Everything but Beetroot

This really isn’t difficult to make once you’ve got the ingredients and it’s just delicious.

Some of the individual ingredients – the shrimp paste and fish sauce – smell truly dreadful before they’re combined with the others. Don’t be put off they do add to the flavour and not in a bad way!

Paste Ingredients:

• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 2 red chili, deseeded
• 2 green chili, deseeded
• 2 lemon grass stalks, chopped
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• 5 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp Shrimp Paste
• 2 tbsp chopped coriander stalks
• zest and juice of 2 limes

Blitz this in a food processor, looks like a lot but you can freeze half if you want.

Other ingredients:

• 220 ml coconut cream
• 400ml coconut milk
• 100g green beans
• 400g cooked chicken, cubed
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 tomatoes quartered
• Coriander leaves to garnish

Method

Heat the coconut cream in a large saucepan over a medium heat for 3-4 minutes. Stir in the curry paste and cook for 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk and green beans. Cook for 3 minutes. Add everything else (except the coriander leaves) and warm through.

Serve over rice.

Fry strips of chicken in a little oil until golden. Remove from wok and replace with onions cut into thin(ish) wedges.  After a couple of minutes add green beans, red pepper, and a mix of balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, chopped chili  and a teaspoon of sugar.  Return chicken to the wok and stir through along with chopped almonds.

This was supposed to be something different, but necessity changed about half the ingredients. I quite enjoyed the result, but my partner wasn’t as enthusiastic.

The original recipe called for borlotti beans, thyme and kale none of which were in our kitchen or the local shop this evening, so they went out the window and in came potatoes, broccoli, blackeyed beans, dried thyme, and baby spinach, and a dash of sherry.

Ingredients

• Chicken thighs
• half an onion, thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• a tin of blackeyed beans
• 250 ml of chicken stock
• new potatoes
• broccoli
• cooking sherry
• baby leaf spinach

Method

Boil your potatoes until almost done. At the same time either fry or roast the chicken until browned. Once done set aside.

Fry the onion over a medium heat for about 5 minutes, add the garlic and after about 1 minute the beans, dried thyme and chicken stock.

Add the chicken and potatoes and simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes.  10 minutes before the finish add the broccoli.

Stir in the sherry and wilt the spinach.

Serves 2.

Chicken with Blackeyed Beans [pdf]

We had a barbecue yesterday and one of the things I particularly wanted to try were the fish; sardines and mackerel.

There’s something very reassuring about cooking on a barbecue; it’s a very bloke thing as this video lampoons so effectively.

I’d marinaded the fish earlier in the day and just turned them once or twice once they were on the barbecue. Because both are quite oily fish they barbecued really well, but I’d say the mackerel were more successful, or probably I should have taken the sardines off a bit before I did.

Marinade

• 2 tsp of black peppercorns, crushed
• 1 tsp of sea salt
• 2 tsp of rosemary, finely chopped
• 2 tsp of thyme, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed

As the photo on the right demonstrates it wasn’t just fish for supper. A friend had given me a recipe for tabbouleh which I made the night before and I spent the morning on a marinade for the chicken and a grapefruit and avocado salad.

Tabbouleh

• 200g couscous
• one red onion, finely chopped
• 400g ripe comatose,diced
• half a cucumber, diced
• juice of 2 lemons

Just mix everything together and leave overnight in the fridge.

Chicken Marinade

•  3 tsp of grated fresh ginger
• zest and juice of a lemon and lime
• a couple of handfuls of coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Grapefruit and Avocado Salad

• 2 red grapefruit
• 2 avocado
• watercress
• sherry vinegar
• olive oil

Cut the grapefruit up – retaining some of the juice for the dressing – getting rid of all the pith.  Slice the avocados and mix with the watercress and grapefruit.  Dress with the remaining juice, vinegar and oil.