Allspice chicken and mango rice - suddenly, we're in the Caribbean!

I'm often drawn towards recipes for traybakes.  They always look so good, with beautifully golden roasted chicken pieces nestling amongst gorgeous roasted vegetables that have just begun to caramelise.  However, my efforts haven't always been successful in the traybake department.

As such, I was bearing this in mind when I found myself drawn towards the recipe for Mango chicken, bean & rice bake in the latest BBC Good Food magazine.  There were the golden roasted chicken pieces, as cosy as can be beside chunks of glowing mango, on a bed of fluffy rice and shiny red kidney beans.

Looking at the ingredients, they seemed to fit what we like - but in a different way to normal.  There were Indian curry ingredients there (chilli, coriander, ginger, onion, rice) with Caribbean influences (allspice, mango and kidney beans).  The recipe even called for lime - which as you know, I have quite a few of just at the moment!

After 30 mins cooking - all chutneyed up and ready to go back in!

I had a little word with hubby about whether he felt he could cope with chicken thighs in this instance.  He's a chicken breast man, ordinarily, you see.  I felt that the chicken thighs would give more flavour to the rice (as they sit on the rice to cook) than ever chicken breast would - plus thighs could cope better with the hour and a half they would be in the oven!  He wasn't convinced, but decided to take it like a man - and have a strategic sandwich afterwards if it all goes to worms.

Making the marinating mix was a breeze - a simple matter of chopping everything into bits and chucking it into the food processor, then whizzing, mixing and we're done for a day.

In fact, for all that the recipe is three main processes - marinating, 30 mins cooking then another 35-40 mins cooking, it really is incredibly easy to do.  Once again, it is a one-pot dish (unless, like me, you decide to add something like red cabbage & apple as a side dish - but that's up to you!) and they really are the easiest things in the world to make.

I have a couple of cook's notes for you though :

1.  If you can, following the 30 minutes cook under silver foil and before the next batch without the silver foil, remove the centre pieces of chicken and give the rice a bit of a stir there.  I found that at the very middle of my dish, the rice was still fairly under done and a bit of a stir at a judicious moment, would have solved that.

2.  If you have anyone who is - like hubby - a bit phobic about "globby bits", remove the skin from their chicken before marinating.  The skin is delicious eating - but not for certain people - and to remove it before serving will mean that they lose all the effects of the marination on the chicken, plus the mango chutney.

3.  Don't be tempted to put too much mango chutney onto the chicken.  I have reduced the amount to half a teaspoonful from a full teaspoonful, as it made the chicken rather too sweet.

So munchable!

4.  The marinade was full of flavour, but if you like the chilli heat do leave the seeds in.  I removed them from our chilli - and rather wished I hadn't by the end of it!

Hubby didn't have need of his emergency sandwich, he enjoyed the new combination of flavours and found the chicken agreeably tender (and free from the dreaded "globby bits", thanks to some careful trimming!).  He did make the comment - and I think he's quite right - in that pineapple would have been a good substitute for the mango.

Son and heir wasn't so keen on the clove-like allspice flavour that is prevalent all the way through the dish, but I think that is simply a matter of being unfamiliar with that particular flavour.  I really liked the dish and agreed, to some extent, with son & heir's lament about the allspice, so I have reduced it from one and a half teaspoonfuls to just the one teaspoonful, in acknowledgement of its dominance - which was a bit too much, I felt.  However, I really liked how sitting on top of the rice - initially in a stock bath - made the chicken incredibly tender.  It was literally falling off the bone.  Lovely!

Considering how differently this turned out to how I was expecting, it was a very interesting and remarkable dinner that is very well worth repeating.  I may well experiment with using chicken breast next time - and cook the rice in the oven without the chicken on board for the first half hour.  Interesting!  I'll let you know what happens.

ALLSPICE CHICKEN AND MANGO RICE   (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 tsp finely grated ginger
2 garlic cloves
1 red chilli, seeds removed if necessary, roughly chopped
small handful of coriander - including stalks - chopped roughly
2 tsp thyme leaves
zest and juice of 2 small limes
1 tsp ground allspice
2 tbsp sunflower oil
8-10 chicken thighs, skin left on but trimmed of fat
300g long grain rice
400g tin kidney beans, rinsed and drained
500ml chicken stock
1 ripe mango, peeled, stoned and cut into small cubes
150g mango chutney.

Method :

1.  Marinate the chicken up to a day, or as little as an hour, before you want to cook it, by putting the onion, ginger, garlic, red chilli, coriander, thyme, lime, allspice and oil into a food processor and blitzing until a paste has been formed.  Pour the paste onto the trimmed chicken thighs in a large bowl and mix until the chicken has been coated.  Cover with cling film and leave in the fridge to marinate.

2.  Heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas4.

3.  Rinse the rice in a sieve under the cold water tap until the water runs clear.  Then place the rice into a large high sided flat baking dish (a lasagne dish is perfect).  Add the kidney beans and a pinch of salt and level out the surface.

4.  Remove the chicken from the marinade onto a plate and stir the stock into the remains of the marinade in the bowl.  Pour the stock over the rice and beans.

5.  Sprinkle the mango pieces onto the top of the rice mixture and place the chicken pieces on top again.

6.  Cover the dish with silver foil and bake for 30 minutes.

7.  Remove the foil from the dish and increase the oven temperate to 220degC/425degF/Gas 7.  Spoon a half a teaspoon of mango chutney onto each chicken piece and return the dish to the oven for a further 35-40 minutes to brown the chicken and cook the rice.

8.  Before serving, remove the chicken pieces and fluff up the rice with a fork.

Serve.

Printable version
 

Spanish style chicken & prawns

For absolutely ages, hubby has had a yen to make a paella-style dish.  Of course, he'd have absolutely loved to have made true paella, but I fear that's beyond our purse at the moment.

I've got to say, though, that the dish he made last night - Spanish style chicken and prawns - is so "after the style of" a paella, that he got as close as he could have done.

He'd obviously spent some time thinking about how he was going to approach the cooking of the dish, having decided to marinade the chicken and cook it separately, so as to preserve the flavours of the marinade.  He absolutely achieved that, as the chicken was discernibly flavoured differently to the rice.  This made for interest in a dish which could very easily have been one overall flavour.

He used pepperoni sausage, as we had some left over from some Calzones he was going to make last week.  I think I probably preferred the pepperoni, as the paprika from the chorizo, together with the two paprika's used in the dish could very easily have been too much for me.  I seem to have become quite paprika-sensitive in my old age!

We were both agreed that it would have finished it off perfectly to have had a sprinkling of chopped parsley to serve - so you may want to add that if you try this dish.

One thing that is worth saying about the meal, is that Son & heir started it suspiciously but was very soon tucking in and polished off the lot!  So that was a seal of approval as regards its kid-friendliness.

It is now March 2015 and I have just made the dish again.  (See photograph above).  It was a late addition to the menu plan, as son & heir's lady love was coming for dinner.  Everyone declared the dish was delicious, son & heir gave it the best accolade by having two enormous platefuls!

SPANISH STYLE CHICKEN & PRAWNS  (serves 4)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp olive oil, used separately
2 chicken breasts, sliced into small pieces

half a lemon, juiced

freshly ground black pepper

half a tsp smoked paprika
sea salt

a small knob of butter

1 large spanish onion, chopped

1 red pepper, de-seeded and chopped

1 yellow pepper, de-seeded and chopped
4 mushrooms, sliced

1 red chilli, de-seeded and chopped very fine

2 clove garlic, chopped fine
100g skinless chorizo, cut into small half moons

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp of paprika (not smoked)

300g long grain rice, rinsed in warm water until the water runs clear

1 litre chicken stock (2 stock cubes are fine)
pinch of saffron

2 handfuls of frozen peas, defrosted

200g prawns, defrosted

1 large de-seeded tomato, chopped.

Method :

1.  Place the chicken into a bowl and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon.  Add a few grinds of fresh pepper and the smoked paprika.  Stir and marinade for half an hour.

2. Add the olive oil to a frying pan and fry the chicken until golden brown all over.  Remove from heat and set to one side to keep warm.

3.  Add the knob of butter and more olive oil to the pan and saute the chopped onions, chopped pepper, sliced mushrooms, chopped chilli and garlic until soft.

4.  Add the chorizo pieces and cook for several minutes, until they have begun to release their oils.  Return the chicken to the pan.

5.  Add dried oregano and paprika, then add the rice and stir until coated with the seasoned oil.

6. When the rice is hot, add the chicken stock and saffron and stir through.

7.  Cook until the rice has absorbed almost all the liquid and add the peas.  Cook until the peas have warmed through.

8.  Add the prawns and tomato.  Stir and cook until the rice is tender and everything is heated through.

Serve.

Printable version

Oriental Beef with Butternut Squash and Special Fried Rice

You remember how keen I was on the shin of beef dishes I've made just recently?  Or perhaps how excited I was about the Pot Roasted Brisket?  Well, this one surpasses all of those.  Truly!

I kept a little secret from the boys about this dish, which was that it originated from the Weight Watchers Oriental Express recipe book!  Anything that has "healthy" or "low fat" in its title always engenders much suspicion in a chap's breast, it seems.  So, I figured it was better that they didn't know, right up until such time as I could commit the big "reveal", or admit it was another failure.  Whichever was appropriate.  In fact, as I didn't have any low fat cooking spray, I substituted olive oil where that was required but used it sparingly.  I also tweaked the quantities of orange juice to water, winding up with a little more of the juice than the water, largely because two oranges came to 150ml, once juiced, and I wasn't prepared to find a home for the extra half - so used it.

I had scheduled this dish for a Sunday evening when, normally, we'd have some sort of Sunday roast.  I reckoned it wouldn't hurt us to not have a traditional Sunday roast - and as it used almost as much beef brisket as had the previous Sunday's meal, it was almost a Sunday roast - just prepared differently.  In truth, I think I was justifying it to myself as I really don't suppose the boys care whether we have a Sunday roast or not - so long as something yummy turns up for dinner each day, I doubt they consider it much further than that.

I had liked the sound of the recipe at the first read-through, plus it also had the benefit of my having just about everything in the fridge or spice cupboard already, barring the meat and the butternut squash.  This made the purchase of these two more expensive ingredients rather more affordable.

The 800g of brisket was a lovely piece of meat.  It took just a little trimming on one side to remove some short runs of gristle, plus a bit of a trim of the fat on the other side.  I didn't remove all the fat, as I knew it was going to be cooking for some two and a half hours and fat doesn't usually survive that!  Dustbins 1 and 2 were in attendance, of course, and soon took care of any offcuts.

Where the rice was concerned, on the previous day we'd been shopping - doing a top-up shop for the weekend and the beginning of the following week.  I always like to have a cruise (don't forget, I use a disability buggy) down the world foods aisle where, to my surprise, I found a bottle of authentic oyster sauce.  At £2-odd, it was a little pricey when I didn't have anything in mind for it - but too good to leave there, so I bought it.  Only as I was assembling the ingredients for the special fried rice, did I remember the oyster sauce.  Using authentic soy (Yellow Plum brand), authentic fish sauce (Squid brand) and the authentic oyster sauce, put the tin lid on our attempts to make an authentic-tasting special fried rice.  I thoroughly recommend you put together some authentic ingredients like these, when you have a go at the rice recipe - they make all the difference.

ORIENTAL BEEF WITH BUTTERNUT SQUASH  (feeds 3-4)


Ingredients :

800g lean beef brisket, visible fat trimmed & sliced
olive oil
2 onions, sliced
1 star anise
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
5cm (2") fresh root ginger, grated
150ml fresh orange juice
250ml water
4 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 red chilli, de-seeded if you prefer, and chopped
400g butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and chopped into 1cm pieces
salt & pepper

Method :

1.  Heat a large lidded saucepan or casserole dish - one which will go in the oven.  Pre-heat oven to 190deg C.


2.  Add a little olive oil and half the beef strips.  Sear until browned all over, then remove and sear the remaining half and remove.

3.  Add the onions to the pan with a little more olive oil if necessary.  Fry over a medium heat for 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. It doesn't matter of some onions take on some colour, but you're aiming for them all to be softened.

4.  Add the star anise, 5 spice powder, ginger and chilli and stir fry for a minute.


5.  Pour in the water, orange juice and soy sauce.  Stir and ensure that you have de-glazed the pan, getting up all the lovely baked on flavour and stirring it in.  Re-introduce the beef and stir to combine.

6.  Bring to the boil, cover and then place in the oven for 2 hours.

7.  Remove from the oven, stir and add the squash, stirring to combine.  Replace into the oven for 30 minutes or until the squash is tender.  You probably won't need to cover the pan at this stage.

8.  If the sauce remains too watery, add a little cornflour and stir to combine until the favoured consistency has been reached.

Serve with Special Fried Rice :


SPECIAL FRIED RICE (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :



a knob of butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and chopped finely
a small piece of ginger, shredded finely
2 mushrooms, chopped finely
a small handful of frozen peas
a small handful of frozen sweetcorn
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp fish sauce
2-300g long grain rice, cooked and allowed to cool.

Method :



1.  Heat the knob of butter and olive oil in a deep frying pan or wok.  Add the beaten egg one by one and cook to form an omelette.  Place both omelettes somewhere to keep warm.


2.  In the remaining butter/olive oil mixture, stir-fry the onion, mushroom and ginger for around 2-3 minutes or until the onions are appearing softened.


3.  Add the peas and sweetcorn and continue to cook until they are tender.


4.  Add the soy, oyster & fish sauces and stir through on a low heat.


5.  Add the cooked rice and stir through gently on a medium heat or until the rice is heated through.  Add the shredded egg omelettes - and serve.


.