Recipe: Chicken Dim Sum

I love rediscovering cookbooks. Do you ever find that you end up cooking the same things over and over when you're in a rush, and things just get a little boring? That's when I return to my little library of cookbooks.

When time's an issue Jamie's 15 Minute Meals is the perfect companion. Ok, it might not take 15 minutes, and some of the ingredients are hideously expensive, as are lots of the specialised equipment he uses, but with careful tweaking you can still make a tasty dinner without breaking the bank.

Food: cheat's jerk chicken

With the weather set to be stunning over the next few days, I'm sure they'll be more than a few BBQs on the offing.

Unfortunately, we won't be joining them as our tiny flat in London doesn't even have a stamp sized patch of greenery to call our own! sob sob.

However, I was keen to share this recipe. Rather than just adding normal sausages and burgers to the BBQ, why not try some marinading chicken legs? I shared my recipe for real jerk chicken here, but I thought I'd let you know how I got on with a Sainsbury's* pre-made version if you're short for time/want to cheat!

The bottled marinade was really quick and easy to use. You simply pour the marinade over the 10 chicken legs. It's supposed to be used on 8 but I'm stingy and like to make things go further so I used 10 (which were covered very generously by the way).

Leave to marinade for at least 40 minutes.

Then place on a hot BBQ or in an oven at 180 degrees celsius for 45 minutes. Make sure the meat is cooked through, especially when using a BBQ!

The end result? I was pretty impressed with the Sainsbury's marinade. It was authentic in that is used Scotch Bonnet chillies and as such was pretty spicy. Personally, I'd have preferred it even more spicy. The chicken legs were lovely and moist and full of jerk flavour.

What are your favourite BBQ staples? Do you have a favourite chicken marinade?

Food: recent eats

praline meringue cupcakes

It's safe to say that it has been a very greedy week so far. I've tried to balance it slightly with gym visits and yoga, but not sure I've cancelled out all the food. I just thought I'd share some pics of what I've been munching on.

Food: Jerk Chicken Recipe

jerk chicken

I couldn't resist quickly adding this post as the weather's been so nice lately. It's a recipe for very spicy jerk chicken which makes a great alternative to sausages and burgers on the BBQ. It's just as easy to cook in the oven though. For a really authentic flavour, you'll need to use scotch bonnet chillies. But be warned; they're incredibly spicy. Just remove the seeds or use fewer chilies if you prefer less spice.

Serves 4
8 chicken thighs or legs (bone in)
1 bunch of spring onions (or 1 white onion), chopped
2 tsp ground all spice
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped finely
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 scotch bonnet chillies
1 thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
Juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper

1. It's much easier to make the marinade if you have a food processor - simply whizz the ingredients together. Otherwise, you'll just need to chop the ingredients up very finely and then combine them in a bowl. Check the flavour - add a little more sugar if it's too sharp.
2. Slash the chicken deeply in a couple of places with a knife. Place the chicken into a sandwich bag, add the marinade. Allow to marinade for a minimum of 2 hours and a maximum of overnight.
2. Cook slowly over indirect heat on your BBQ for 30-40 minutes, until tender and blackened.  Otherwise, preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Place the chicken on a wire rack on an oven tray and cook for 1 hour, turning over the chicken half way. It's nice for the chicken to be a nice dark brown colour when you remove it as it'll taste more caramelised.

Food: Dinner Party

We were having two of our good friends over for dinner, Andy and Fi, over the weekend. This meant that I had to slightly relax the ultra healthy food that I've been cooking up recently. I'm sure they would have appreciated it all the same, but dinner parties are supposed to be relatively decadent. As the weather has been so lovely the last couple of days, finally, I wanted to make a more summery dish. I was initially going to make roast chicken but I decided to use the chicken instead to make Martin's favourite dish, chicken and saffron rice. I'd cooked up a large quinoa salad at lunch time, so I added some of that as a side and also a quick carrot and orange salad that I had rustled up. 

For dessert I scanned BBC Good Food for some ideas. BBC Good Food is one of the best food websites around. The number of user reviews means that you're pretty much guaranteed that the recipe will work, it's is been highly rated. I decided to make a reduced fat lemon tart. I'm usually not keen on reduced fat desserts because you can tell that they're the diet version due to lack of flavour or an unusual texture compared with the full fat version. However, because this particular recipe had 38 five star reviews, I thought I'd give it a go, and, with just over 180 calories per portion, how can you go wrong?

I had a bit of a disaster initially, as I stupidly didn't measure the size of my tin, so I didn't make enough pastry. I tried, in vain, to roll it out between two pieces of cling film to make it thinner. But no, the pastry wasn't having any of it and I ended up making a second, larger batch. This time it worked perfectly. However, on blind baking, I sampled a little excess pastry and realised I'd forgotten to add icing sugar. Doh. I was not happy! Having already made a previous attempt, I gave up at this point and just carried on with recipe. Luckily I'd made my pastry nice and thin, and the highly lemony filling more than disguised this error. The end result was a beautifully crisp pastry tart with a soft, moreish, oh so lemony, filling.


Chicken and Saffron Rice

It's hard to describe what this dish is like as it involves such an unusual combination of flavours such as paprika, golden syrup, saffron, tomato ketchup, risotto rice and chicken. But honestly, please take my word for it that it's delicious and give it a go! It's effectively a chicken and rice bake. 

chicken and saffron rice

Food: shredded chicken - cheap and easy!

I often find it quite tricky when a recipe asks for chicken pieces e.g. in a curry, pasta dish or casserole. It's very easy to buy chicken supremes/breasts, chop them into pieces and fry them off. I have two problems with this, firstly, chicken breasts are expensive. Yes, it's cheaper if you buy them with their skin on, but even so, a large chicken breast can cost around £3-4. Secondly, chicken breast isn't very tasty and can get quite a dry texture. Because of this I often end up picking around the chicken in curries, ridiculous I know!

I was trying to solve the problem of taste and economics yesterday when I had a brain wave. The best way of being economical with chicken is to buy a whole chicken and then butcher it yourself. I'm making a roast dinner on friday which I only need the breasts for. I was making a chicken bake yesterday and needed chicken pieces so I chopped the two legs off the whole chicken. I wanted the chicken legs with the thighs attached, so I ran my hand up the leg until I reached the joint where it meets the main body of the chicken. I then used a sharp knife to separate the whole leg and it really was that easy!

I then placed the legs on a baking tray and cooked them for 1 hour 15 minutes at 160 degrees celsius in the oven. Leave the chicken legs for 10 minutes to cool slightly and then use two forks to shred all the meat of the bones. It's great, the meat literally just falls off the bones. Discard the skin. To make sure you remove all the tiny chickens bones and gristle, use your hands to go through all the meat. This meat is super tasty, juicy and cheap. I can't recommend it enough.

Typical me,  I forgot to take a photo of that particular chicken, but here are some chicken thighs I cooked a couple of weeks later!

Food: Chicken and Broccoli Bake

Yum yum yum. This really is one of my favourite comforting recipes. Even friends who swear they don't like broccoli will happily munch away on this dish.

Serves 4

1 medium sized broccoli head, broken into florets
350g cooked chicken - left over roast chicken works perfectly here - just chop roughly. Otherwise use fresh chicken breast, slice into small pieces and fry off in oil until it's cooked (around 7 minutes)
284ml single cream
3 eggs
100ml milk
2 onions, chopped
100g cheddar cheese, grated
salt and pepper
1 tbsp olive oil

Preheat the over to 190 degrees celsius

1. Begin by boiling the broccoli for 5 minutes. Then chop into half inch pieces. This can be done very roughly.
2. Mix together in a bowl the eggs, milk and cream. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Fry the onions in the oil and a little salt for five minutes. They will be softened but not discoloured.
3. Use a shallow ovenproof dish, around 1.7L capacity.
4. Alternate layers of chicken and broccoli in the dish. Each layer should be about 1 inch deep.
5. Top with the fried onions.
6. Pour over the sauce and finally sprinkle on the grated cheese.
7. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes, or until the dish is golden.