Abla's Lemon Chicken Drummettes

One of the pleasures that awaited me when I recently returned from California was that my friend Emerald was visiting from Singapore. A couple of days after my return I had a lovely breakfast with her at the Greengrocer in North Fitzroy. She came laden with lemons and my first reaction was to make lemon butter with them. However, finally today I used some of them to cook one of my variants of Abla's lemon chicken.  I am not sure what I will do with the rest but the lemon chicken is just wonderful! Maybe I will need to have the rest of the chicken for breakfast tomorrow? And the rest of the lemons?  Well, lemon butter is still a possibility.

I love both Abla's restaurant in Carlton and her cookbook, The Lebanese Kitchen. Abla's recipe is for chicken wings in garlic but I am never very good at sticking to recipes. I use them as a guide. I used little chicken drummettes instead of wings and I just used already prepared and purchased minced garlic from a jar. So the principle and the cooking methodology was Abla's but practically no ingredient remained the same! Well, that's how I like to cook: getting ideas from different sources and seeing what's at the shops.  So here is my recipe for Lemon Chicken Drummettes.

Ingredients

10 chicken drummettes
1 teaspoon coarse salt
250 ml lemon juice
1.5 tablespoons minced garlic (purchased prepared)

Mode

Preheat the oven to 220c
Place the chicken pieces in a single layer in a baking dish
Sprinkle salt over
Roast for approximately 30 minutes until browned
Meanwhile squeeze lemons and add minced garlic to resulting juice
Remove chicken from oven and pour over garlic and lemon mixture
Stir through
Cook for another 20 minutes.

These are great served with a green salad dressed with shaved Parmesan.

Festive Coriander Salmon Salad

I know that people do still seem to be a bit obsessed with pumpkins but Halloween and Thanksgiving have now passed for my U.S. friends and yesterday I noticed that the City of Yarra low key Christmas decorations had been put up in Queens Parade. Yesterday we were also having family discussions about Christmas celebrations.  So when I was thinking of making a salad for lunch today, Christmas was there in my consciousness.  This salad is a variant of one I often make and one which I like to take to Christmas events. Today I made Festive Coriander Salmon Salad.

 

Ingredients

210 gr canned pink salmon (in water)
6-8 mini Roma tomatoes
2 Lebanese cucumbers
1/2 bunch of coriander (cilantro)
1 clove of garlic crushed
1 tsp crushed ginger
1/2 tsp Sambal oelek
1/2 red pepper
Olive oil


Mode

Slice the tomatoes in half lengthwise
Slice the cucumbers lengthways and chop into rough half circles
Roughly chop the coriander
Slice the red pepper into fine strips
Place salmon (including liquid), tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper and coriander in a bowl
Add garlic, ginger and Sambal oelek
Dribble some olive oil over
Toss salad to mix ingredients

This should serve two people for lunch. If you are sharing the meal with someone who thinks that bread is the staff of life, some multigrain bread with lashings of butter would go with it nicely.

#blogjune 28 Sweet chilli prawn pies

I am still on a bit of a roll about cooking pies. This started this time last year when I was in England and had fabulous pies in a few pubs. The latest one I tried was a pie cooked with prawns, sweet chilli sauce and broccoli. It was very yummy and I ate it with potato and sweet potato chips cooked with garam masala.



Ingredients

4-5 tbs ready prepared tomato sauce
12 prawns (peeled)
8-10 broccoli flowerets
2 tbs chopped parsley
1/2 tsp chopped red chilli (dry or fresh)
2-3 tbs Thai sweet chilli sauce
Puff pastry



Mode

Heat oven to 200c
Remove pastry to thaw (if frozen)
Chop broccoli, parsley and chilli
Add tomato sauce to pan and heat
When heated add prawns, broccoli, parsley, chilli and sweet chilli sauce
Stir to combine
Simmer until cooked
Add to mixture to pie dish or individual dishes
Cover with pastry
Cook for 20-25 minutes
Serves two

#blogjune 15 The Flavour Thesaurus

For my last birthday, I said "No presents" but some people did sneak some in. One of them was this fascinating little toolbox entitled The Flavour Thesaurus: pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook, published by Bloombury in 2010 and written by Niki Segnit.

Segnit divides 99 foods into twelve categories ranging from "Roasted" through "Mustardy" and "Woodland" to "Floral Fruity" to name just a few. Within each food section there is information about the food, a few recipes, and pairings with other foods on the list. I often use Stephanie's bible for its suggestions of what goes with the food element I happen to have on hand so it will be interesting to see if I use this reference tool as well or stick with my tried and true Stephanie. It will also be interesting to see how much similarity there is between the two lists of "pairings".

#blogjune 13 Turkey and coriander balls in tomato sauce

I made two different meals with my turkey and coriander meat balls. Apart from eating them directly from the pan with stir-fry vegetables, I made a dish of them in tomato sauce.




Ingredients
500 gr minced turkey
1 slice multigrain bread
1 bunch of coriander
1 egg
Flour
Olive oil
1 cup ready made tomato sauce



Mode
Place the bread in water to absorb liquid
Roughly chop coriander
Place turkey in bowl
Add coriander and egg and mix
Squeeze excess liquid from the bread and add to mixture
Combine mixture thoroughly using hands
Using a dessertspoon and hands form meatballs
Place tomato sauce in large pan or casserole and heat
Add oil to pan and heat
Roll balls in flour
Add to oil and seal quickly
Place into tomato sauce
Place a simmer pad under pan and simmer for half an hour

#blogjune 12 Turkey and coriander balls

One of the recurrent themes to this blog is definitely meatballs - of all shapes and sizes and used in many different ways. Wandering around the supermarket at lunchtime the other day I saw minced turkey. Hmm, turkey meatballs! There was some lovely fresh coriander as well, so my dinner plans were made. Turkey and coriander meatballs with plum sauce served with sweet chilli sauce stir-fried vegetables!



Ingredients
500 gr minced turkey
1 slice multigrain bread
1 bunch of coriander
1 egg
Flour
Olive oil


Mode
Place the bread in water to absorb liquid
Roughly chop coriander
Place turkey in bowl
Add coriander and egg and mix
Squeeze excess liquid from the bread and add to mixture
Combine mixture thoroughly using hands
Using a dessertspoon and hands form meatballs
Add oil to pan and heat
Roll balls in flour
Add to oil and seal quickly
Then cook until done turning regularly

#blogjune 7 Mackerel and vegetable pie

This pie is a bit in the category of what to cook you haven't been shopping and are scrounging to cook something with what's lurking around the kitchen. But it is very tasty nonetheless and I reckon I will cook it again!


Ingredients

1 can mackerel (425 gr)
3 tomatoes
Head of broccoli
1/2 cup ready made tomato pasta sauce
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (or whatever is required for pie dish)

Mode

Heat tomato sauce in pan
Remove pastry from freezer and set aside to thaw
Preheat oven to 200c
Chop tomatoes roughly and add to tomato sauce and combine
Cut broccoli into flowerets and add to mixture
Add mackerel and break down into small pieces
Reduce heat and simmer on a simmer pad until vegetables are tender
Spoon mixture into one large pie dish or four individual ones
Cover with pastry after brushing edges with water to seal
Cook for 20-25 minutes at 200c.