Chicken or pork marinade

Someone in my household refuses to eat chicken breast or pork chops, unless they have been marinated, especially when they are going to be cooked on the barbecue. I use a marinade meant for tofu from Sarah Brown's Vegetarian Cookbook, a vegetarian classic that was a favourite in my student days.

For 2 chicken breasts or pork chops

1 small onion, chopped very finely
4 tbsp peanut or sunflower oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
3 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp dry sherry
2 tsp honey
1 tbsp grated ginger
3 garlic cloves, crushed

Mix all ingredients, then add the meat and let it marinate for 2-3 hours. Take the meat out for cooking. Pour the marinade trough a sieve and let the juice boil for a few min. if you would like a tasty sauce.
No pic in these extremely busy times.

Roast chicken with fries

This WE we were house-and-dogsitting at my mother's. For city birds like us, it's great to get out to the countryside, and have some space. We took advantage of the facilities and invited family and friends over for a very traditional Sunday dinner: roast chicken with fries and apple sauce. As a kid we had this every Sunday, except for the fries. We used to be a very untypical Belgian family who didn't own a 'friteuse' for deep frying for a very long time.

For starters I prepared soup in an enormous pot, according to my basic soup recipe, using onion, leek, green celery, fennel, broccoli, parsnip and 'knolselder' (root celery, celeriac?).

The fries were freshly cut from potatoes, since someone in my household strongly objects to deep frozen ones.

Some were cut by hand, with a very sharp Japanese ceramic knife

and some using a special tool for cutting fries - I couldn't believe I still could find this in my mother's house after perhaps more than 20 years.

After this the fries were soaked for min. 1 hour. Then they were pre-baked at 170°C, and later properly baked at 180°C. Baking them twice is a secret of Belgian fries.

The chickens were washed and dried. Inside they were seasoned very liberally with salt and pepper, and a little sage and rosemary. You can add a lemon cut in 4 on the inside.

On the outside the skin is loosened a little on top and then you put some sage and rosemary in between the flesh and the skin. These herbs should be fresh or soaked, to prevent the skin from breaking when in the oven. Then rub the skin with olive oil and season liberally again with pepper and salt.

Our helper in the kitchen said it was a pity that the chickens were dead, since they couldn't enjoy the massage any more.

Put them in a 200°C oven for about 15 min. Take them out of the oven, turn them upside down, season the other side and put them back in the oven and lower the heat to 180°C. Reverse them every 15 min and pour some of the juices over the chicken. Total cooking time is about 50 min- 1 hour.

The chicken was served with fries, apple sauce (from my mother's deep freezer ;-) salad and home made mayonaise. It all tasted terrific.

My guests brought cakes for dessert, but I forgot to photograph them. Labelga did though. Cakes on Sunday is also a real big tradition here.

I had also prepared a few healthy appetizers and brought real good pistachioes and fried corn from Istanbul.

To my surprise, the vegetables were very popular with the kids.

After the meal, albeit not without difficulty, we managed to stir ourselves for a walk.

A strange phenomenon was observed.

Thank you all guys for a very cosy afternoon - exactly like a Sunday should be.

Note

For my own records I noted the quantities. We were 9 adults, 2 big children and 3 smaller ones. We had 5 chickens which was a good estimate. We had 6-7 kg potatoes for the fries, which was far too much. 5 kg would have done. One big box of apple sauce would have done, I had opened another one. 2 bags of salad were OK and mayonaise made with 2 egg yolks as well.

Simple chicken stew

Tonight I prepared a simple, quick and light chicken stew, based on the recipe for treya by Claudia Roden.


Serves 2-3

2 chicken breasts, chopped
1 fennel, washed and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
4 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
6-8 cardamom pods
a few parsley sprigs, chopped
1 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp sunflower oil
salt

Put all ingredients in a pan and add water until the ingredients are not entirely covered.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer until it's cooked (around 15 min).

Notes
I had added 2 slices of pancetta, but this didn't do much for the flavour, so next time I will leave it out.
You might add a dried chilli pepper or lots of white pepper. Ginger could also be nice.
On a previous occasion I prepared this dish without potatoes and served it with rice - a special Claudia Roden version of rice with vermicelli, called roz bil shaghria.

Roast chicken with potatoes and mushrooms

My neighbours had a busy weekend moving stuff etc so I cooked them a simple Sunday dinner.
The recipe is from R. C. Sidoli's "The cooking of Parma".
Forgot to take a pic though :-(

Serves 4

16 potatoes (small - medium size)
1 chicken, cut in 8 pieces
500 g mushrooms, whole

Put all ingredients in an oven dish, season with a lot of pepper and salt. No oil is required.
Bake in oven at 200°C for 1h30 - 2h, until everything is cooked.
Mix the ingredients regularly while baking.

I served this with a turnip soup and pears with star anise.

Note: the chicken legs took a bit longer than the wings.
The vegetables tasted so delicious that everybody ate loads of them.

Brussels goodies

One week ago I had friends over from the UK, so I stocked up on a lot of goodies from Brussels, before fleeing with them to the countryside. One night we had a big dinner.

One speciality here are 'grijze garnalen', a small type of shrimp. I got a salad with these and another one with crab from a renowned fishmonger. We had this on toast as an appetizer.

One very small hand was tucking in:

As a main course I prepared a chicken stew. I've posted it here before, just used carrots and parsley in stead of Jerusalem artichokes and coriander.

This is what was inside the pot:

And this is what it looked like on a plate:

In Belgium this is the season for strawberries. Labelga brought some along:

I had also gotten ice cream from the adventurous ice cream maker Comus & Gasterea, just around the corner from my appartment in Brussels. His ice cream is excellent, made from top quality ingredients, and he makes strange tastes such as curry, ginger, rose, chocolat sorbet...The owner has a rather oldfashioned approach, so I wasn't surprised not to find a website. I did find a few sites mentioning him though, such as this article in the newspaper Le Soir.

I went for classics: vanilla,

strawberry


and mango.

Everything met with success ;-)

Thank you labelga for all the pics!

Chicken stew with Jerusalem artichoke

In my previous risotto post I discovered a really nice combination of vegetables and decided to try that with chicken. I must have said before that I looooooove Jerusalem artichoke and it came out terribly well in this dish. I invented the dish, based on a recipe for minty carrot chicken from Claudia Roden's book of Jewish food.



Serves 4

2 onions, peeled and chopped
12 chicken wings
700g - 1 kg Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and chopped
2 cups of peas (I used organic frozen ones)
lots of fresh coriander leaves, chopped
1 tsp turmeric
pepper & salt
sunflower oil

Fry onions in oil on low heat until they are soft and golden. Add turmeric and stir it. Raise the heat a little and add the pieces of chicken. Season them well with pepper and salt. Fry for 5 min, turn around, season again and fry the other side for 5 min.
Transfer the chicken to a big cooking pot, add boiling water, add the vegetables and if necessary some more salt. Chicken and vegs should be just about covered with water.
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and let the dish simmer for 15 min, half covered with the lid. Remove the lid and let it simmer for 20-30 min, until the Jerusalem artichokes are soft. Add the coriander in the last 5 min of cooking.


I served this with basmati rice and a little side salad with lettuce, red beetroot, parsley and gomasio. My guests loved the meal. They were my neighbours who are going to move soon and whom I will miss a lot! They took the pictures which I really like.

Chicken broth

Broth is my favourite dish. My mother used to make it when I was a kid, and I took out the vegetables and ate them first and then slurped the liquid which is so delicious.
Since a few years I've started making my own broth, based on my mother's and her sister's recipe. It's not difficult but you need a lot of time.


Ingredients
1 chicken
2 carrots, peeled and cut in pieces of 3 cm
2 leeks, cleaned and cut in pieces of 3 cm
2-3 branches celery, cleaned and cut in pieces of 3 cm
1 onion, peeled
2 shallots, peeled
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 turnip, peeled and cut in big pieces
1 parsnip, peeled and cut in big pieces
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp dried thyme (or better: a few branches of fresh thyme)
a few branches parsley
2-3 cloves
8-12 black pepper corns
salt

Wash the chicken and put it in a pan with 2-3 l cold water.
Bring this to the boil.
Take off the froth on medium heat during 5-10 min.
Add the vegetables. Stick the cloves in the whole onion before adding it.
Add parsley and herbs. You can bind them together with cooking thread (this is called 'bouquet garni' in French), so they are easy to take out in the end.
Add whole pepper corns and salt to taste.
Bring this to the boil again.
Then lower the heat and leave it to simmer for 2-3 hrs on very low heat.
Take out the chicken, pour the soup through a sieve into another pan and throw the vegetables and everything else that remains in the sieve away.
Take the skin and bones off the chicken and put the pieces of meat away.
Leave the broth to stand in a cool spot overnight.
In the morning, take off the fat carefully with paper towel.
The broth is now ready for use.

I froze half of the broth and made a soup with the rest.
For this I chopped a few vegetables very finely (1 leek, 1 carrot, 1 potato, 1 onion and 1 turnip). I heated the broth until it boiled, added the vegetables and let them simmer on low heat for 10 min.
You can eat the meat cold or put it back in the soup to heat it.

Notes

You can add a little vermicelli or other pasta in the soup.
I also make this with beef in stead of chicken.
Claudia Roden advises to keep the cooked meat in a little bit of broth.

Chicken in coconut sauce

Yesterday my cousin who lives in Tanzania told me she prepares this dish very often there. It's a recipe by Claudia Roden, also called macalcal or masala chicken. I still had one pumpkin left that my other cousin gave me, so I decided to add this.

Serves 6

4 onions, chopped

4 tbsp sunflower or sesame seed oil

6 garlic cloves

7 cm ginger root, crushed or ground

1 tsp turmeric

6 pieces of chicken (e.g. breasts)

salt

a lot of white pepper

500 g potatoes

500 g pumpkin

1 can coconut milk or 75 g santen (creamed coconut)

1 tsp sugar

100 g cashew nuts or almonds

2 tbsp raisins

Fry the onions on low heat in the oil until they are soft and golden.

Add garlic and fry for a few more minutes.

Add ginger and turmeric and stir this.

Add the pieces of chicken and pepper and salt. Fry this a bit and turn the chicken around.

After 5 min, add the potatoes, pumpkin and coconut milk. Add hot water until everything is just covered.

Let the dish simmer for 30-45 min until everything is cooked.

Add cashew nuts or almonds and raisins and heat for a few min.