Brazilian Chicken Stew

I don’t know much about Brazilian food.  I’ve never been to Brazil.  In fact the nearest I’ve got to South America is Mexico.   Although I have, once or twice (I think), eaten in South American/Brazilian  restaurants, I would struggle to tell anyone much about Brazilian food.   Anyway, the reason I was so keen to make a Brazilian recipe was that this month’s Regional Recipes, hosted by Joanne at Eats Well With Others is focusing on Brazil.

Well, one of the dishes I remember eating  was a  chicken stew, rather like this, and so I set about researching a Brazilian chicken stew recipe.  Once I found one that looked similar and seemed to contain the flavours I remembered, I stopped, and it was a couple of weeks later before I went back to it and actually managed to recreate it.    I’m glad I did,   it was really delicious and I had enough sauce to freeze for another day.  Perfect!  The recipe I chose was by Joyce Goldstein and the original can be seen here.

Ingredients

300g chicken

Large knob of ginger

3 garlic cloves

3 small green chilli peppers

Juice of half a lemon

1 1/2 tsp paprika

1 large onion, chopped

400g can chopped tomatoes

1/2 can coconut milk

2 tbsp dry roasted peanuts, crushed a little

1 tbsp desicated coconut

1 tsp dried coriander leaf or fresh handful if you have it

1 chicken stock cube

How to make Brazilian Chicken Stew

1. Cook the onion in a saucepan with a little olive oil for about 10 minutes.

2. Put the garlic, chillies, paprika and ginger into the food processero and blitz.  Then add to the  onion and continue to cook for a few more minutes.

3.  Add the tomatoes, coconut milk, peanuts, desicated coconut and coriander.  Simmer for 5 minutes then add to the food processor and blitz again.

4. Put the chicken into the pan and seal on all sides then return the sauce to the pan.  Crumble the stock cube on top and stir to disolve.  Simmer for about 20 minutes as the sauce thickens and reduces.

5. When ready add the lemon juice to taste.   Season with salt and pepper.   Serve with rice and extra lemon wedges.

 

Curried Bean Soup

This is another of my meals for one that I make when I am home alone.   Baked beans and sweetcorn are two of my husband’s worst ingredients.  In his eyes I could only have made this dish worse by adding tinned tuna, which you’ll be pleased to know I didn’t .   As nice as tuna is, there are too many ingredients in here already, and I doubt it would have gone quite so well with the baked beans.    Anyway,  I love dishes like this, partly as they are so easy, but also as they are great for using up leftover vegetables.  Don’t feel you have to use exactly the same ingredients as I did.    Feel free to use whatever vegetables are lingering at the bottom of your fridge or freezer.

I am sending this to Deb at Kahakai Kitchen for this week’s Souper Sundays.

Ingredients – serves 1

1 small tin of baked beans

Large handful of kale

1 carrot

1 onion

1 clove of garlic

1 green chilli

1 tbsp frozen sweetcorn

1 tbsp frozen peas

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp garam masala

1/4 tsp cumin seeds

How to make Curried Bean Soup

1. In a saucepan heat a little oil then fry  the onion, chilli and garlic.  When softened add the spices.   Stir for a couple of minutes.

2. Add the carrot, kale and beans, top with a little water (about 150 ml), bring to the boil then simmer for about 10 minutes.   Add the frozen peas and sweetcorn.    Bring back to the boil and simmer for about 3 minutes and then serve.

 

Chicken Pie

The time has come for this month’s Taste and Create event.   I love this event as it gives me an opportunity to find out about different blogs and also to cook something that I would perhaps not have made otherwise.  That’s the case with this pie.  I love pies but my husband is not so keen.   For that reason I had not made a pie like this before, although I have used this type of pastry for tarts.    This event was just the opportunity I needed to go ahead and make a pie.

Taste and Create is an event run by Nicole at For the Love of Food.  Participants are paired with another blogger and each have to make a dish from each other’s blog and then blog about it.  This month I was paired with Glenda at Busy at Home.  Her blog is extensive, covering not just food and recipes, but also gardening, home-schooling and family life.  There’s also a good mix of sweet and savoury recipes.  At first I was drawn to the brownies, but as I’ve just made Millionaire’s Shortbread and am going on holiday at the weekend, I would unfortunately not have time to eat them.   It had to be something savoury, and also as I am pretty busy this week, something relatively easy.

As there are just two of us at home I made two individual pies rather than one large pie.  However, they were quite big and would have easily served four rather than two people.  I  didn’t put as many vegetables in the pies as in the original recipe but I did serve extra vegetables with the pies instead.   The result was delicious and creamy.   Very nice traditional food, a complete change from what I normally make and I would happily make again.  See the original recipe here.

Ingredients

200g chicken, cut into slices

1 potato, diced

1 onion, finely diced

1 clove of garlic, finely diced

4 spring onions, sliced

Handful of frozen peas

Tsp dried rosemary

Black pepper

1 tsp chicken stock powder

300ml milk

1 tbsp flour

Ready-made puff pastry

How to Make Chicken Pie

1. Heat some oil in a saucepan.   Fry the chicken until cooked.  Remove.   Add the potatoes, onion,garlic, rosemary and black pepper.  Cook for about 10 minutes until the potato is cooked.

2. Add the flour and stock powder to the potatoes.   Stir well so it coats all the vegetables.   Add the milk.   Stir until the sauce thickens.

3. Dice the chicken and put it in the bottom of the pie dishes.  Sprinkle the frozen peas over the top.  Top with the rest of the pie filling.

4. Grease the pie dishes around the top and put the puff pastry on top. Put a few dabs of butter on the pastry lid.

5. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.

 

Millionaire’s Shortbread

When I was a child I was only lucky enough to eat this type of shortbread at friends’ houses or birthday parties.   My mother always gave us healthy food.  Although we did get cakes and sweet things, they were always homemade and used as little sugar as possible, which I think in retrospect was  good thing.   This is something she would never have made and that made it an extra special treat whenever I got to have some.  I have to say, when making this I was rather shocked at the amount of butter and sugar it contains.  After melting the sugar and butter for the caramel, I tasted the condensed milk and discovered it was already very sweet.   Maybe I could have left out some of that extra sugar?  What would my mum think?   Mmmm maybe daughters do turn into their mothers.

Anyway, lets forget about all the sugar, this was absolutely delicious and I would like to send it to Chele at Chocolate Teapot for November’s We Should Cocoa Challenge, which was to make a recipe using caramel, as well as chocolate of course.

Ingredients

For the Shortbread Base

150g butter

75g caster sugar

250g plain flour

For the caramel

300g can of condensed milk

75g golden caster sugar

150g butter

For the Top

100g dark chocolate

1. Line a square tin with baking parchment.

2. Cream the sugar and butter together for the base.   Then add the flour and mix in till it forms a dough.

3. Put the dough into the baking tin and press down so it covers the whole of the base.   Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes at about 180°c.

4. To make the caramel, put the sugar and butter in a saucepan and heat. When the butter is melted and the sugar has dissolved, add the condensed milk.   Heat gently and stir continuously.  While stirring, let it boil gently for about 5 minutes but make sure it doesn’t burn.   It should gradually thicken.

5. Pour the caramel onto the shortbread base.   Leave to cool then put in the fridge to firm up.

6.  A couple of hours later, melt some chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water.   Pour onto the caramel and spread evenly.   I preferred dark chocolate for this as the caramel is very sweet but you could use milk.  Put back in the fridge to set.   Cut into small squares to serve.

 

Chocolate Soufflés

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided many of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

Of course, I decided to make the chocolate soufflés.   I’m a Masterchef addict and have recently seen the contestants trying to make soufflés and so I was even thinking of attempting them before this challenge came along.  I’ve already made the other Masterchef dessert classic of chocolate fondant, which is supposed to be notoriously difficult to get right.  Soufflés are supposed to be  even more difficult in order to get to rise properly.    Added to that the state of my oven; I have to guess temperatures as the markings have rubbed off the dial, and the sealing around the door has come away on one side so I’m not even quite sure if all the heat actually stays inside.   So, although I was enthusiastic, I was not confident that this would be a success.   Luckily I was wrong.   They did rise, and the leftover mixture that I put in the fridge and then cooked the next day also rose, and they were perfectly cooked.   Success! The only thing I would change about these is to add a bit more sugar.   I found them to be not quite sweet enough.  Apart from that I enjoyed them.   I ate them with custard on the second day and that was delicious.    Would I make them again?  Perhaps, to impress someone, but, if I had a choice to make these or chocolate fondant I would go for the chocolate fondant every time.   The ones I make are also a Gordon Ramsey recipe.   Rich gooiness wins out over lightness any day.  I thought I’d blogged about them earlier this year but apparently not so I will have to do so soon.   Having said that,  I will experiment with soufflés again, although next time I’ll probably try a savoury option or spice these up a bit with some chillies, as suggested by Dave and Linda.

Ingredients

For the Dishes

Margarine to grease

Cocoa powder

To make the Crème Patisserie

18g plain flour

10g caster sugar

4 1/2g cornfour

1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk

60ml milk

75 ml double cream

90g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids, broken up

15 unsweetened cocoa powder

For the Egg Whites

6 medium egg white

90g caster sugar

How to make Chocolate Soufflés

1. Grease the inside of the soufflé dishes with a little margarine.   Put a teaspoonful of cocoa inside one dish.  Hold two dishes together and shake so that the cocoa covers the inside of both dishes.

2.Mix the flour, sugar and cornflour together in one bowl.  In another bowl beat the egg and egg yolk together.  Tip half of the flour mixture into the egg and beat till smooth, then add the rest of the flour and cocoa powder and continue to beat until it is well-combined.

3.Heat the milk and cream in a pan.  Stop heating just before it boils.  Stir the chocolate in until it melts.  Let it cool a little before step 4.

4. Gradually stir the chocolate mixture into the paste from step 2.  This makes the crème patisserie.

5.Whisk the egg whites and gradually add the sugar.   Stop when the mixture forms meringue-like peaks.

6. Stir 2 tablespoons of egg white into the crème patisserie.  Then fold in a third of the remaining egg white, then another third and finally the last third.

7. Put the mixture into the soufflés dishes. Use a spoon to make the top flat.  Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 190˚C.  The soufflés should rise above the dish.

8. Serve immediately, alone or with some cream, custard or ice-cream.

 

Afghan Potato Salad and Beef Kebabs

I am always interested in trying new dishes and finding out about new cuisines.  I was therefore very excited to research Afghan cuisine for  this month’s My Kitchen My World.  I was lucky enough to discover Shayma’s blog, The Spice Spoon, which is full of delicious recipes from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.   I would definitely recommend this and I know I will be returning here again and again.

First I made the Borani Kachalu, potato salad.  Borani is a cold dish of vegetables in a yoghurt dressing.  I was never a fan of potato salads as a child and always avoided them.  It’s only in the past year that I have begun to try them again, sometimes making a quick potato salad with an olive oil dressing to take to work as a packed lunch.    I think part of the reason I have never been keen on potato salads is because I am not a fan of heavy mayonnaise or creamy dressings but I do love the lightness of yoghurt dressings.  I could therefore instantly see the appeal of this salad.   Not only that but the tomato sauce the potato is cooked in uses some of my favourite flavourings and  spices – ginger, garlic and chilli.   I just knew that this was my kind of potato salad.   I followed the recipe almost exactly except that my slices of potato were larger and more chunky than in the original recipe.  The end result was also much less elegant than the original version.   The only thing I found difficult was having to stop myself eating the potatoes and leave them to cool so I could get on with the kebabs.   I would happily have eaten them warm and would cook them again this way to eat as a hot side dish.

I suspect that an Afghan may not eat these two dishes together like we did but I found they went together perfectly.   The kebabs were really easy to make.  I just put all the ingredients in the food processor, shaped into patties and then fried them.  The one thing I did have to alter in this recipe was the use of herbs.  I was not quite organised enough and only had dried herbs so I used them instead of fresh ones.   I loved the spiciness of these kebabs.   They suited me perfectly and my husband agreed this is definitely something he wants me to make again.   So, this meal was definitely a success.

To see original recipes go here for the potato salad and here for the kebabs.

Ingredients for Potato Salad

2 medium potatoes, sliced

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 knob of ginger, same size as the garlic, minced

8 tbsp passata, and then I added an extra dash

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp turmeric

Dressing

3 heaped tbsp yoghurt

2 tbsp water

1 tsp dried mint

Ingredients for Kebabs

250g minced beef

1/2 medium onion, diced

3 small chillies, diced

2 spring onions

1 small egg

1 tsp ground coriander seed

1 tsp dried coriander leaf

1 tsp dried mint

How to make Afghan Potato Salad, Borani Kachalu

1. Heat a little oil in a pan.   Add the minced garlic and ginger.   Cook for about 30 seconds.  Add the powdered spiced.  Stir for a few seconds then add the passata.  Stir for about a minute then add the potatoes.

2. Make sure all the potatoes are thoroughly coated in the passata.   Add a dash of water so the pan is not too dry, I added an extra dash of passata too.   Put the lid on and leave to cook for 20 minutes.

3. Check the potatoes are cooked. If so, take them off the heat and begin to make the dressing.  Mix the yoghurt, water and mint together and leave in the fridge till ready to serve.

How to make Beef Kebabs

1.  These are so easy you don’t really need a recipe.  Put all the ingredients in a food processor and process till thoroughly combined.

2. Shape into kebabs and fry in a pan of hot oil for about 2 minutes on each side.   This amount of mixture made 6 kebabs for us.

To serve, drizzle the yoghurt over the  top of the potato salad, serve the kebabs on the side with an extra dollop of yoghurt.   I also served a green salad with it.   To be more traditional you could also serve it with naan bread.

 

Creamy Chorizo Pasta

This pasta is an old favourite of mine.  The idea came from a recipe I found at my mum’s house a few years ago when I was only just beginning to get interested in cooking.   I wanted to impress my future husband and felt I should expand my rather limited repertoire.  Little did I know back then that cooking would become a passion and that my favourite tv programmes a few years later would all end up being about food too.  I spent an afternoon going through lots of old books and magazines, making notes and this was one of the recipes I came away with.   Well, not exactly this as I only read the recipe once,  I don’t have those notes any more and I’m sure it has changed a bit over the years.  Unfortunately I also now have no idea which book it came from so cannot give the original source.

I love the combination of creme fraiche and chorizo.  It makes for a really comforting dish of pasta.  Excellent for autumn nights.

I am sending this recipe to Helen at Fuss Free Flavours for this week’s Presto Pasta Nights.

Ingredients – serves 2

Enough pasta for 2

1 green pepper, sliced

2 chilli peppers, sliced

6 mushrooms, sliced

1 small onion, sliced

2 tbsp creme fraiche

3 inches of chorizo, diced

How to make Creamy Chorizo Pasta

1. Put the pasta on to boil while preparing the sauce.

2. Heat a dry saucepan.  Add the chorizo.  Enough oil will come out of it so you don’t need extra oil.   Add the vegetables and continue to cook.

3. When the pasta is ready drain and add to the pan with the chorizo and vegetables.   Add the creme fraiche and stir well.  Serve immediately.

 

Kale and Bean Soup

This is a really easy and filling soup that makes a complete meal.  It’s incredibly healthy and makes me feel good just looking at it.   I only get kale a couple of times a year.  I love the strong flavour but unfortunately my husband is not so keen.   I think it goes really well in  a soup.  As it’s quite a tough leaf it doesn’t disappear to nothing like spinach does.  I love that fact it keeps its shape and flavour.   The beef stock is also good in this soup and I think it goes perfectly with the kale.  I sometimes think if I lived alone I would be really lazy about cooking and just live on these types of one-pot meals.

I am sending this recipe to Deb at Kahakai Kitchen for Souper Sundays

Ingredients – Serves 2

1 can canellini beans

3 large handfuls of kale

1 carrot, diced

1 onion, finely diced

2 cloves of garlic

500 ml beef stock

1 small chilli, seeds removed

2 inches of chorizo sausage, chopped into chunks

How to make Kale and Bean Soup

1. In a saucepan fry the onion, garlic, chorizo and chilli.   Add the carrot, beans and kale.   Cover with beef stock.

2. Simmer for about 15 minutes.

I think this must be the shortest recipe ever!

 

Custard

Whenever I go out to a pub for lunch I always look forward to the dessert menu far more than when I’m in a more classy restaurant.   I just love large hot filling comfort puddings with lots and lots of custard.     At home I usually make custard with custard powder.   I always thought it was easier that way.  I imagined that real custard would be difficult to make, that it would taste eggy, or that the eggs would scramble, and what a waste of eggs that would be!  Anyway, I discovered that real custard is not only easy and foolproof to make this way, it also tastes delicious, just as good (even a little better) as my old instant version.  Well, you’d expect that wouldn’t you.

You can make this recipe a little healthier by replacing the cream with milk, but I had some cream I wanted to use up.   This is also a great way of using up the extra egg yolks you get after making things like meringue.  The basic method and recipe comes from here at BBC Good Food.

Ingredients

5 egg yolks

70g sugar(I used golden castor)

100ml double cream

300ml milk

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp cornflour

How to make Custard

1. Put the milk and cream in a saucepan with the vanilla and heat gently.  Don’t let it boil.  Take it off the heat when it looks like it is about to begin bubbling. Leave to cool.

2. Beat the eggs, sugar and cornflour together to make a smooth paste.

3. When the milk mixture is lukewarm, add a tablespoon to the egg mixture.   Beat it in.   Keep adding a little at a time until it is all combined.

4. Return the mixture to the pan, heat gently, stirring continuously.    It will gradually thicken.   When  it thickens take it off the heat and serve immediately.

Delicious on its own or with a hot sponge, pie or cumble pudding.

 

 

Herring Baked in Vinegar and Pickling Spices

I have been so busy over the past week or so that I have hardly had time to create interesting dishes, never mind write posts or read other people’s posts.   I can see the list of unread posts in my reader getting longer and longer but I have had absolutely no time to relax and catch up.   It’s been one of those times where I realised a couple of weeks ago that the next time I would have to catch up on these things would be this coming weekend and it’s nearly here.  I’m definitely looking forward to it and hope to plan lots of interesting meals for the week ahead.  Anyway, although I haven’t done a lot of interesting meals I have experimented with fresh herring.    It was in the supermarket and was about half the price of all the other fish.   As my husband doesn’t like fish too much and was away, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to use it.   All the way home I pondered ways of cooking it.   Should I grill it and make some chunky homemade chips to serve with it?  Should I  put it in some sort of curry?  Now, herring is often pickled so I began thinking about whether to cook it escabeche, thinking the vinegar would go well with it.  As I’d also been thinking of curry, I decided to combine the two ideas.   I cooked it in the same way as this post but used the same spices that are used in Chicken with Pickling Spices.  In the end I was quite proud of myself for combining the two ideas and for avoiding the easy option of fish and chips.

Ingredients

2 small herrings

pinch, nigella seeds

pinch of mustard seeds

pinch of fenugreek

pinch of fennel seeds

Pinch of caraway seeds

Drizzle of groundnut oil

Good dash of white wine vinegar

salt

Pepper

half a green pepper, sliced

half a stick of celery, sliced

1 green chilli, sliced (optional)

1/2  onion, sliced

How to make Herring Baked in Vinegar and Pickling Spices

1. Put all the spiced in a pestle and mortar and grind to a powder.

2. Make a few slashes in the skin of the fish.    Put them in the middle of a large square of aluminium foil.   Sprinkle the spices over the top and season with salt and pepper.  If using also add the sliced chilli pepper.

3.  Put the vegetables on top of the fish and pull the edges of the foil up to make a parcel.  Drizzle with oil and a good slug of vinegar.   Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes.