Spicy Chicken

I had this delicious chicken dish at my aunty’s house whilst in Melbourne over Christmas, and immediately had to try it myself when I got home. It did not disappoint, and was fabulous served with a light and refreshing Cucumber & Dill Salad and some steamed broccolini.

This salad was amazing! I did it exactly as the recipe stated, and bought a piece of Danish feta to sprinkle over the top as I thought this would be a great addition to the flavours of cucumber, dill and zucchini – however, I completely forgot until we’d finished eating, that the feta was still sitting in the fridge waiting to be used! Oh well, I’ll try that idea next time, as I fully intend to make this salad again.

You can use whatever chicken pieces you like – I love drumsticks, and they’re great for picking at cold the next day. This would be a great picnic dish too.

My quantities are double the original, so increase/decrease accordingly as you see fit!

Aunty Helen’s Spicy Chicken

1 tbsp olive oil

8 chicken drumsticks

Spice Rub:

2 tsp salt

4 tsp sugar

2 tsp ground pepper (I had a jar of ground pepperberries so used that)

2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp curry powder

2 tsp dry mustard powder

Sauce:

6 tbsp mango or lemon chutney

2 tbsp light soy sauce

2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

a splash of white wine

Combine spice mixture and coat chicken in it (I placed it all in a plastic bag to shake it around easily). Leave for at least 1 hour (overnight is good) in the fridge.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and brown the chicken on all sides. Place in a casserole or baking dish.

Combine remaining ingredients in a small saucepan, and bring to a simmer over low heat.

Spoon over the chicken pieces.

Cover with foil or lid and bake at 180C for 40 minutes.

Remove foil/lid and cook, uncovered for a further 20 minutes.

Happy Summer Fooding!

You Say You Want a Revolution….

Layer upon layer upon layer

A quinoa one, that is. Quinoa has been a super food winner for the last couple of years, and I’ve been on that bandwagon since living in Chile, where it has always been a commonly found staple food, and for good reason – it tastes great, is easy to cook, is suitable for those with wheat allergies, and of course is extremely good for you.

There is a plethora (I just wanted to use that word cos’ it’s a cool one!) of quinoa cookbooks around these days, and I eagerly scour through every new one that comes in at my work. The recipe below is adapted from Cabbage Crockpot Casserole, from Patricia Green & Carolyn Hemming’s new cookbook, Quinoa Revolution.

I don’t usually go in for crockpot recipes that involve a heap of pre-preparation – I do like to just throw it all in – but I had plenty of time on this day so was happy to brown the mince before putting it in the crockpot, and it was simple enough to do. Everything else is just layered over the top and then it is switched on and ignored for the day.

I don’t feel the passata on the top added anything really, so next time I will just leave that top bit out – it doesn’t really mix in through the rest, and just stays as a layer of tomato “paste”, when you serve it. Just tinned tomatoes is enough I think.

Layered Beef Casserole

1 tbsp olive oil

500 gms minced beef

1 brown onion, cut into wedges

4 slices rindless bacon, fat cut off, roughly chopped

3/4 cup red quinoa

1 green capsicum, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 green cabbage, roughly chopped

cracked pepper, to taste

400 gm can diced tomatoes

700 ml bottle bought passata

Heat olive oil in a large pan or wok, and saute the beef for a couple of minutes, stirring to break up lumps, until lightly browned. Drain in a colander and if it is a fatty mince, rinse through with hot water.

Place meat in crockpot. Place all other ingredients on mince, layered in the order given.

Cook on LOW for 8 hours or HIGH 4 hours.

If desired, serve with mashed potatoes and a green vegetable, or salad and garlic bread.

Serves 4-6

I don’t think this wins a lot of points for looks, but the flavours are great.

Happy Fooding!

Another Quick Salad

Creating a healthy meal in a hurry does not have to be complicated. This salad incorporated what I had on hand at the time, as well as including beetroot and pear, two things that (according to practitioners of Chinese medicine) are very good for the skin. As I have had rosacea for years, I try anything and everything to give my skin a helping hand.

Steam 1 whole beetroot in the microwave (skin on or off, up to you). Trim roots and cut into wedges.

Place a heap of baby spinach leaves on your plate, and top with beetroot wedges, chopped pieces of ripe pear, chopped avocado, bits of cheese of your choice (I used torn bits of shaved Jarslberg as that’s what I had, but I also like feta or blue, or sauted cubes of yummy haloumi) and a sprinkling of walnuts.

For a dressing, just whisk together some extra-virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar (use balsamic if you can’t find sherry vinegar, which is expensive but lovely for this kind of thing) and a bit of dijon mustard – drizzle over the salad and tuck in!

Happy Summer Fooding!

Cauli Continues…

Cauliflower is so cheap here right now! It has a very short “cheap” season here in WA, and for most of the year is expensive, so I’ve made the most of the current availability.

I had a recipe from somewhere online, can’t remember where, for really easy cauliflower fritter things, and intended to make those tonight for dinner. I haven’t been cooking much lately, just working and coming home tired and really just haven’t been bothered, a lot of the time – but this morning I was super organised and had the cauliflower all cut up ready to go, before I left home.

So…..I arrived home, cooked the cauli ’til tender, and added the other ingredients. The instructions then said to form the mixture into patties and sauté….WELL, this mixture was boiling hot, and too “wet” to form into anything resembling a firm patty. So I had to rethink…..I also didn’t feel like standing over a stove doing fritters in batches, which takes a while let’s face it.

So…..instead, I placed the mixture in a baking dish and topped with a few slices of tomato and some parmesan cheese, and baked for 20 minutes. It was absolutely delicious – actually quite spicy from the cayenne pepper, which had much more of a peppery kick than I expected it to.

I guess this is more of a side dish, the way I ended up making it – but I just piled a heap in a bowl and ate it with a spoon for my dinner lol. Good stuff.

Cauliflower Gratin

1 head cauliflower, cut into large florets

2 eggs

1/3 cup tasty/cheddar cheese, grated

1/3 cup breadcrumbs

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

60 gms parmesan cheese, grated

1 tomato, sliced

Cook the cauliflower in boiling water until tender – about 10 mins. Drain, mash and add the eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs and cayenne pepper.

Place mixture in a lightly greased baking dish (I used a square ceramic dish 20 cm x 20 cm approx).

Top with tomato slices and parmesan cheese.

Bake at 180C for 25 minutes until top is golden and bubbling.

Serves 6 as a side dish.

Happy Winter Fooding!

 

Need to Get Healthy Again….

Salsa

I had a severe meat overdose last week.

Firstly, I made a beef stir-fry which lasted me for two evening meals – no particular recipe, just chucked in some marinated beef strips plus whatever veggies I had and a few sauces. It was good.

Secondly, I tried the Indian cafe at the end of my street, for the first time (even though it’s been there for over 2 years….) on Friday night – I bought takeaway lamb saagwala, rice, naan bread and vegetable pakoras. Apart from the pakoras, which were delicious, the rest was awful – undercooked, tough lamb with no flavour, and too-chewy naan bread. The service was also very poor – 25 minutes to get a takeaway order when there was only one order before me and one table of 6 in the actual restaurant. Plus, the girl taking the orders stopped halfway through an order to take an obviously personal phone call, which she then proceeded to take outside to carry on in private! I won’t be going back there again. Shame, as it is so close to home and they home-deliver for free if I really can’t be bothered walking 100 metres haha.

Thirdly, on Saturday, I decided to cook lamb shanks in a cook-in-the-bag thingy, with roasted veg. This was quite lovely – I don’t use a lot of pre-prepared foodstuffs, but I like the convenience of these flavour sachet/bag things for an easy, family-style meal occasionally. I had, however, eaten the leftover lamb saagwala, on a roll at lunchtime (because despite its lack of flavour excitement, I do hate to waste food, especially when an animal has died to provide it), plus I had a slice of roast beef on my crumpet for breakfast, so the whole day was very meat-intense, which is not like me.

And finally, on Sunday I went to “high tea” at a posh hotel in the afternoon. I deliberately ate nothing but a crumpet early in the morning, to build up a good appetite. I will write about my total pig-out separately, but suffice it to say, I did not need dinner that night and in fact felt quite disgustingly bloated and huge afterwards. Not only that, but the skirt I wore to the high tea was tight and it is usually quite a loose fitting one, so that means I still haven’t physically gotten over my excess of cheese and pastry whilst in the UK!

Time has come for some detoxifying……for me that means not eating meat for a while – not that I will ever completely be a vegetarian, as I do love a good curry, roast or  meat stir-fry. But I know my body, and I do just feel a lot healthier when I stick to veg & fish/seafood. I’d like to say I would give up alcohol to detox, but hmmmmm that will never happen. I have to have something to keep me sane….

I’m really big on mushrooms at the moment, so this is what I had last night – I simply placed 200 gms (9) cup mushrooms (stalks cut off then finely chopped) in a baking dish and topped with 100 gms crumbled feta, the chopped mushroom stalks, 50 gms pitted kalamata olives, cracked pepper and some fresh basil leaves. Baked it for 30 minutes at 160C and served with a freshly made salsa – in this case I used the kernels from 1 corn cob (I don’t bother blanching it, just slice it off raw – yummo), 1 red onion (finely chopped), 1 tomato (finely chopped), 1 avocado (chopped), a pinch of salt, cracked pepper and a splash of lime juice.

Mushrooms, Feta, Olives

This was a delicious and healthy comfort food – filling and “meaty” tasting thanks to the mushrooms, but without the blurrrrggggghhh feeling of eating too much meat in one hit.

This mushroom idea actually works well as a side dish, rather than the main meal that I made of it. I made this quantity just for me – it was too much of course, but bearing in mind that mushrooms shrivel a lot when they cook, you would need to increase the quantities if you wanted this to be a main dish for a few people or a side dish for a large group.

Mushrooms + Salsa = Yum

Happy Fooding!

Jumpin’ Jezebel(le)….

I had a spur of the moment brunch yesterday, whilst wandering the antique/coffee strip at the historic town of Guildford. It is only 15 minutes drive from me, but I went there by train, as it is their monthly craft market day and I expected parking to be an issue. I have never been to this market before, and was expecting big things….only to be pretty disappointed. It was just one room (the old town hall) with about a dozen stalls selling value-priced but not very exciting stuff. I could easily have found a parking space as well, but it was still nice to just wander up and down browsing – there are several antique/curio/collectibles shops and an excellent secondhand book shop – always worth a delve into.

As usual I had a book with me, so I decided to stop and have an early lunch at Jezebelle, a fairly new tapas bar/cafe. It was too early for tapas so I had brekky instead, which was absolutely delicious. I had the “hot smoked salmon cake, poached eggs & avocado”. There were 2 eggs, perfectly poached, except a bit cold by the time I finished mucking about taking photos haha, but that was my own fault and I am quite happy with cold food anyway. The salmon cakes (x2) were baked rather than fried, so not greasy and kind of like a mini hashbrown/frittata thing. The dish didn’t come with bread apparently so I asked for some rye toast with it, and this came with a tomato/onion salsa on top that was quite spicy and blended perfectly with the other flavours.

I had English Breakfast tea (it was the silk bags from Tea Drop, who seem to have a completely monopoly on coffee shop/restaurant supplying here in WA these days – it is nice tea, but I would prefer it a little stronger – I don’t think they put enough tea in the bags) and a glass of house sparkling. After all, it says on the menu that champagne is okay to drink any time, as it is always 12.00pm somewhere. I took them at their word.

The decor here is very modern – posh toilets! – and the service was good. The staff were all “young and hip” and very friendly. There was a family group arriving at the same time as me, and they were the customers from hell – they asked to be moved to a different table 3 times (just to be painful, as there was nothing wrong with any of the seating/view/light/temperature arrangements and you could choose to sit outside or inside) – I could see the poor staff doing their best to please them and no doubt wishing they would just go away! Thankfully, this lot only had coffees and didn’t stay all that long, as they were loud and had snivelling whiny kids with them, right behind me. When you are alone with a good book and have ‘been there, done that’ you don’t want rude, noisy kids mucking up your quiet Sunday morning! That’s my ‘old person rant’ over with anyway lol.

Prices were comparable to elsewhere in Perth: $16 for my main dish which is pretty good considering there was no charge for the toast (not sure if that was a mistake or not) and $4.50 for the tea. The only thing I realised when I got home and checked the bill, was that they actually charged me $18 for a premium glass of champers, when I asked for the house sparkling which should have cost $9.00. The reason I didn’t notice at the time, was that 1) I thought they were charging me extra for my toast, and 2) I had a 25% off discount by using the Entertainment card, so in my head I thought the total was about right, at the time. Hmmm, well my fault for not checking the bill properly at the time I suppose.

Had I been there a bit later in the day, there is live music from 1-3pm on Sundays, which would have been very nice alongside a few tapas dishes.

Happy Brunching!

Cheese & Herb Tomatoes

I’ve raved about the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook series before, and this tasty tomato side dish is from the AWW Microwave Cookbook 2. Both of the microwave books are out of print, but I just picked up a secondhand copy from the local Salvos for my daughter – op shops and market stalls always have a few AWW cookbooks going for a song, so they’re very easy to find.

I fought having a microwave at all, for years, because I thought I would only use it for heating things up and defrosting. When I finally bought one, about 20 years ago, I was determined to learn how to use it properly and actually COOK in it, to make it worth the cost investment (they were a lot more expensive then, and my budget was tight!).

Both of the AWW microwave cookbooks were invaluable in helping me get the hang of this newfangled, quick-cooking technology, and I still use recipes from both books on a regular basis. I’ve shared a couple with you – Satay Chicken and Scalloped Potato & Bacon – and I’m sure I’ll share more with you in future.

I had children who were fussy eaters (thankfully they grew up and got over it, eventually), and a husband who was even worse! This tomato dish suited everyone’s tastes, although I had to pretend that the cheese on top was tasty cheese, as just mention of “spew cheese” would have made the dish inedible in the kids’ minds!!!

I use fresh basil whenever I have it growing (it loves the hot Summers here in Perth, and there’s a big clump growing at the moment in the communal bit of garden belonging to the flat I live in), but dried is fine too.

Cheese & Herb Tomatoes

500 gms tomatoes

30 gms butter

1/3 cup breadcrumbs

2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 tsp dried basil leaves

1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves

1/3 cup grated fresh parmesan cheese

Cut tomatoes into 1cm thick slices. Place slices, slightly overlapping, in a large shallow dish (I find a pie plate works well).

Melt butter in a small bowl in microwave; stir in breadcrumbs and herbs, and cook on HIGH for a further 1 minute, stirring occasionally.

Stir in cheese, and sprinkle mixture evenly over tomatoes.

Cook on HIGH for about 4 minutes or until tomatoes are heated through.

Serves 4.

Happy Fooding!

Annette’s Salad

At an OIDFA gathering last weekend, we had a yummy salad of chicken, salad and rolls, including a delicious bowl of salad made by one of the members, Annette.

We all asked how this was made and were told it was just avocado, feta cheese, red onion, tomato and basil – topped with bought Italian dressing! How simple. So I made some for my dinner one night this week – I added fresh bean shoots as well, for some extra crunch and nutrition, and it was very good but not QUITE as good as Annette’s. Maybe it was the brand of Italian dressing I bought, or probably it’s a case of something never being as good as the original – who knows, but for sure it was edible and very healthy.

I don’t think you need specific quantities for this, but here is how I did it:

Annette’s Salad

1 ripe avocado, chopped

100 gms feta cheese, chopped (I used low-fat)

1 red onion, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped

a handful of fresh bean shoots

1/3 cup Italian dressing (I used fat-free)

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Toss, refrigerate until ready to serve, and toss again.

Serves 4 as a side dish.

Happy Summer Fooding!

Crockpot Vegetable Chilli

Healthy and filling, this slow cooker chilli is the perfect example of the ‘chuck it all in and turn it on’ philosophy that slow cookers are all about. To me, a slow cooker should be about convenience, so the recipes where you still have to saute things on the stove first etc are just not my idea of fun. I want my crockpot to serve my needs, and this chilli suits the slow cooker ideal so well. Plus, it tastes great!

Vegetable Chilli

2 medium zucchini (OR 1 large eggplant), chopped

1 green or red capsicum, chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled & chopped

2 celery sticks, sliced (optional – include leaves as well)

2 brown onions, chopped

425 gm can chopped tomatoes

425 gm can chickpeas, drained & rinsed

2 tsp chilli paste

2 tsp cumin, ground

225 jar salsa (hot)

140 gms tomato paste

425 gm can corn kernels, drained

cracked pepper, to taste

Place all ingredients in crockpot. Cook on LOW for 8 hours. Serve with rice or tortillas.

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

Happy Fooding!

Smashing Summer Salad!

Bright, vibrant and fresh, this salad was made by my daughter on Christmas Day – it is in fact a recipe her friend made up. There aren’t proper quantities for the salad part – just toss it in until it looks good!

I’ve listed the dressing ingredients as it was made; however, I found this amount of sesame oil to be too overpowering. Next time I will only use a few drops.

AJs Salad

cucumbers (we used the small Lebanese ones – sliced thinly)
cherry tomatoes (chopped in half)
fresh coriander (chopped)
snow peas (blanched in microwave for 1 minute first)
sweet potato (we used 2 – peeled, diced, and roasted with olive oil for about 15-20 minutes – be careful they don’t burn)
pine nuts

Dressing

1 part balsamic vinegar
1 part sesame oil
1 part extra-virgin olive oil
pinch of sugar
sesame seeds, to taste

Mix all ingredients together, toss well and refrigerate until serving. Toss again just before serving.

Happy Summer Fooding!