Chicken St Clements à la Abla

It is always nice to have some chicken fresh from the oven or, indeed, to be able to pull a container out of the freezer to form the basis of a meal. Abla’s garlic chicken has been a favourite of mine for years, though I never quite cook it according to her recipe. This time rather than having only lemon juice, I made the sauce from the juice of an orange and a lemon. Hence the name chicken St Clements! 

It was delicious with rice, and also with stir fried vegetables. And there are a couple of serves in the freezer. I am hoping that now that we are circulating more I might even get to try Abla’s own version, as might any Melbourne readers. In the meanwhile, enjoy this version!

 Ingredients

16 chicken drumettes (about 1 kilo)
2 dessertspoons rock salt

1 lemon

1 orange

2 tbs crushed garlic

Mode

Preheat oven to 210c.
Arrange the chicken drumettes in a baking dish
Sprinkle with rock salt
Roast for 30 minutes
Meanwhile juice the lemon and orange
Add minced ginger to juice to total about 150 ml

Stir thoroughly

Remove the chicken from the oven and pour the  mixture 

Return to oven and roast for another 25-35 minutes.

Serve with rice, pasta or roast vegetables  

Preserved limes #blogjune Day 9

I was recently the fortunate recipient (or one of a number of recipients) of the bounty of my friend, Neville's lime tree.  So what to do with them?  I drank some of them instead of my normal morning lemon juice, but then I remembered years ago making preserved limes.  So that became my plan. 

There are many recipes for both preserved lemons and preserved limes around on the web and in various cook books on my shelves. I kept it fairly simple with limes, cloves, cinnamon sticks and salt.  I have purposefully been rather vague in my quantities as it depends on what you have on hand and what tastes good to you. I used 200 gr of salt flakes and I probably had a couple of dozen limes.  This made three reasonably sized jars of limes and I used one cinnamon stick per jar and scatterings of cloves.

I remember from last time that I made them that they took quite a while to reach their prime: much longer than lemons.   Now all I can do is put them away for a few months and see how they go.  But I will keep on eye on them for a while and top them up with extra lime juice if they seem to be getting dry.

Ingredients

20-24 limes
200 gr salt flakes
Cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
Extra lime juice (if required)


  
Mode

Place the salt flakes in a large bowl
Quarter the limes and add to the salt
Mix thoroughly to ensure that the limes are coated
Cover and set aside for 24-36 hours
Meanwhile sterilize the jars you plan to use (I simply do this by putting them in the dishwasher)
Place some of the salt in the bottom of one of the jars and add the limes interspersing them with cinnamon stick and cloves
During the packing and particularly at the end use a spoon to squash down the fruit and release the juice
Be sure to leave space at the top of the jar as they will expand.
Repeat the process until all the limes and their liquid are in jars
Check the levels and if necessary squeeze extra lime juice and add to ensure that the limes are covered.
Observe them for a few days in case the limes are getting dry and add extra juice if necessary.
Then label them and store them high away in the top of the pantry for a few months!