Butter Chicken

One of the real perks of working in Hawthorn was being able to go to my favourite student Indian place in Burwood Road (and previously in its tiny location in Glenferrie Road).  I loved their butter chicken.  I also used to be able to get a butter chicken simmer sauce from my local supermarket and make it at home.

Alas, I no longer work in Hawthorn and, what is worse, the simmer sauce is no longer on sale at my local supermarket. What to do?  Obviously I needed to work out how to make it myself.  I researched quite a few recipes but also found some Fern's butter chicken curry paste to use as a basis. I fear that traditional butter chicken is not a very healthy meal, but I tried to mitigate this by using light Greek yoghurt rather than the full fat yoghurt and cream I saw in some recipes, by leaving out the added salt and sugar, and by minimizing the amount of butter. I also left out the ground cashews because I didn't have any in the house.

I really enjoyed the resulting butter chicken. I served it with white rice and some vegetables (cauliflower, onion and green peas cooked with oil, turmeric and fenugreek and water). The vegetable recipe is for another time as I forgot to take any photos. But try the butter chicken recipe and let me know what you think.

Ingredients

1 kg skinless chicken thighs (about 7 thighs)
4 tsp Fern's butter chicken curry paste
1 lemon
300 gr light Greek yoghurt
100 gr unsalted butter
1 onion
2 cloves crushed garlic
50 gr tomato paste
400 gr crushed tomatoes


Mode

Combine the juice of the lemon and half the yoghurt and half the curry paste in a bowl
Roughly chop the chicken
Add to the mixture and mix thoroughly
Cover and marinade for at least 30 minutes
Preheat the oven to 220c
Place the chicken and marinade in a flat baking dish
Bake for 15 minutes and put aside
Dice the onion and crush the garlic
Melt the butter in a pad on the stovetop
Add onion and garlic and cook until translucent
Add the tomato paste and the rest of the curry paste and stir through
Add the crushed tomatoes and blend together thoroughly
Add the rest of the yoghurt and stir through
Finally add the chicken and marinade mixture and stir
Cover and simmer until all the ingredients have combined and the chicken is tender.
You can see the difference in colour and texture between the mixture before it has simmered and the final product at the head of  the post.

Meatballs with Middle Eastern flavour

Readers of this blog know that I really love meatballs in every shape and form and am constantly experimenting with different combinations of flavours. Recently I felt like some lamb ones and thought that Lebanese type flavours would be the way to go.  The resulting meatballs were indeed yummy.

Ingredients
450 gr minced lamb
1 onion
1 bunch of flat leaf parsley
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp sumac
Couple of grinds of black pepper
1 tbs pine nuts
1 egg
Flour
Olive oil


Mode


Place lamb in bowl
Dice onion and add to lamb
Chop parsley roughly and add to mixture
Add spices, pine nuts and egg and mix
Combine mixture thoroughly using hands
Using a dessertspoon and hands form meatballs
Roll balls in flour
Heat olive oil in pan
Add meatballs to oil and seal quickly
Continue to cook in pan turning regularly until cooked through
Enjoy with salad or vegetables

#blog12daysxmas Day 11 Citron salt chicken

I am very lucky to have a nephew who understands my love of food and cooking. This year for Christmas Bast gave me a few ingredients that I want to cook with.  One was citron sea salt flakes.  These sea salt flakes are the product of Cyprus and contain in addition to salt flakes turmeric and lemon flavour.  I love that these are products of the Mediterranean which is an area that Bast knows I love.

So I was wondering what to cook with them.  Then it hit me!  Abla's lemon chicken!  So that is what I did.  I did a variant of my variant of Abla's chicken using drumettes and citron salt.

Ingredients

10 chicken drummettes
2 teaspoon Citron salt flakes
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 citron 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.

I ate these chicken drummettes with a cucumber and tomato salad and they were delicious.

#blog12daysxmas Day 2 Pomegranate Chicken

For my #blog12daysxmas challenge I am going to be jumping around amongst my blogs as the fancy takes me.  For day 2 as food seems to have been uppermost in my mind for the last few days I am going to blog the recipe of the Pomegranate Chicken which I cooked last week. I love playing around with recipes and food and being on holidays gives me the opportunity to do more of it than when I am working in a full-time busy job.

So why pomegranate chicken? As always a number of triggers led to this dish. I had some chicken breasts that I wanted to cook and a friend sent me a recipe of a chicken salad she had made with pomegranate molasses.  What could I do with my chicken breasts that would have a pomegranate touch?  I read a bit of Claudia Roden for some Middle Eastern ideas and then I just started playing around with foods that I had in the kitchen.  If I may say so myself, the result was very yummy.  Well, it certainly was to me as it included so many of my favourite foods!

Ingredients

2 cups pomegranate & cranberry juice
1/2 cup baby lentils (French lentils)
4 chicken breasts
Flour
Olive oil
1 can chickpeas
Handful walnuts
1 green pepper
1 tsp Sumac
1 bunch coriander

Mode

Place the pomegranate and cranberry juice in a pan on the stove
Add lentils
Cover and bring to the boil
Reduce heat and leave simmering
Meanwhile roughly chop the chicken breasts
Flour the chicken pieces
Heat olive oil in frying pan
Quickly seal the chicken pieces in the oil and add to the simmering juice and lentils
Break up the walnuts and add
Add chickpeas and Sumac  and combine
Thinly slice the green pepper and add to the pan
Bring to the boil again and then reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of hours until all the flavours are absorbed and everything is tender
Roughly chop the bunch of coriander
Add half of it to the mixture about 10 minutes before serving and mix well
Sprinkle the rest of the fresh coriander on the chicken dish on serving.

Spanakopitta

One of my very favourite dishes of all time is spanakopitta.  I have had it in many places and in many shapes and forms.  But the one I love most is the one(s) that has evolved in my kitchen over time.  Of course, it isn't the same every time as I might use silver beet instead of spinach, or frozen spinach instead of fresh.  Or I sprinkle the top with sesame seeds instead of poppy seeds or I leave the top plain.

Spanakopitta is delicious fresh from the oven, but is still yummy heated in the microwave the day after and is fine cold too. I have used the mixture here to make a large spanakopitta but, of course, the filling can be used to make individual spanakopittes for each person or spanakopitakia for nibbles.

I cooked spanakopitta for a friend the other night and she described it as "refreshing."  I hadn't really thought of it in conjunction with that word before but it certainly is so when served with a fresh tomato and cucumber salad dressed simply with olive oil and torn basil leaves. Hmmm, heaven on a stick, she might also have said!

 

Ingredients

375 gr ricotta
200gr fetta
Parmesan or other yellow cheese
1 egg
1/2 tsp Sambal oelek
1 garlic clove
4 spring onions
1 packet of frozen spinach or 1 bunch fresh spinach
Phyllo pastry
Olive oil
Poppy seeds

Mode

Preheat the oven to 180c
Place the spinach in a microwavable bowl
Chop the spring onions roughly and add on top
Crush the garlic and add to the vegetables
Add Sambal oelek
Cover the bowl with greaseproof paper and cook in the microwave on high for about 5 minutes
Alternatively this can be cooked on the stovetop in the upper part of a steamer until the vegetables are tender
Meanwhile place the ricotta in a bowl
Crumble the fetta by hand on top and add a handful of grated Parmesan (or to taste)
Add the egg and stir to combine
When the vegetables are cooked add to the mixture and combine well
Using a pastry brush and olive oil line the bottom of a baking dish with about six layers of phyllo taking care to oil well between each layer
Add the cheese and spinach to the phyllo
Fold the phyllo over the mixture and cover with several layers of phyllo brushing with oil between each layer
Fold in the edges and oil the top layer
Sprinkle with poppy seeds
With a sharp knife cut the top of the pie into desired portions. DO NOT cut hrough the bottom of the pie
Cook for 45 minutes in 180c oven until top is crisp and golden
Leave to rest for 2-3 minutes after cooking
Then with a sharp knife cut the portions through to the bottom of the pie
Serve with salad.

Yummy Ricotta and Dill Nibbles

 

I have been making these ricotta and dill nibbles (or variants of same) for years.  It has been so long that I have no idea where I got the idea for them from. When I was trying to think of a savoury snack to take last night to the Collingwood Historical Society AGM, these suddenly came to mind.




Ingredients

375 gr ricotta
20 gr dill
1 egg
18 slices prosciutto
9 cherry tomatoes



Mode

Preheat oven to 180c
Chop dill roughly, discarding large stems
Place ricotta in bowl and add dill and egg
Stir to combine thoroughly
Cut each slice of prosciutto in half and use to line 18 small muffin tins by placing each half in the tin across each other
Add a heaped dessertspoon of the ricotta mixture to each muffin tin
Quarter the cherry tomatoes and place two quarters on top of the ricotta mixture in each tin
Cook in 180c oven for approximately 30 minutes
Makes 18 nibbles.

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.