Paella

Firstly, Nigel would like to say thank you for all the birthday greetings and good wishes he received from literally all round the world! He is not one for wanting to be in the spotlight and was therefore overwhelmed by all the publicity, but he was most appreciative nevertheless. :-)

A couple of weekends ago, I bought some Mozambican prawns from the seafood trader at the Saturday market.  I got home and then wondered what I was going to do with them!  I decided that paella sounded a good choice, despite being short of some of the ingredients I would usually use.  I found the following around the house.

Ingredients
About 10 cms or 4 inches chorizo, cut into thin slices
110g/4oz pancetta, cut into small dice
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 large onion, finely diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 tsp soft thyme leaves (1/2 teasp dry, if you have not got thyme in the garden)
1 small chilli, chopped
1 cup of rice
1 tsp paprika
1/2 cup dry white wine
About 3 cups of chicken stock, hot
3 chicken breasts, each chopped in large bite size pieces 

2 to 3 fillets of white fish cut into bite size pieces
1 cup of frozen peas 
1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter
6 to 8 Large cloves of garlic, separated and peeled
12 prawns, in shells, preferably raw

5 tbsp chopped green parsley
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Heat half the olive oil in a paella dish or heavy-based non stick frying pan. Add the chorizo and pancetta and fry until crisp. Add the garlic, onion and pepper and heat until softened.
 Add the thyme, chilli  and  rice, and stir until all the grains of rice are nicely coated and glossy. Now add the paprika and dry white wine and when it is bubbling, pour in the hot chicken stock, add the chicken pieces and cook for 5-10 minutes.  

Add the pieces of fish fillet. Sprinkle in the peas and chopped tomatoes and continue to cook gently for another 10 minutes.

Note - I always have hot water on hand, in case the rice takes up more liquid than expected, and I just add a little if the ingredients look a bit dry.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil  and butter with the garlic cloves in a separate pan and add the prawns. Fry quickly for a minute or two then add them to the paella. 

Scatter the chopped parsley over the paella and serve immediately.

For my usual recipe with all the normal ingredients see Here

Add the chorizo and pancetta

 Add the thyme, chilli  and  rice

Chicken, fish and peas added

Fry the prawns and the garlic

Add the prawns to the main dish and serve.

Bon appétit.  

 

See also - My Life Before Charente Updated 18/11/12

Beetroot with Orange Sauce and Five Spice Mango Chicken

As we have so many beetroot in the garden, I have been looking for new ways to cook them, especially as we both prefer them hot rather than cold.  The other day, I discovered this recipe here and we both loved it so much, that I thought that I must share it with you all.  It really is very special, and what was left over, tasted even better when re-heated the second day.

Beetroot with Orange Sauce

I dug out 3 quite big beetroot which I roasted, skinned, and cut into chip shapes. I am sure precooked beetroot would work just as well.

225 g dark brown sugar

150 ml malt vinegar

15 ml cornflour

Juice and grated rind of 3 oranges (I only had one, but I used all the zest and for the extra juice which I realised I needed, I added a bit of apple juice which I had on hand)

Preheat oven to 150°C/ 300°F/ Gas Mark 2. Put the strips of beetroot onto a baking tray.( I put them directly into a pyrex dish).

Mix the sugar with the vinegar in a pan over low heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Mix the cornflour and some of the orange juice together and set aside; then add the rest of the juice to the pan with the grated rind. Simmer for another 5 minutes and then stir in the cornflour mixture to thicken the ingredients. Pour over the beetroot and then place in the oven to warm - about 5-10 minutes, or until ready to serve.

This dish was definitely a 10/10 and I will be cooking it again and again.

The second night I served it with rice and the following recipe, but hot* not cold, see at the bottom:

Five Spice Mango Chicken

Serves 8

Preparation 15 mins (Chicken pre-cooked)

750 gr cooked chicken with no bone
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Mango Sauce

2 large mangoes peeled (I often use tinned if fresh are unavailable)
8 mild (I use hot!) peppadew peppers from jar. (These originate from S.Africa but I have seen them on the shelves in the UK and Australia. I am sure bottled small peppers would do as well, or a home roasted red pepper or two)
200g/8oz Greek yoghurt
6 tblesp mango chutney
1 tblesp Chinese 5 spice powder
Juice 1 lemon
Few drops of Tabasco sauce

Garnish

Fresh salad leaves
2 mild peppadew peppers thinly sliced
Lots of chopped parsley

1 For the sauce cut the flesh of 1 mango roughly into pieces and put into food processor. Add the rest of the ingredients and whiz until smooth and blended. Season with salt and pepper.

2 Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and mix with the mango sauce in a mixing bowl. ** Cut the flesh of the remaining mango into 1 cm pieces and mix in with the chicken mixture. Taste and check seasoning.

3 Spoon the chicken mixture into a dish, decorate with the salad leaves and sprinkle over the peppadew slices and parsley- serve cold.*

** If you want to prepare the day ahead, omit the chopped mango and leave it mixed with a little lemon juice in a bowl. Just stir in before serving.

* To serve hot simply add one teasp of cornflour to the mango mixture before blending in the processor. Then add the chicken and mango, put into a shallow oven proof dish and bake at 200ºC for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with peppadew and parsley and serve. ( I sprinkled with the pine nuts as I had some roasted leftover from a previous dish, I forgot the parsley!).

Cold, it was delicious with toasted pine nuts sprinkled over.  Hot, every bit as good!

This originates from a Mary Berry recipe and was sent to me by an "old" school friend. It really is fantastic; I have tried it both hot and cold.

See HERE For the original recipe. 

A very quick and easy dish to cook and the result is good enough to serve up at a dinner party.

Enjoy

P.S. 30 Jan 2012 17h00 It has just started snowing! So much for the mild winter!

DEVILLED CHICKEN (or Pork) LEFTOVERS AND COUSCOUS

This is another recipe that I have had for years and I have no idea where it originally came from!!  I use it often when I have small amounts of chicken or pork left over, because with the onion it is easy to make it 'stretch'.



Devilled Pork served with Couscous and Vegetables

DEVILLED CHICKEN (or Pork) LEFTOVERS

Ingredients

Left over chicken or pork
1 large onion
1 oz butter
½ pint chicken stock
2 rounded teasp of  mustard
1 teasp Worcestershire sauce
2 tablesp tomato sauce
1 teasp brown sugar
4 drops Tabasco sauce or to taste
2 level teasp cornflour
2 tablesp water
Salt and pepper

Chop onion and fry till slightly brown. Add stock and flavourings, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, sugar and Tabasco. Boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Add chopped chicken or pork, heat for 5 minutes. Blend cornflour and water together till smooth and stir into mixture. Simmer gently for 5 minutes. Season to flavour.

This is delicious and so easy to make. I used left-over smoked ham hock today, with duck stock that I had on hand (as you do!!).

MY COUSCOUS AND VEGETABLES. (for the 2 of us)

I chop up an onion and then anything else that I may have lying around in the fridge; this time I chopped a carrot, a celery stalk, half a red pepper and added a few frozen peas that I had in the freezer.  I tossed them all in a little oil and then cooked them gently for about 5 mins.  I then added one cup of boiling water and a teaspoon of chicken stock granules.  Bring all to the boil again and add 1/2 a cup of couscous, stir well, put the lid on the saucepan and allow to stand  for 5 to 10 minutes.  Fluff up with a fork and serve.

Enjoy.

Sweet Potatoes and Chicken with Fruit

Autumn is very definitely here, and although the oak tree is still green, other trees in the garden are shedding their leaves.  The shrubs are on the point of producing little red berries, which will certainly keep the birds happy for a while.

I only planted one single sweet potato, late in the year, mainly out of interest to see what would happen. There had not been a huge amount of greenery above the soil and I decided that, with the change of weather, the cold would  finish it off anyway. So I thought I might as well dig the plant out and throw it on the compost heap. I was amazed at the result and will definitely try to grow them again, but next year I will plant earlier. They are not huge, but enough for at least three meals for me. I have to say, I was quite excited at the result. You can see the length of them by the size of the board which is 240mm (9.5 inches) wide.

Last night I decided that I would cook a few of the smallest ones with some beans (I am still picking them from the garden) and a chicken thigh I had in the freezer.  Looking around to see what I had available I came up with the following.

Ingredients:

1 chicken thigh unfrozen. 

A small handful of dates

A small handful of raisins

Enough cider to cover the bottom of the dish by about 10mm (½ nch)

Quince jam to spread over the chicken

[As this was what I had available I had no choice, but I think I would make this dish with mixed ready to eat dried fruit, instead of the dates and raisins, under normal circumstances.  The jam is a matter of choice; fig would have been second on my list].

I put all of this in the microwave, covered, and cooked it on medium high until the chicken was tender. (Sorry forgot to time it, but it was not very long!)  Meanwhile, I chopped the smallest of the sweet potatoes and added to boiling water on the stove. After a few minutes, I added the beans, and five minutes later drained all the liquid off and served it up with the chicken- see below.  It was very yummy and I will certainly try this recipe again when I get back to the UK, but will double up, as of course there will be two of us once more.

This was so quick and easy and took me less than 30 minutes from start to finish, both preparation and cooking time.