Butter chicken with Madras curry vegetables

One of the great things about working in Hawthorn is that being located near to Swinburne University there is a fabulous array of Indian eateries. I love being able to dash out at lunch time to grab some butter chicken or other dishes from one of the places where Indian students gather to eat and watch Indian TV. I also like being able to make a quick and easy butter chicken at home. And this is where supplies at Piedimonte's help me and provide the sauce which is the basis for this.


Today is Saturday and so I had time to prepare and simmer the chicken and vegetables and cook rice as one needs to do with Indian food. It is also the start of daylight savings (Blah!) so I should have started to do my simmering earlier. I served the butter chicken with rice and a vegetable dish which I made with Madras curry powder.




Butter Chicken

Ingredients

600 gr chicken thigh pieces
Butter chicken sauce ready prepared
300 ml low fat Greek yoghurt

Mode

Heat butter chicken sauce in large pan
Roughly chop chicken thighs
Place chicken pieces in pan over medium heat and cook partially
Add yoghurt and stir through
Simmer on low heat until chicken is tender and sauce thickened.



Madras Curry vegetables

Ingredients

1 onion
Frozen peas
3 potatoes
Frozen broad beans
Water
Madras curry powder
Olive oil

Mode

Heat olive oil in saucepan
Chop onion and toss in oil until softened
Slice potatoes and add to mixture
Add Madras curry powder according to taste and stir through
Add frozen peas and beans and mix
Add cup of water and mix
Cover and simmer until tender

Serve the butter chicken and Madras curry vegetables on steamed rice.

Beetroot and fetta salad

I love beetroot in any shape or form - except the canned variety. I was delighted recently to find it available and stocked up. As it was Father's Day last weekend we were gathering for lunch so I thought I would make a beetroot salad using a couple of my other favourite foods: fetta and dill.



Note that it's a good idea to make this just before serving as the beetroot quickly colours the fetta. The taste is fine later but it's visually nicer early after tossing.




Ingredients

7 medium-sized beetroots
400 gr fetta
15 gr dill
Olive oil
White wine vinegar

Mode

Chop both ends of beetroots and crosscut ends
Place in a saucepan and cover with water
Cook until tender
When cool peel off skins and chop into pieces of desired size
Roughly chop dill
Add beetroot and dill to serving dish
Crumble fetta into mixture
Dribble with oil and vinegar and toss

Dill chicken balls take two!

After my first disastrous but redeemed go at chicken balls I thought I would have another go! This time the mixture was very firm and easy to form into balls.



They tasted very meaty as I didn't add any bread, though the addition of grated parmesan was nice. They were fine but I think I will try again with bread as I like that texture. Dill chicken balls are a work in progress!



Ingredients

650 gr chicken mince
15 gr dill
1 egg
2 cloves garlic crushed
4 tbs grated parmesan
Flour
Olive oil
Tomato sauce
Shaved parmesan

Mode

Roughly chop the dill
Place chicken, dill, parmesan, garlic, egg in bowl and stir
Roll up sleeves and blend the mixture until combined
Form balls of desired size and roll in flour
Add tomato sauce to large pan or saucepan and heat on top of stove
Heat oil in pan
Quickly seal the balls in oil and added to already heated tomato sauce
Simmer on top of the stove for 30 mins or if preferred in 180c oven for 45 mins
Serve with shaved parmesan and accompanied by vegetables or green salad

Dill chicken balls

I love all sorts of meatballs and am particularly partial to some chicken balls I buy as a treat from a chicken place at Northland shopping centre. So a couple of weeks ago I thought I would have a go at trying to make some myself. I couldn't make up my mind whether to do them with dill which I was excited to find at the shops or to do a more Asian tasting lot with chilli, ginger and coriander. I finally plumped for the dill as I thought it would go nicely with tomato sauce.



Unfortunately the process was somewhat fraught as I didn't realize how sloppy minced chicken would be in comparison to minced beef or lamb and ended up with a mixture that was too moist to form balls. I think that two eggs was too much for the mixture and that the bread would have been better not soaked in milk. I added extra dry bread to the mixture and managed to make balls and cook them. The end result tasted lovely but I am going to continue experimenting with this!



Ingredients
1/2 cup milk
4 slices stale multigrain sourdough bread
650 gr chicken mince
15 gr dill
2 eggs
2 cloves garlic
Flour
Oil
Ready made tomato sauce
Shaved parmesan

Mode

Soak two slices of bread in the milk
Roughly chop dill
Place chicken mince, dill, crushed garlic, and eggs in bowl
Remove bread from milk and squeeze before adding to bowl
Stir all ingredients until combined
Make breadcrumbs from other two slices of bread and add to mixture
Combine full with hands
Form mixture into balls and roll in flour
Place in refrigerator for an hour before cooking to help form
Meanwhile make a tomato sauce or heat ready-made one
Remove to ovenproof dish which is large enough to contain chicken balls as well
Preheat oven to 180c
Heat oil in frying pan and quickly seal the chicken balls
Add to tomato sauce in oven-proof dish
Cook in oven for 45 minutes
Serve with shaved parmesan and accompany with vegetables or green salad

Osso buco - with a touch of orange

Yummy, yummy osso buco! I'm always very open to temptation when I go shopping. I can reframe that easily into meaning that I cook things seasonally and like trying new things. On Monday I went shopping and saw lots of osso buco in the meat section of Piedimonte's. I hadn't cooked osso buco for ages and thought it a great idea for a cold, wet week here in Melbourne.



I thought I had all the basic ingredients: osso buco, tomatoes, red wine. But I found when I checked out a few recipes that that I had forgotten the gremolata and didn't have any parsley. This meant I had to be a bit more creative about the recipe. So I looked at some of my Greek stifado recipes and finally got inspiration from the use of lemon and pickling spices in some of the recipes I had been reading.



I would try a new flavour by adding some of my Stephanie's Spiced oranges and the spicy liquid! I also cooked the dish over two days for a minumum of 2.5 hours and added some carrot and parsnip in the last half hour of cooking. This recipe is definitely not your traditional Italian osso buco apart from the meat used, but it is delicious. Tomato and orange and carrot go so well together, and the little taste of orange that comes through is a lovely taste sensation!

Ingredients

4 pieces of osso buco
Plain flour
Olive oil
Pepper
2 onions
5 cloves of garlic crushed
1 can diced tomatoes
4 quarters spiced orange
2 dsp Spiced orange liquid
Glass red wine
2 cups water (or more if needed)
1 carrot
1 parsnip

Mode

Heat oil in stovetop pan or casserole which will be large enough to contain all ingredients
Pepper some plain flour
Coat osso buco lightly in flour
Seal in olive oil and remove from pan
Cook roughly chopped onion and garlic until tender
Add red wine to sear pan
Return meat to pan and stir
Add canned tomatoes
Chop the spiced orange and add spiced orage and liquid to pan
Add water to cover all ingredients
Bring to boil and simmer over low heat for about 2 hours checking regularly that meat doesn't stick and adding more water if needed
About half an hour before serving peel and slice the carrot and parsnip
Add vegetables to pan and stir to integrate
Cook for another half hour
Serve with mashed potatoes

I cooked this over two days, about an hour the first night and then 1.5 hours the next day. The flavours intensify and the taste improves over a couple of days!

Spiced Orange Roast Chicken

It really is feast or famine with me! I can't think when was the last time I cooked a roast chicken before I was enticed into it on Sunday. Though there are still some leftovers from Sunday's delicious Librarians' Lemon Thyme Chook, when I was walking home tonight in the wet and was approaching Piedimonte's I was struck with the desire to do another chicken!



So what would I do this time? The Librarians' one again or just Stephanie Alexander's normal one with fresh lemon and rosemary? What else could I try? Suddenly I thought of my stock of Spiced oranges high in the pantry. That was what I was going to try.



Ingredients

1 fresh chicken
2 cloves garlic
Spiced oranges (orange and syrup)
4 potatoes
1 orange sweet potato
Olive oil


Mode

Preheat oven to 220c
Quarter potatoes, chop sweet potato and place in bowl
Dribble with olive oil
Pull up your sleeves and mix vegetables to coat with oil
Rub the chicken inside and out with several pieces of the spiced orange
Place remnants of spiced orange inside cavity
Crush the garlic cloves rub over chicken
Sprinkle several spoonsful of the spiced orange syrup over top, bottom, sides and cavity of chicken
Place chicken in baking dish on its side
Arrange vegetables around
Rub chicken with remaining oil from bowl
Place in centre of oven and cook for 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken to other side
Turn the vegetables
Cook for another 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken onto back (ie breast facing upwards)
Turn the vegetables
Cook for another 20 minutes
During this final 20 minutes of cooking prepare salad or vegetables to accompany.

The orange sauce provided the basis for a lovely glaze and the trick was to ensure that it didn't burn. I served it with a simple rocket, parmesan, oil and balsamic vinegar salad on the side. It was yummy! And I am sure it will be yummy cold as well. What will I try next? Something with plum sauce is very tempting!

Librarians' Lemon Thyme Chook

You might think with the new series of The Librarians coming up next week that that TV program might be the inspiration for this recipe. But how wrong would you be!

Oh the power of suggestion! Tonight several of my friends on Facebook were roasting chickens for dinner. I had planned making meatballs with some "organic" meat that I sincerely hope did not go through the traumata I saw in the great doco Food Inc yesterday. But what happened to me? I went off to do my regular Sunday night supermarket shopping to my favourite Piedimonte's, pleased to notice their pledges about preservatives and organicness at the door and to note that most of their fruit and vegetables were "Product of Australia" and hence somewhat seasonal. I was just about to leave when I thought: hmm roast potatoes would be nice. I bought some potatoes and next thing you know I was back in the meat section buying a chicken! Thanks Stephanie McGlinchey and Michelle McLean for the inspiration: this recipe is for you!


My chicken recipe has at its basis Stephanie Alexander's roast chook, 220c, chook with vegetables around, 20 minutes each side, 20 minutes breast up. But I used preserved lemons, dried thyme, garlic and salt instead of her condiments. I haven't done this before, so I really looked forward to the flavours. It was delicious.



Ingredients

1 fresh chicken
2 cloves garlic
4 quarters preserved lemons
1 dsp salt
4 potatoes
Olive oil
Dry thyme sprigs

Mode

Preheat oven to 220c
Quarter potatoes and place in bowl with thyme and dribble with olive oil
Pull up your sleeves and mix potatoes to coat with thyme and oil
Rub the chicken inside and out with quarter of preserved lemon
Place other quarters of preserved lemon inside cavity
Crush the garlic cloves and place inside cavity
Sprinkle salt over all top, bottom and sides of chicken
Place chicken in baking dish on its side
Arrange potatoes around
Rub chicken with remaining oil and thyme mixture from bowl
Place in centre of oven and cook for 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken to other side
Turn the potatoes
Cook for another 20 minutes
Bring out of oven and turn chicken onto back (ie breast facing upwards)
Turn the potatoes
Cook for another 20 minutes
During this final 20 minutes of cooking prepare salad or vegetables to accompany.

I served it with a simple rocket, parmesan, oil and vinegar salad on the side and was delighted to have chicken for lunches during the film festival this coming week.



Thanks Stephanie Alexander, Stephanie McGlinchey and Michelle McLean for the inspiration to try this out! You can't go wrong really with the ingredients. Pretty good hey? The power of four librarians in the kitchen! Now I need to get on with those meatballs and use up the meat waiting for that!