This curry really wasn't supposed to be like this and I don't mind admitting it. If I had have been paying attention, it was supposed to be my Chilli Chicken Curry with Courgettes. However, I wasn't paying attention and the aforesaid curry seemed to be too complicated for my head to handle, so I decided to wing it. Aaaah, how often does winging it result in a great recipe? Not as often as I'd like, to be honest, but in this case it did.
I've been having problems with my chicken recently. Now I don't THINK it's my cooking methods - or I flipping hope it's not my cooking methods - but it seems to often come up hard or even tough in the finished dish. I'm coming to the conclusion that the quality of chicken breasts that aren't organic, corn fed, gold plated and groomed by faerie folk, is just pretty parlous. A kind of "keep the good chicken for the people with money, fob the rest off with the hard as nails, brought up in Wormwood Scrubs, whatchoolookinat chicken" situation. So I've been thinking about how I can alter my cooking methods to best cope with this reluctant to be cooked chicken - and this was my first foray into this turned on its head kind of cooking and, to my palate anyway, it seems to have worked.
The chicken spends much less time in the pan, but it didn't seem to lose anything for having not been cooked for long in the curry sauce, so I'm happy with that. The curry sauce is made with the same oil that the courgettes and chicken were cooked in, so none of the flavour is lost. However, the big joy with this recipe is the cherry tomatoes. By piercing the stalk end of each tomato, it allows the sauce to penetrate and the short time they are in the pan means that each tomato while cooked, still retains the characteristic sweetness and juice of a cherry tomato. They are nothing short of little flavour bombs that fill your mouth with deliciousness and refresh you as they go. Just remember to keep your mouth closed when you bite one! Nobody enjoys being targeted by someone else's cherry tomato explosion, particularly not one that comes with curry sauce.
I really enjoyed this curry. I liked its lighter nature, it has a cleanliness that a cream based curry, or even a lentil based curry, doesn't have. The courgettes lend it a natural sweetness and the tamarind sauce balances that with a touch of sour. Frisky enough with its medium curry powder, black pepper and red chilli flakes to satisfy those who enjoy a spicy curry, it can easily be pepped up by simply adding more red chilli if you like your curries hotter than the average.
I'd better get on and type out the recipe, before I forget it!
CHERRY BOMB & CHICKEN CURRY (serves 3)
Ingredients :
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
20g salted butter
1 courgette, cut into bite sized chunks
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced
sea salt
ground black pepper
2 red onions, diced small
2 garlic cloves, chopped
0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
3 heaped tsp of medium curry powder
1 heaped tsp of Tikka curry powder
1 tsp paprika
a pinch of red chilli flakes
400ml hot water
2 tbsp tamarind sauce (I used East End brand)
1 heaped tbsp creamed coconut
10-12 tiny cherry tomatoes, pierced at the stalk end with a sharp knife
1 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped (keep some back for garnish)
Cooked, hot, Basmati rice to serve.
Method :
Heat the rapeseed oil and butter together in a deep pan or wok over a medium heat, until the butter is foamy. Add the courgette pieces and fry until just beginning to take on colour. Turn each courgette piece and continue frying until beginning to soften but still fairly firm. Using a slotted spoon, remove the courgettes to a warm bowl and reserve, leaving as much of the buttery oil behind as possible.
Increase the heat under the pan and add the chicken slices. Season with a pinch of sea salt & black pepper and fry until just beginning to turn golden, then turn and repeat on the other side. Cook until just cooked through - a little bit of pink showing is okay, as they will receive more cooking once added to the sauce. Using a slotted spoon, remove from the pan to the bowl with the courgettes and reserve. Retain the oil and cooking juices in the pan.
Add the chopped onions, garlic and cinnamon to the pan and fry until the onions and garlic are softened. Take care not to allow the garlic pieces to burn.
Add the two curry powders, paprika and chilli flakes to the pan and stir well while they cook out. This should take about 3-4 minutes.
Add the water and tamarind sauce and stir well to combine. Pour any cooking juices into the pan from the courgette and chicken bowl and stir to combine. Bring to a lively simmer and reduce the heat. Simmer the sauce, stirring from time to time, until reduced by approximately a third.
Add the coconut cream and stir gently through. Add the contents of the chicken & courgette bowl and the cherry tomatoes and stir gently until everything is covered with the curry sauce. Simmer until you are happy that the chicken is cooked through, the cherry tomatoes are hot and the sauce is at your preferred consistency. If the sauce becomes too dry, simply add a little more hot water.
Stir in the chopped coriander and serve with hot white rice.
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As most of you know, we grow rhubarb in our garden. It all started with the one plant - called Ruby - who grew so much we had to split her in half and so she spawned her daughter, RubyTwo. Well, the years have gone past and the pair of them are now busting out of the brick planters they are in and three times a year (or more) threaten world domination unless we harvest them and share them around the neighbours. So, as you can imagine, obtaining rhubarb isn't exactly a challenge. In fact, for this recipe, hubby went out and cut the 500g required and it was in the oven half an hour later. Can't get a lot fresher than that!
With this crumble, I wanted very much to just celebrate the joy that is rhubarb. Not dilute it with apple, or confuse matters by adding blackberries. No, I wanted it to be simply rhubarb. Our rhubarb is so tasty - it's a champagne variety - that I always think it's a shame to mask its deliciousness with other flavours.
However, that didn't stop me from having a rush of blood to the head and adding sherry. *chuckle* Well, I figured that as we've had a rhubarb trifle with sherry in the past - which was delicious, why not? I used a medium sherry - Harvey's Bristol Cream, in fact. It definitely lent the dish a certain something and I'd definitely do that again.
What did it taste like? Oh, it was beautiful. Sweet, sharp, deep rich flavours of rhubarb with the slight headiness of sherry, balanced against the buttery, oaty, slightly toffee flavoured crumble that just melted in the mouth. Heavenly. Especially with vanilla custard, which is just the perfect accompaniment.
I have two Cook's Tips for you, which are as follows :
Lots of crumble recipes tell you to pre-cook the fruit, but I didn't want rhubarb slush, I wanted pieces of rhubarb that still had their shape and a little of the crunch. Cutting the pieces slightly smaller than usual, managed to achieve that very nicely across the 30 minute cooking time. If however, you prefer your rhubarb to be softer then make sure to cook it on for another 10 minutes or so.
I'm sure we've all made fruit crumbles that wind up being all juice. For me, too much juice can almost ruin a crumble as it tends to steam the underside of the crumble top and you end up with a yukky sludgy uncooked layer and the fruit swimming in juice. To offset this, I mixed in some cornflour (or perhaps corn starch where you are) with the raw fruit and sugar, which has the effect of thickening the juice and so preventing both the sludge and the pool. You don't even notice it's there, so it's a sneaky tip to remember for fruit pies, too!
Maybe the very next time you lay your hands on some rhubarb, you can give this crumble a go. Your family will thank you!
SHERRIED RHUBARB CRUMBLE (serves 4-5)
Ingredients :
500g rhubarb, washed, dried and cut into 1cm pieces
100g caster sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
3-4 tbsp of medium sweet sherry.
For the crumble :
130g self raising flour
50g light brown muscovado sugar
30g rolled porridge oats
90g slightly salted, chilled butter.
Method :
Pre-heat your oven to 190degC/375degF/Gas 5.
Place the chopped rhubarb into a deep sided casserole or baking dish. Sprinkle over the caster sugar and cornflour and mix together thoroughly until each piece of rhubarb is coated.
Sprinkle the sherry over the rhubarb and set aside while you make the crumble.
Weigh the self raising flour, muscovado sugar and porridge oats into a large bowl and lightly stir together.
Cut the butter into small pieces and rub it into the dry ingredients until everything is buttery and breadcrumb-like.
Spread the crumble across the top of the fruit mix and level the surface without pressing down or compacting the crumble at all.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, or 40 minutes if you like your fruit softer.
Serve with vanilla custard, or double cream if you must. *wink*
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As much as I would like to, I can't take credit for this delicious risotto recipe. No, that accolade needs to go to Heck Sausages. However, I found the recipe because it was featured on lovefood.com
with credit going to Heck - so I suppose this is the great-grand daughter recipe recommendation, if you like! I have changed the recipe a tiny bit, but it's only re-organising the order of play and not changing the ingredients. Now I could have just placed the link here and not bothered to reproduce the recipe, but I have learned that sometimes favourite recipes disappear from the internet never to be found again - so I'm immortalising it here for future reference.
If you're still with me after such a meandering explanation, well done. LOL
It has been ages since I made a risotto. Hubby is ordinarily the risotto chef in our house - and he does a cracking job at it too. However, he was otherwise engaged so I decided to give it a go. I'd made some good risottos in the past, so my track record wasn't bad.
For all that it is currently autumn - and a good time for risotto - I have to say that this recipe would be very much at home in a springtime capacity.
The addition of the courgette and petit pois, with the light touch of the chicken sausages, definitely made us think of the relief of coming out of the heaviness of winter and into a relatively lighter menu, as spring comes around. However, as all the ingredients aren't reliant upon seasonal produce (although, again, it is the perfect time for young courgettes), you can enjoy its fresh tasting loveliness at any time of the year.
As with all risottos, they live or die on the quality of the stock you are using. So at this point I have to blow my Essential Cuisine trumpet once again. I used 75% Essential Cuisine chicken stock and 25% Essential Cuisine vegetable stock for this risotto and it was fantastic. The very best part of the Essential Cuisine stable of stocks is their wonderfully intense flavours, however, because they are a stock powder (and they have a new range of liquid stocks, too) it is so simple to just increase the intensity by adding another half a teaspoonful as required. For a risotto stock, this works perfectly. So - I recommend them. 'Nuff said.
As for Cook's Tips, I have two :
Firstly, I wasn't looking forward to the unzipping the sausages and separating the sausagemeat into individual little meatballs. It's a gacky thing to have to do, even if you baste your hands liberally with cold water so that the sausagemeat doesn't stick. Then, I had this brilliant idea. I unzipped each sausage from its skin, ran my chef's knife under the cold water and chopped each sausage into five pieces. It worked, too! You have to wet the knife in between each sausage, but it is SO much more of a pleasant way to do it.
Lastly, if you're wondering what pan to use to cook the risotto in, well I used our new wok. It's quite compact, with high walls and fits nicely onto each burner so there are no cold spots to contend with. So if, like me, you were worried about the rice catching on the bottom of your pan and/or can't see in to the top of a tall pan (alright, so I'm short and most unhelpfully, have to sit to cook), consider using a wok. It worked absolutely perfectly for me.
So, without further ado, here's your recipe :
CHICKEN SAUSAGE, PEA & COURGETTE RISOTTO (serves 3-4)
Ingredients :
1-2 tbsp olive or rapeseed oil
8 chicken sausages (Heck or Asda are our favourites), skinned and each sausage formed into 5 small meatballs
450g approx of courgettes, cut into half centimetre dice
1 sweet onion, diced small
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
125g Arborio risotto rice
pinch of sea salt
quarter of a tsp ground black pepper
1 litre of good quality hot chicken stock, or chicken/vegetable combined
half a tsp of ground nutmeg
1 heaped tsp of Dijon mustard
300g defrosted petit pois (peas)
1 handful basil leaves (I used Thai basil as we prefer it)
grated Grana Padano, Parmesan or Manchego cheese to garnish.
Method :
Heat the oil in a large frying pan and once heated, add the sausagemeat balls. Fry on a medium/hot heat until deeply golden on at least three sides, then remove from the pan into a bowl and reserve.
In the meantime, make up the stock in another saucepan and place on the heat to simmer. Just before you are due to add the peas to the risotto, give them a few minutes in the stock pan to take the rawness off of them and heat them up.
Leaving the sausage flavoured fat in the pan, add the chopped courgettes and fry until just beginning to soften and take on colour. Remove from the pan to the same bowl as the sausage balls and reserve.
Decant what little fat is left into a high sided saucepan or wok and add a little more oil if necessary. Once the oil is hot, add the onion and garlic and fry over a medium/hot heat until softened and transparent. Add the sea salt and black pepper and stir through.
Increase the heat under the pan to maximum and add the dry rice. Stir well, to cover the rice in the flavoured oil and cook until you can see the rice is beginning to toast. Add a ladleful of the stock and stir well, to release the starch from the rice. Add the nutmeg and Dijon mustard and stir in. Once the stock has all but disappeared, pour in another ladleful and stir consistently - it is the stirring that ensures you wind up with a creamy texture to your risotto. Once the pan is again almost dry, repeat with another ladleful of stock and continue this way until the rice is very nearly cooked through. You may find that you have a little too much stock, or you may need to add a little boiling water as your last ladleful - it all depends on how much you stir and how starchy your rice is.
Add the petit pois along with your last ladleful of stock and stir through, then add the courgette/meatball combination and stir through. Make sure to bring the pan contents to piping hot and add the torn basil.
Serve immediately, on warmed plates and with grated Grana Padano or Parmesan cheese as garnish.
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