Coronation Chicken in a Warm Baguette

The base of this recipe came from Economy Gastronomy but with a few frugal tweaks, plus the inability to follow any recipe rigidly. This is amazing served in a crunchy, warm baguette with a bit of lettuce and lots of napkins on hand for spillage, because you can’t help but overfill with this mix!
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You only need a bit of coconut milk so next time, I’d probably try to do it in a week when we were having a curry with a coconut base. Otherwise, you have to become creative. In the end, I just added it to a tropical smoothie I was making (pineapple, banana, mango, milk and the rest of the coconut milk tin).

Ingredients:

Left over chicken, shredded

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

2 dessertspoon of curry powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp turmeric

100ml stock

100ml coconut milk

200g mayonnaise (try Helman’s Extra Light – it’s really good!)

2 tsp chopped herbs (coriander is ideal but don’t buy it especially)

2 tbsp desiccated coconut toasted

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Method:

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Fry the onion and garlic in a little bit of oil until soft. Add all of your spices and fry lightly for about 30 seconds (You’ll get an amazing smell!)

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Add the stock and coconut milk. Boil until its mostly dry. It will not look particularly attractive at this stage but have faith(!)

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Allow it to cool completely. Add the mayonnaise, herbs and toasted coconut. Mix together well. Add the cooked chicken, shredded or diced into small bits.

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Serve in a warm baguette. Lush!

Chicken Fajitas

We are big fans of Mexican food in our household. The food is so fresh and vibrant, and inherently fun to eat. None more so than fajitas. This is a great recipe for fajitas and a great way of using up leftover meat.

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The secret ingredient here is chipotle paste, which are smoked, dried jalapeno peppers. We found this in Waitrose, made by the Discovery brand. We usually avoid using the pre-made sauces and kits, but this is a great little ingredient, especially given that we cannot easily make this ourselves. A teaspoon of this stuff goes a long way, and we keep finding more and more uses for it.

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Ingredients:

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Left over chicken, shredded

1 onion

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

Sprinkling of allspice

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 tin of plum tomatoes

3 teaspoons of chipotle paste

¼ iceberg lettuce

Cheese

Sour cream

4 Tortillas

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Method:

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Cut the onion into slices. Heat up some oil in a large frying pan, and add the onion, sugar, cinnamon, allspice and some salt and pepper. Cook for a medium-high heat for 15 minutes. Then add the chopped garlic and cook for another 5 minutes.

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Add the tin of plum of tomatoes, breaking up the tomatoes into smaller pieces with the back of your spoon. Now add the chipotle paste. Stir in a teaspoon at a time and have a taste to get the spiciness right for your tastes. We like it spicy so we put in 3 teaspoons. Cook on a gentle simmer for 15 minutes.

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During this time, prepare your accompaniments. Finely spread the lettuce and grate the cheese. Place these in separate bowls and put on the table, along with the sour cream. Heat the tortillas in a frying pan with a splash of water to stop it from sticking.

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Once the sauce has been simmering for 15 minutes check the consistency. It should be fairly thick by now. If not, cook for a big longer. Stir the shredded chicken into the sauce and give it a good stir.

Vietnamese Cold Noodle Salad

This is yummy on a scorching hot day but you do need to enjoy chopping or have some kind of device that juliennes the vegetables for you easily. Otherwise, you might go stir crazy cutting matchstick size slices!

This comes from our faithful book Blue Ginger by Les Huyh although we added the chicken to his vegetarian salad which we love. The dressing is amazing, so we always make extra and fire up the heat with an extra chilli or two.

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We were pleasantly pleased to see Bill Granger doing an incredibly similar recipe on Saturday Morning Kitchen. Pure coincidence but we decided to try the wine recommendation as we spotted in Sainsbury’s later that week. It was very drinkable and reminded us of Sauvignon Blanc.We thought it would have gone better with prawns or oysters rather than chicken but what do we know?!

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Ingredients:

Nuoc Cham -
2 long red chillies
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons sugar (we use palm sugar)
Juice of 1 lime
3 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon vinegar

Salad -

2 Portions of rice noodles

2 carrots

1 cucumber

¼ iceburg lettuce (optional)

1 handful of mint leaves

Left over chicken, shredded

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Method:

First make the Nuoc Cham. Pound the chillies and garlic into a paste with a pestle and mortar (or use a small food processor. Add the sugar, lime juice, fish sauce and vinegar with 2 tablespoons of water. Stir well until the sugar dissolves.

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Now cook the noodles. Boil the kettle, place the noodles in a large bowl, and then cover the noodles with boiling water for about 10 minutes or until they are soft. Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables. Julienne the carrots and cucumber and finely shred the lettuce.

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Mix together the vegetables, mint, chicken, noodles and Nuoc Cham. Serve.

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Wine: Sainsburys TDD Albarino Rias Baixas 2009

Tumbledowns - Chicken

When you’ve only got two people in the household, it can sometimes be a challenge to have a variety of home cooked meals during the week without having a load of half-used ingredients left over and going off in the fridge.

Borrowing the terminology from the book and series “Economy Gastronomy” by Paul Merrett and Allegra McEvedy, my boyfriend and I are trying to choose a “bedrock” ingredient for the week which once cooked, can then be turned into a variety of delicious dishes.

This week, our local supermarket had chickens on offer, so that’s what we went for. We have quite often roasted a chicken during the weekend and used the leftover during the week, but this time we decided to poach it.

This proved to be such an effortless way of cooking a chicken we will definitely be doing it again.

You cover the chicken with water and add carrots, 1/2 onion, peppercorns, bay leaves and various herbs. You slowly bring it to the boil (covered) and then let it lightly simmer for 20 minutes. You then turn off the heat and allow it to cool in the pan, which ended up taking about 2 hours.

The chicken comes out a healthy white and was immediately stripped of its skin. Carve it all up and we were left with two tupperware dishes of chicken for the week.

See, the next entries for what we did with the chicken.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

I thought this story from the BBC website was quite interesting. It’s about a vault in the Arctic Archipelago where seeds from the main food crops are stored. Several kinds of rare chilli seeds had been delivered, including some cultivated by Native Americans.

What an amazing idea! Its cool to think that somewhere there is this magical vault containing the building blocks of all the food that we eat today. It’s designed in case some kind of natural or man-made disaster wipes out our crops and all seems very 2012 (the disaster movie about the possible end of the world) but also quite comforting.

To learn more about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, go here.