Last night's dinner was very nearly a complicated messup. This was largely due to my appalling memory skills, in that we ate the greater part of a head of broccoli that was meant to be for that night's dinner, the night before with the Cottage Pie.
I had completely forgotten that I'd scheduled peas & carrots with the Cottage Pie.
So, yesterday morning dawned and as I was considering what needed to be got out of the freezer in preparation, I realised that we'd eaten most of the broccoli. Hubby wasn't terribly pleased by this news, as we'd had broccoli twice that week and he was then looking at yet another dose of broccoli. This is not a good thing, apparently. Then Son & heir chimed in and declared that he didn't like the sound of the Broccoli Chicken anyway and why couldn't we have something else?
*BIG SIGH*
So, while I was still gritting my teeth and trying not to snap, Hubby came up with a compromise that was (puts tongue firmly in cheek) painful for me, but would save the day the cheapest way possible. His suggestion was that Son & heir had (~sob~) the leftover Cottage Pie (~sob~) that I was angling to have for lunch, instead of the Broccoli Chicken and we got some Green Beans for him to have and to bolster the little bit of broccoli we had left. Having mopped my tears (I absolutely LOVE leftover Cottage Pie cold the next day) and made Hubby swear to buy some mushrooms to go with the chicken too, that problem was solved.
Another problem turned out to be that all of my shallots had gone manky. Thankfully, I had half a bunch of Spring Onions, which made a lovely stand-in.
This is why the Ken Hom Broccoli Chicken turned into Jenny Eatwell's Chestnut Mushroom, Green Bean and Broccoli Chicken - based on a Ken Hom recipe. LOL
I'll tell you what, though, it was jolly lovely - and far more interesting than just broccoli would have been.
However, the best and most useful part of cooking this dish was not matching the vegetables, but learning - quite by accident - how to "velvet" chicken. This is the process by which your local Chinese takeaway manages to keep chicken so soft and moist - and is well worth learning. I'd seen Ken "velvet" chicken on the Good Food Channel's "Perfect" t.v. show and had tucked the information behind my ear to examine at a later date. However, completely unnoticed by me when I gave the recipe its first read-through, the first bit of real cooking involved in this dish is to do just that - velvet the chicken. It's basically to marinate the strips of chicken in whatever flavours you want, so long as it includes cornflour and sesame oil, for around 20 minutes. Goodness, but it made all the difference! I'll definitely velvet chicken again when I'm doing a chinese style dish - it only takes a second and is very worthwhile.
I paired the chicken dish with Jasmine rice which was very acceptable, although it has to be said that a good special fried rice would have been better - and even better than that, from the chicken's point of view, would be to include some water chestnuts with it. Because of that, I've added them as an ingredient in my recipe.
12 April 2013 : I've just made this again (see photograph on the left there) and this time, as I didn't have any green beans I added two small sweet red peppers and left the water chestnuts out (again). I didn't have any basil in either, so just left it out.
I also used my favorite stock - Essential Cuisine's fantastic chicken stock and the lovely vegetable stock in which I cooked the rice. This time, I paired the chicken up with lemon rice - which son & heir absolutely loved. He ate the lot, chestnut mushrooms, broccoli, everything. You see? What a couple of months (or so) will do for a boy.
BROCCOLI, BEAN & MUSHROOM CHICKEN (serves 2)
Ingredients :
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 skinless & boneless chicken breasts, sliced thinly into strips
half a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and sliced along the diagonal
1 clove of garlic, grated
half a tsp finely ground black pepper
1 tbsp Mirrin, rice wine or dry sherry
2 tbsp Oyster sauce
100g small broccoli florets (cut them smaller, if they are large and also include the stalks, cut on the diagonal)
100g green beans, chopped into 4
4 chestnut mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
a small tin of water chestnuts, sliced
150ml chicken stock
handful of basil leaves.
For the marinade :
2 tsp low salt soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp cornflour.
Method :
1. In a large bowl, combine the chicken with the marinade ingredients and leave to marinade at room temperature for 20 minutes or as long as it takes to prepare the vegetables.
2. Heat the wok over a high heat, then add one tbsp of the sunflower oil and the chicken. Stir-fry for 5 minutes or so until the chicken is golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside to keep warm.
3. Reheat the wok and add the other tbsp of oil. Stir fry the spring onions and garlic for 2 minutes until softened.
4. Add the pepper, mirrin (or whatever you are using) and oyster sauce and stir-fry for a minute or so.
5. Now add the vegetables and the chicken stock. Bring to the boil, cover and cook for around 5 minutes.
6. Return the chicken to the wok and cook for a minute or so until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Finally, add the fresh basil leaves and serve immediately.
Printable version
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.
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