possibly-too-sugary fruitiness wonderfully, but without making anyone wince.

Regarding substitutions: obviously I've not tried any myself, having only cooked the original dish about fourteen hours ago, but I can imagine that different meats would react differently to the glaze. Chicken breasts just soak up flavour rather than adding any of their own, so it was a good one to start out with. Chicken thigh might not be as forgiving. Beef would be superb with this, at least in my mind - you wouldn't have to add the cauliflower because of the beef's own bitterness, and the red wine gravy would do wonders for it as well. Also, I can imagine a stupendous vegetarian version, or simply glazing the cauliflower and calling it a side dish. Let me know if you try anything different!

Funnily enough, this meal is really quite easy. And it sounds impressive! Cook it now - with or without chicken.

Strawberry Mustard Chicken with Roasted Cauliflower
(Printable Recipe)

Serves 2

Half a head of cauliflower

3 chicken breasts

1 tablespoon jam (mine was strawberry)

1 tablespoon mustard

(basically you want 1 teaspoon of each per breast)

1/2 tablespoon oil

1 tablespoon gravy powder

1 cup red wine

1 pinch each chilli powder and cinnamon

1 teaspoon parsley

Seasoning

Break the cauliflower into small florets and put in a pan of boiling water on a high heat for five minutes. In the meantime, mix jam, mustard and oil in a bowl and add seasoning. Cover each chicken breast in the glaze, place in an oven-proof tray large enough to hold the chicken and cauliflower, and drizzle any left over on top.

Drain the cauliflower and nestle around the chicken. Cover liberally with oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for thirty minutes. In the meantime, prepare your side dish (I just put rice on to boil and went back to the very important business of sitting around doing nothing.)

When the chicken, cauliflower and rice are cooked, serve and keep warm. Put the roasting tray on the hob on a low heat and stir to loosen all the sticky bits. Sprinkle one tablespoon of gravy powder into the pan and stir, followed by a cup of red wine. Add small pinches of chilli and cinnamon, one tablespoon of parsley, and stir until slightly thickened and hot. There isn't too much of the sauce but it is very flavoursome - you don't need much. Pour over the chicken and some of the rice, and eat.

Apple Mustard Risotto

Risotto has been one of my favourite lunches for a long time - it was one of the first meals I posted, not that I strictly wrote recipes back then. It's the sign of someone who doesn't have to go to work until after 2pm. If I ever have a real job, I'll miss lunch risottos.

So yesterday I made an apple and mustard risotto, after trawling through a bunch of links and somehow finding my way to Cookie & Kate's apple cheddar quesadilla. Oh, I miss cheese. Anyway, more things happened and I ended up using apple in a risotto. (I also used apple in a peanut sauce for dinner, which was also delicious, but there are no pictures of that meal - partly because Tom burnt his contribution - so it's like it never existed!)

 Apple Mustard Risotto

(Printable Recipe)
Serves 1

1/2 an onion

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 an apple

1/2 a glass white wine
1 cup rice

400ml stock (roughly)

1 tablespoon mustard

Seasoning

Chop your onion and apple, and fry in butter until softened. Add the rice to the pan and stir to coat the rice in the butter - it should go translucent. Pour the white wine in and allow the mixture to simmer for a few moments.

A very liquidy pan.

Add stock to the pan little by little, waiting until the rice has absorbed the liquid before adding the next 100ml or so. Stir as regularly as possible. Usually I just dump all the stock in in one go because I have better things to do with my life, but you do run the risk of oversaturating the rice that way.

The rice has absorbed more of the stock.

Towards the end of the cooking time, add the mustard - it should need about five minutes in the pan to heat through and allow the rice to absorb some of the flavour without being totally overwhelmed by it.

Season the risotto, and taste - after twenty-five minutes it should be nicely edible. Serve.

Throw some extra apple chunks on to garnish.

Chicken in Bell Pepper Sauce

I have been reading The Flavour Thesaurus avidly. That pre-Christmas cooking rut has been well and truly bashed to death by Niki Segnit's amazing, amazing "flavour compendium." It's laid out in an accessible way, the entries are short and mostly very interesting to read, and it's really easy to get into the spirit of things: if Segnit misses out a pairing (for example, the garlic chapter doesn't talk about garlic and bacon), you notice it and start thinking about the possibilities, and perhaps match it up with another flavour that was mentioned in either the garlic or bacon chapters. I'm enjoying reading this book. It's fun.

Anyway - I hope this doesn't sound like an advertisement. It's just a very enthusiastic review of a gratefully-received Christmas present.

So, under "chicken and bell pepper" Segnit claims that with just those two ingredients you can create a fabulous and complex main dish. I had to try it. True enough, the food was pretty wonderful. If you have more time, I would cook the chicken and pepper for longer, because after the half an hour I gave it the pepper chunks were mushy but just about holding their shape.

Also I suggest maybe adding more liquid if you want sauce more than something that resembles chunky salsa - a tiny bit of stock, perhaps, or even fruit juice. Next time I might add some slices of apple to the pan because apple releases juice at an almost terrifying rate. Although the meal takes a while, it is so easy. I recommend below eating it with rice drizzled with soy sauce, though, because the dish does require a bit of extra saltiness.

Chicken in Bell Pepper Sauce

(Printable Recipe)
Serves 2

3 chicken breasts

4 red, yellow or orange bell peppers

Seasoning

Deseed the peppers and chop into generous chunks. Put the pepper and chicken into a pan over a medium heat and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

After 10 minutes cooking.

The peppers will begin releasing some liquid - when you see this juice, cover the pan with a lid or foil, and keep on a medium-low heat for at least twenty minutes. I imagine you could keep going for forty minutes, but remember to stir every so often so the chicken doesn't stick or burn. Season.

Serve with rice drizzled with soy sauce.

Dinner time!

Sweet Potato Peanut Stew

My first recipe of the day (yes, there is another to come) began life at Everybody Likes Sandwiches. It's called a "West African Groundnut Stew," but I hesitate to label it that way - I'm British, I got the recipe from a Canadian website, I'm making it with Korean ingredients, and added my own twist based on information found in The Flavour Thesaurus - adding pomegranate juice in homage to Iranian cuisine. My adaptations have, I'm sure, made the dish veer off wildly from its original incarnation, so I would personally feel uncomfortable giving it any label other than 'mine.' Sorry, West Africa.

One thing that's been bothering me for a while is whether it's spelt turmeric or tumeric. According to The Internet, both are valid. So that's that then.

Anyway! The meal was delicious, and took a surprisingly short time to make - from start (peeling potatoes) to end (serving up) took just under an hour of my life. I never thought I'd find a stew that would be suitable to make after work, given that I get home at 9:30 (not that that stopped me from trying, yesterday. Let Tom starve while I create culinary masterpieces!).

Also, a quick word of warning: if you don't have a blender, or the patience to smash two handfuls of peanuts into tiny little bits with your own (no doubt formidable) strength, you may want to skip this recipe. Or just add another spoonful of peanut butter at the ground peanuts stage, or even just not bother grinding the peanuts at all and adding them whole.

Sweet Potato Peanut Stew

(Printable Recipe)
Serves 4

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 green chilli

4 large sweet potatoes

2 chicken breasts

2 handfuls of peanuts

100ml pomegranate squash (or other concentrated fruit juice)

500ml chicken stock

2 tablespoons tomato puree

1 tablespoon turmeric

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ssamjang

Chilli powder

1 head broccoli

1 tablespoon lime juice

2 tablespoons peanut butter

Seasoning

Chop the onion and garlic and put in a cold pan with some oil, to allow the flavours to heat up together. Peel the potatoes and chop both the potatoes and chicken into similarly-sized chunks. Add to the pan. Whizz the peanuts in a food processor to reduce most of them to a fine dust (or see my note, above) and add this to the pan as well. Stir through for a few moments, so that most of the chicken is browned, and add the pomegranate syrup. Allow the mixture to bubble for another couple of minutes before adding 500ml boiling water mixed with stock. (I used six chicken stock ice-cubes) Mix in the tomato puree, turmeric and cinnamon, and leave the mixture on a medium heat for twenty minutes or so.

Simmering stew.

Then add chilli powder and ssamjang to taste, along with the head of broccoli, broken into small florets. Cook for fifteen minutes, then add the lime juice and peanut butter. The stew should be fairly dry by now, so turn the heat down and let it sit for a moment to incorporate the extra peanut and lime. Stir again and serve - I served ours with rice.

Chilli con Carne

Before Tom left for work yesterday, he issued me a challenge. He stepped out of the flat, ready to leave, and said "I fancy... chilli con carne for dinner," closed the door, and left. He knew full well that we had no rice and, more importantly, no mince. I immediately knew that I had to win, and that to do so I would make the best chilli con carne ever. Admittedly it does sound like Tom would be the winner in that case, particularly as I've never liked chilli con carne, but I also resolved to make it in the messiest way possible. Tom is the one who washes the dishes. I ended up going shopping after work.

Luckily, my chilli was so good that even I really enjoyed it - although to be fair, my tastes have developed since I last tried it, and that was only from a tin anyway. My plan was to make the chilli with biscuits, but Tom arrived home before I'd made the dough and confessed that he'd prefer rice anyway. I did make sour cream from scratch (he was very pleased), and we ate the meal in wraps. There's a lot left - enough for another night's dinner.

Chilli Con Carne with Sour Cream
Makes 4 large servings

1 onion
4 small garlic cloves
1 large carrot
3 small packs of mince (probably about 400g)
1 tablespoon gravy powder
1/2 cup chilli powder
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 tablespoon ssamjang
1 large tin of passata
1/2 large tin's worth of red wine
2 squares of dark chocolate
1 green bell pepper
1 normal-sized tin of red kidney beans
Seasoning

4 tablespoons cream cheese
1 tablespoon lemon vinegar
2 tablespoons milk

Peel and dice the onion, garlic and carrot, and fry lightly in a large pan until softened. Add the mince, with gravy powder to darken it, and cook, stirring to break up clumps, until brown (about ten minutes). Add the chilli powder, curry powder, ssamjang and passata and stir. Pour red wine into the passata tin, enough to about half-fill it, and swish it around to collect all of the leftover tomato, and pour that into the pan too. Allow to simmer for fifteen minutes; add the dark chocolate and kidney beans, cover, and simmer for a further ten.

Meanwhile, mix the cream cheese, lemon vinegar and milk in a blender until smooth, which should only take about ten seconds. Boil rice if you are serving with rice.

The chilli should have reduced and be fairly thick by this point. Add the bell pepper and give the pan five more minutes before serving, with rice and/or biscuits and/or wraps and/or sour cream.

Tortillas Galore

Two vegetarian recipes - one good, one mind-blowingly brilliant - for lunch and dinner. Both are extremely easy and can generally be made with what's on hand. The pizza was my idea, although no doubt it's been done before, and the pie came from this recipe. I had planned on using two or three tortillas in the pie, but in the end we only had one left, and it worked well anyway. It's so filling that it's almost shocking that this is vegetarian!

I've used this post as an excuse to add a 'potentially vegetarian' label to all posts that are, or could easily be (by skipping on the meat rather than replacing it), vegetarian.

Tortilla Pizza
Serves 1

1 tortilla wrap
1 tablespoon tomato sauce/passata
1 tablespoon garlic sauce (or minced garlic, or just leave this out)
Handful of grated cheese
Handful of chopped onion
1 tablespoon cream cheese

Use the back of a spoon to spread the tomato and garlic sauces lightly over the (flat) tortilla, leaving a slight margin at the edges. Top with the grated cheese and chopped onion. Blob (yes, blob) bits of cream cheese over the pizza and put in an oven at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) for 5-10 minutes, depending on how crispy you want the 'crust.'


Tortilla Pie
Serves 2

1 1/2 cups rice
1 onion
1 green chilli
1 cup tomato sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon ssamjang
1 tin red kidney beans
1 green pepper
1 broccoli stalk
Seasoning
1 tortilla wrap
Grated cheese
Cream cheese

I put the rice on to boil while I chopped the onion and chilli. Fried those for a few minutes before adding tomato sauce, sugar, chilli and curry powders, and ssamjang to make a salsa. Allowed to simmer for a few minutes before adding the kidney beans, chopped pepper, and chopped broccoli stalk. Seasoned, and drained the rice. Once heated through, half of the bean mixture went into a deep dish, and was covered with rice. This was covered with grated cheese and several teaspoons of cream cheese. The remaining bean mixture went on top, was covered with the tortilla, and more grated & cream cheeses. Baked for 15 minutes at 180 degrees (360 Fahrenheit) and served.

Chicken with Mustard Sauce

This week, I've been re-doing recipes rather than trying new ones. Unfortunately, the cheap passata we bought was more like ketchup than tomato sauce, so a second attempt at Tunisian chicken was disgusting. Yesterday, I mixed milk and broccoli pesto to retry the amazing pesto chicken, which worked pretty well but wasn't worth creating a whole separate post for. Basically, pesto + creamy sauce = delicious. And easy.

Tonight was a third night of chicken, inspired by (not really adapted from) this recipe at BBC Good Food. We served it with rice, which is bland anyway, but this dish did lack something. I'm not sure what, and it was perfectly pleasant - I could have had more afterwards - but... yes. Not a meal to impress.

The good news, however, is that this is the first time I've successfully made mustard sauce!

Chicken with Mustard Sauce

Serves 2

Handful of chopped onion

2 chicken breasts

1 tbsp flour

2-3 cups milk

2 tsps cream cheese

1 tbsp parsley or other herb(s)

1 splash white wine

3 tsps wholegrain mustard

Seasoning

The onion was fried in hot oil for a few minutes before the chicken was added, to seal on each side. The flour was sprinkled over and stirred through to make a loose roux, and the milk added. The heat was turned up until the milk was on the point of boiling before being lowered again. Cooked through for ten minutes before the cheese, parsley, wine and mustard were added. Stirred and cooked for another ten minutes until the chicken was no longer pink in the middle. Served over rice.

Purple Pasta

This dinner was so exciting - not only was it a fabulous colour, but almost all of the ingredients were alliterative! In the interests of full disclosure, this was pasta with pork, potato, (chilli) pepper, and probably some other p-words that I've forgotten a few hours later.

Despite John suggesting that 'purple pasta' bore some resemblance to vomit, tonight's dinner was really quite good. It started out with my Friday adult students telling me about the lunch they'd had at a Chinese restaurant - noodles with pork, sweet potato, onion and spinach. The day before we had bought purple sweet potatoes at Home Plus, and I was eager to cook with them. I was convinced that we had bought curled mallow (in fact, I still am convinced) but the hunt for it proved fruitless, so the spinach equivalent was missed. It was flavoursome but in an amazingly subtle way, with a kick from the chilli.

I also made myself a fragrant pumpkin risotto for lunch, which was delicious - I added pumpkin chunks between the adding rice and adding wine steps, and cinnamon as one of the spices. Nutmeg or ginger would have gone well too.

Anyway, the proper recipe:

Purple Pasta
Serves 2 with small second servings (more alliteration! I'm so happy)

200g pork, chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 purple sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes
1 onion
1.5 garlic cloves (one of the cloves was smaller than my littlest fingernail)
2 servings spaghetti
400ml hot vegetable stock
Honey
Soy sauce
1 green chilli
100ml cream
Seasoning (including chilli powder)

The pork, potatoes, onion and garlic were chopped and fried in a hot pan for five minutes. The vegetable stock was added and the pan was brought to a boil before being put on a low heat to simmer. The spaghetti was also put on a low heat in a separate pan for fifteen minutes. The potatoes had turned the pale stock a pretty burgundy colour, to which roughly a tablespoon each of honey and soy sauce was added, along with the chopped green chilli. The nearly-cooked pasta was drained and added to the pork pan, along with the cream and seasoning, and heated through (about five minutes). Served, with the sauce now a pretty lilac colour.

A whole chicken!

We watched the first episode of Nigella's Kitchen at the weekend, which got me ridiculously excited because it included an oven-free way of cooking a whole chicken. I have really missed using bigger cuts of meat so the 'praised chicken' (not a fan of the name) was perfect. The meal was really nice, very easy, made the flat smell wonderful, and was best eaten with mustard as Nigella recommends.

This recipe could be improved in a number of ways; the one that comes most readily to mind is the water that the chicken is poached in. This could be made into a less watery, more flavoursome sauce. If I had the funds to buy more alcohol (oh, Korea, why do you make my wine so expensive?) I would have used more wine and less water. A stock rather than plain water would also have helped. Almost anything could be substituted for that 'water' part of the recipe!

Oh, and most excitingly of all - I now have a chicken carcass in my freezer, waiting for some friends before it is turned into stock =)

Stovetop Whole Chicken
Serves

1 chicken (730g)
1 garlic clove
2 potatoes
2 sweet potatoes
Big glug of white wine
Water
Italian herbs
Parsley
Seasoning

2 servings rice

Chopped the garlic, and the potatoes into batons. Heated the garlic in oil on a low heat. Broke the chicken's back to flatten it and sawed off its feet. Added the chicken breast-side-down to the hot pan and cooked for about five minutes while I struggled to open the wine. Turned the chicken over, added the wine and the chicken feet, and turned the heat up. Bubbled for a minute or so. Added the potato batons with lots of Italian herbs and parsley, poured in enough water to almost entirely cover the chicken, and turned the heat up to its highest setting. When it reached a boil, I put the heat back down to very low and covered the pan with tin foil.  After leaving it for about fifty minutes, I put the rice on. At the 1 hour mark I checked that the chicken's juices were running clear and turned the heat off, leaving the lid on. Ten minutes later Tom shredded the chicken and the rice was ready.

Bulgogi

I mentioned a few days ago that we went to a Korean barbeque place on Saturday, and really enjoyed the food. Given that we were defrosting meat anyway, I looked up bulgogi (a kind of marinaded beef, fairly common in Korea and a specialty in this area) and found that it would be fairly easy to make. I wish we'd had sesame seeds to put in the marinade, and even though it was cooked in the marinade the beef was still quite dry and tough, unlike the meat we had on Saturday. If I had cooked less rice, we could have rolled it up in lettuce leaves, but I was silly and did giant-sized portions. It was still very nice – the onions cooked in marinade with the rice were absolutely delicious, and worth trying of their own accord.

Bulgogi

Serves 2

1 400g pack of beef

Soy sauce

Oil

2 tablespoons sugar

3 garlic cloves

Chilli powder

Seasoning

1 onion

2 servings of rice

Large handful of broccoli florets

Chopped the beef into medium-sized, very flat strips (each strip should theoretically take no more than 1 minute to cook through). Marinaded in a mixture of soy sauce, oil, sugar, chopped garlic and chilli for about twenty minutes. Put the rice on a low heat in salted water for ten minutes Chopped the broccoli into small pieces and added to the rice, cooking for a further ten minutes. Chopped 1 onion into half-moons and put in a pan on a high heat with the beef and marinade, which only needed about five minutes of cooking time. Served the rice with the beef alongside, with some cooked marinade drizzled over the rice.

We ate this with ssamchang, a Korean condiment which I doubt you'll be able to find, at least without difficulty, anywhere else in the world. It's a 'meat dipping seasoned bean paste' and absolutely delicious, if really spicy. Any spicy salsa-esque dipping would probably serve just as well, although you'd miss out on some unique flavours.

Tunisian Chicken

This, from the BBC Good Food website, was really nice. Really nice. A bit too spicy, but you could easily get rid of that by not using the chilli (which was my not-so-brilliant substitute for harissa). Frying the pumpkin chunks along with the chicken allowed the pumpkin to retain its shape later on rather than dissolving mushily into the sauce. When eaten with the lemon risotto the flavours of both completely changed and melded into something wonderful.


Tunisian Chicken
Serves 2

1/4 small pumpkin
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 green chilli
2 chicken breasts
Vegetable stock
Cinnamon
Passata
Seasoning

Other flavourings: chilli powder, honey, milk.

I peeled and chopped the pumpkin into bite-sized chunks (again, with difficulty), chopped the onion and garlic, cut the chicken breasts into roughly eight pieces per breast, and mixed in a dry, cold pan with oil, vegetable stock, cinnamon, a tiny bit of chilli powder, and seasoning. Stirred it all to coat before putting the pan on the heat. Cooked on a medium heat for about five minutes before reducing the heat to low and adding the passata, along with a few tablespoons of water. Simmered for about twenty five minutes, adding other flavourings to taste.

Served with the lemon risotto I made a couple of weeks ago. I didn't add broccoli this time, and used thyme instead of rosemary. Other than that it was exactly the same.

Stuffed Chicken Thing

Last night I was craving my stuffed chicken, but a lack of the vital ingredients and cooking devices stopped me in my tracks. Until! I came across this recipe from Love and Olive Oil. Stuffed chicken... in a pan. But how to get around the fact that there was no cream cheese? Aha! Mustard to the rescue, from Wilde in the Kitchen.

I actually really enjoyed this. Tom is not a fan of the natural yoghurt, which (like everything in Korea) has had a bunch of sugar added to it, so that diminished his pleasure. However, it was hot and filling and still light, without being overly spicy. It definitely comes second to the original recipe - in fact, to every one of the three or four which inspired it - but it was not a bad substitute at all.

Also - welcome to the new background, drawn (admittedly poorly) by myself =)

Stuffed Chicken Thing
Serves 2

2 chicken breasts
1 egg

Stuffing:
Wholegrain mustard
1 natural yoghurt (serving sized)
Handful of grated cheese
Handful of chopped onion
Honey
Seasoning

Rub:
Wholegrain mustard
Oil
Curry powder
Thyme
Seasoning

2 servings of rice

Mixed the ingredients for the stuffing (lots of mustard, little bit of honey) until thick. Mixed the ingredients for the rub. Put the rice on to cook. Slit open the chicken breasts and stuffed each with 1/3 of the stuffing mixture, coated in the oily rub, and put on a medium heat for about seven minutes. Added the leftover stuffing, rub, more onion and one egg to the pan and stirred thoroughly before turning the breasts. The stuffing fell out at this point but I kept spooning it back over the chicken.

Chicken and Beer Stew

When I told my Korean co-teacher that I would be making a chicken and beer stew tonight, her mind was blown. Apparently Koreans simply don't put alcohol in their food. A whole culture missing out on one of the greatest things to happen to humanity! I feel such pity, and am renewed on my quest to introduce boozy food to this country. (Or maybe not. Wine is expensive!)

Anyway, chicken and beer stew, from this recipe at Everybody Loves Sandwiches, my new favourite website. I would love to try this with homemade bread, but as everyone knows we are still an oven-free apartment. It was absolutely delicious anyway - the gravy ended up really creamy for something that included neither cream nor milk.

Chicken and Beer Stew
Serves 2

3 chicken breasts
1 garlic clove
Chilli powder
Basil
Seasoning

3 potatoes
2 onions
1 fat garlic clove
Flour
300ml chicken stock
Half a bottle of beer
Oregano
Wholegrain mustard
Gravy powder
Seasoning

2 servings of rice

I put the chicken breasts, minced garlic, chilli, basil and seasoning into a plastic bag and scrunched it all together. Peeled and cut the potatoes into eights, onions into quarters, and minced the other garlic clove. Put the chicken in an oiled pan on a medium heat, turning once, until it is browned. Removed. Added more oil to the pan along with the vegetables and cooked for a few minutes, stirring, until coated in the oil. Sprinkled flour quite heavily over the vegetables and stirred. Added the chicken back in along with the stock and beer. Sprinkled with oregano and squeezed as much mustard as I could out of the bottle - probably about a tablespoon's worth. Seasoned and left to simmer for about forty five minutes. Added some gravy powder, not much, when the sauce was looking too thin. Twenty minutes before serving, once the potatoes were nearly edible, I put the rice on. Served in bowls.

Sticky Pork with Lemon Risotto

Tonight's dinner was an odd one. I originally conceived of the idea whilst in a temple, so it's clearly a dish that God meant to exist. My plan was to marinade a large, flat piece of pork in soy sauce, honey and tomato sauce, cook it lightly, put a couple of spoonfuls of cooked rice with vegetables in the middle, wrap the pork around it, and seal it in the pan with some of the sauce draped over it. That way you could cut open a ball of pork and find rice inside! It would be like a giant inside-out rice ball.

Sadly, it turned out that the large, flat piece of pork we'd bought was mostly in little bits. I couldn't be bothered to make a million little inside-out rice balls. So I combined some recipes I vaguely know and steamrollered on: the pork marinade is mostly from my mother, who I think got it from Nigella, and the lemon risotto is from an amalgamation of risotto recipe titles I've glanced at in the past.

We both really enjoyed this meal. Even if the soy sauce-y pork didn't go brilliantly with the lemon risotto, the flavours were stunningly intense. I would be happy to eat this risotto on its own for a lunch, as well - it's the first time I've had a risotto that's been refreshing! It would be nice with chicken.

Sticky Pork with Lemon Risotto
Serves 2.5 (extra pork)

1 400g pack of pork
Soy sauce
Honey
Orange juice
Tomato sauce (passata)
1 tsp wheat flour
Chilli and cinnamon spices
Seasoning

Butter
Half an onion, chopped
2 handfuls of rice
Lemon vinegar
Chicken stock
Rosemary
Lemon juice
Broccoli
Seasoning

Chopped the pork into large bite-size pieces and put in a bowl with quantities of soy sauce, honey, orange juice and tomato sauce. I honestly don't know what these quantities were, although the soy and tomato sauces dominated - I added more honey to the pan at a later point after tasting the sauce. Added the flour, spices and seasoning to the sauce and mixed well. Covered and left for about twenty minutes.

Melted the butter on the stove on a low heat and cooked the onion till soft. Added the rice and stirred. Added lemon vinegar, probably about 1/4 of a cup, and stirred. Put a tablespoon of chicken stock powder and a sprinkling of rosemary into a jug, made chicken stock, and added bit by bit, stirring in between. After about ten minutes I put the pork and the marinade juices into another pan and left on a medium heat. Ten minutes later I added some broccoli stems to the risotto and continued to cook, tasting and adding lemon juice and seasoning periodically. Once cooked, I drained the risotto to get rid of some of the excess starch, served both the rice and pork, and ate with chopsticks.

Wrestle Curry

I didn't strictly make this: I supervised and guided my little brother as he made the meal. It was actually quite nice, and I was very impressed with the level of cool he maintained while cooking his first meal for the family - and it was for 10! The name of the dish is a reference to the person he got the recipe from - a wrestler, obviously.

Chopped 13 chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and mixed in a bowl with 4 big tablespoons of mustard, till coated. Drizzle of olive oil heated on the stove, chicken pieces put in on a high heat.
2 apples, 3 figs and a handful of large cherry tomatoes were chopped and added to the chicken once it had browned lightly all over. 1 litre of natural yoghurt was added along with curry and chilli powders. Heat was reduced from high to medium.
Enough rice for 10 was put on the stove with boiling water and salt.

The dish was amazingly simple, delicious and fruity. I was surprised by how watery the sauce was given that it was mostly made of yoghurt. It had a bit of a kick to it, balanced out by the apple & fig. I was very proud of my brother and would be happy making this dish myself.

The next time I cook will be in Korea!