It's Nothing Like - Chicken Rendang

We're expecting guests tomorrow and Mrs Chubby Chops is planning to cook her delicious lontong. To be absolutely correct, she'll be cooking sayur lodeh to serve with lontong. It's her sayur lodeh that is so enjoyable. I had some boneless chicken breasts that I wanted to cook so I thought I'd cook something along the lines of chicken rendang to compliment Mrs Chubby Chops sayur lodeh.

I'm not a fan of chicken rendang as I believe that the slower cooking beef makes a much tastier dish. What I came up with is nothing like chicken rendang anyway. The biggest difference is that I wanted to cook something child friendly so I really cut down on the number of chillies compared with a typical rendang.

Ingredients

Four skinned chicken breasts

About 500 grams of santan (thick coconut milk).

Two small red onions

Six cloves of garlic

A couple of inches of ginger

Two lemongrass stalks

One red chilli

A heaped dessert spoon of turmeric powder

A heaped dessert spoon of kerisik

Half a small turmeric leaf

Five or six kaffir lime leaves

Salt

Sugar

I used fresh santan, a can of coconut milk or cream would suffice.

Kerisik is fresh grated coconut slowly dry roast until it turns brown. You could probably try to make it from desiccated coconut. If you do, you will need to constantly stir the coconut when you roast it.

If you can't find lemongrass, you could probably use the peel of a lime instead. The peel of a lime would also be the best substitute for kaffir lime leaves too.

I can't think of a substitute for turmeric leaf which seems to add more to the aroma than the taste.

As for the chilies, I'd normally have used five red chillies for such a dish. Doubling the amount of chillies and removing the seeds would give the dish a  smoother, more subtle taste.

Equipment

A wok, preferably with a lid

Method

Slice the chicken into finger-sized pieces. Try to cut the chicken with the grain so that it retains a little bite once it is cooked. 

Pound or grind the chilli, onion, garlic, ginger, and lemongrass into a smooth paste.

Stir the turmeric powder and a little salt and sugar into the paste.

Empty the coconut milk into the wok. Add the chicken and paste. Simmer slowly, covering with a lid if your wok has one. Stir gently from time to time.

The coconut milk, paste, and chicken starting to simmer

Gradually, the sauce will start to thicken. Once it does, add the kerisik, finely sliced turmeric leaves and kaffir lime leaves. Add more salt and sugar if necessary.

After the kerisik and leaves have been added

Continue to simmer the dish, stirring more and more frequently as it starts to dry out. Take care not to break the pieces of chicken which will be very, very tender at this stage. 

Cook until the sauce is quite dry.

The finished dish

It's Nothing Like - Cassoulet

I'm normally a last minute cook, by which I mean that I wait until it's almost time to eat before I decide what to cook. Only once I have decided what takes my fancy do I worry about whether I've got the correct ingredients. Usually I don't have them so I have to improvise. Some of my improvisations are better than others. Thankfully Mrs Chubby Chops rarely complains and Little Miss Chubby Chops can be so fussy that it makes no difference.

This recipe has its roots in Cassoulet and some similarity to one cooked by Jaime Oliver during one of those "a complete meal for four in twenty three seconds" TV programmes.

It's Nothing Like Cassoulet

This makes a great supper dish eaten with some good rustic wholemeal or rye bread.

Ingredients

A couple of skinned chicken breasts

A pinch of cumin powder

A pinch of coriander powder

A pinch of salt

A splash of olive oil

A squeeze of lemon

Some frozen broad beans

A can of cooked foul medammas

A can of tomatoes

Two cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced

A brown-skinned onion, peeled and thickly sliced

Two pinches of paprika

Another pinch of salt

A good slug of olive oil

I've used canned chick peas instead of foul medammas and have managed to remember to buy a can of butter beans for the next time that I cook this dish. I'm hoping the use of butter beans will make the dish even better.

Equipment

A heavy bottomed frying/grill pan

A heavy bottomed large sauce pan

Method

Slice the chicken breasts longways so that you end up with slices the size of a thin sausage.

Rub the cumin, coriander, salt, olive oil, and lemon juice ono the chicken pieces and leave to stand for 15 minutes or so. (Less if you're in a big hurry).

In the meantime, sauté the onion and garlic in a good slug of olive oil until they are soft.

Add the canned tomatoes (I prefer to liquidise them first), the broad beans, and drained canned beans. Season with salt and paprika. Then bring to the boil and leave to simmer.

Heat the dry frying/grill pan to a high temperature and quickly cook the chicken strips so that they are cooked through, crisp on the outside but still moist inside. I usually cook them for about 5 to 7 minutes and never more than 10 minutes.

Once the chicken is cooked, leave it to stand for a few minutes. Then add it to the tomato and beans for a few minutes.

The dish is now ready to serve.

"Snowman"

Little Miss Chubby Chops has a couple of kids's cookery books. One has a recipe for a meringue snowman. One day, just before it was time to eat, she came to me and said "Please can I have a snowman for dessert?". There wasn't time to cook the meringue (even if I did know how to do it) and the recipe used ingredients, such as marmalade, that we didn't have.

I didn't want to disappoint her so I came up with a simple biscuit snowman using the sour cream that we had in the fridge. Little Miss Chubby Chops loved it.

Today, Little Miss Chubby Chops wanted dessert after her lunch, not just any dessert, she wanted a snowman. We had some gorgeous fresh, thick cream (naturally thick not thickened) in the fridge. So I started to make the snowmen using fresh cream instead of sour cream. I gave Little Miss Chubby Chops a taste of the fresh cream. The cream had hardly touched her lips before she decided that she didn't like it and it wasn't getting anywhere near the back of her mouth, let alone her throat. So it was back to sour cream.

A Snowman

Ingredients

A digestive biscuit

A ginger nut

Three teaspoons of sour cream

Five chocolate buttons

Method

Spread the sour cream on the biscuits.

Arrange the biscuits so it looks a little like a snowman.

Use the chocolate buttons for the eyes, mouth and buttons for the snowman. 

Variations

I've successfully used full milk, greek-style yogurt instead of the sour cream. Real cream would probably be popular with most kids, just not Little Miss Chubby Chops.

As you can see from the photo, we didn't have any chocolate buttons so I used Hundreds and Thousands. 

Brie, Mustard, and Onion Beef Rolls

I was preparing dinner recently and, at the last minute, realised that the meal needed a starter to make it complete. I had some thin slices of beef which we normally eat in the morning for breakfast. I was able to come up with this tasty, light dish to fill the gap.

Brie, Mustard, and Onion Beef Rolls

Ingredients

Topside of Beef, 10mm thick slices

A quarter teaspoon of mustard for each slice

A decent slice of mature Brie for each slice

An onion, cut into wedges and tempered

A little olive oil

I use French mustard with whole mustard seeds. A smooth mustard should work equally well provided it is vinegar rather than water based.

The brie could be substituted by other cheeses but I would recommend using a cheese that turns gooey when heated rather than one that turns stringy (such as mozzarella). The cheese needs to be mature so that its taste doesn't get overpowered by the mustard.

As the dish will be cooked quickly, the onions need to have their rawness taken away but not lose their crispiness. Sauté them lightly in a little olive oil until the rawness has gone but they retain a little bite.

Equipment

A heavy bottomed grill/frying pan

Cocktail sticks

The dish needs to be cooked very quickly at a high heat. Our cooker has a double gas burner that provides comparatively high heat for a domestic cooker. A thin bottomed pan will quickly warp and cause food to cook unevenly and stick to the pan.

Method

Lay out the slices of beef on a plate, slightly stretching them as you do so.

Spread the mustard on the side facing upwards. Place a slice of cheese on top of the mustard and a wedge of onion on top of the cheese.

Ready for rolling 

Roll the slices of beef and secure them with a cocktail stick.

The Beef Rolls waiting to be cooked

Place the pan over a high heat source and wait until it becomes hot. 

Whilst the pan is heating sprinkle a little salt over the rolls.

When the pan is nice and hot, splash a little olive oil around the pan. Place the beef rolls in the pan. Keep the heat high. Turn the rolls so that they brown evenly until you can see that the cheese has melted inside.

Turn them out onto a serving dish or plate and leave them to stand for about five minutes before serving.