Friday 30 Jan - Thai Chicken Massaman Curry

This weeks purchase from Lidl was a rice cooker - I know that rice is easy to cook anyway, but we eat loads of it, and this cuts out the boiling over or forgetting about it risk.

As it was Friday, there was little doubt that it would be a curry night so we would get to use our new toy, but I rather fancied a change from the usual.
After Christmas I had treated myself to the Hairy Bikers Asian Adventure book, and I found a recipe in that for this Chicken Massaman Curry.

To start off with, some spices were roasted and ground

Then the other paste ingredients were added - these ingredients had caused a lunchtime visit to three shops to find galangal, lemon grass, lime leaves and Thai basil. The unusual ingredient for me in this paste was the peanuts.

Once the paste was made the curry could be cooked - onions and chicken were fried before adding the paste mix.

And then in went tomatoes, stock, coconut milk,cubed potatoes, and some more flavourings - this was all simmered until tender.

Once cooked, the dish was finished with thai basil and roasted peanuts, and served with the rice.

Sunday 25 January - Vegetarian Burns Night

I love haggis, but it was just me and George for the evening, and there is no way he is going to eat anything made out of lungs and other offal and cooked in a sheeps stomach. (As it turned out he didn't eat the veggie version either and I ended up heating up a pizza for him.)

I have seen veggie versions on sale, and had a hunt round for a recipe so I could have a go myself. I found one on the River Cottage Forum that looked perfect (this means I had all the ingredients already)

Started off with sauteeing onions, carrot and chopped mushrooms.

Then in went lentils, and pearl barley with some vegetable stock

To this a tin of beans (I used black beans as that's what was in the cupboard, and these were mashed with some flavourings  - nutmeg, mixed spice, thyme, rosemary and then the liquids - soy, lemon juice, whisky and a spoonful of marmite.

This was added to the pan along with some oatmeal, and it was all simmered until thick and then poured into a loaf tin for baking.

Served, of course, with mashed neeps and tatties, and also a peppercorn and whisky cream sauce.
I thought it was a really good alternative to the proper thing.

Friday 23 January - Tofu

We set off in search of tofu a couple of weeks ago, and found it to be much cheaper in the Chinese Supermarket, as that's a bit of a journey for us, I bought several types and froze them for later use.
I got a medium one out to use, but felt it needed pressing, so we used our lovely cheese press to do this.
This tofu was to be used stir fried with shitake mushrooms and fermented black beans.

I also decided to make red braised beef with dried bamboo tofu, so the tofu sticks were put into soak.

The beef dish commenced by bringing cubes of beef to the boil in plain water - this was then drained off.

Some chilli beef paste was fried, and then in went the flavourings.

Followed by the beef cubes, and stock ingredients - chinese wine, a bit of ketjap manis (as I didn't have thesweet fermented sauce that the recipe called for), and it was all left to braise for a couple of hours.

To prepare the other dish, mushrooms and beans were soaked for a while, to remove some of the salt from the beans, and to rehydrate the mushrooms.

Once prepared the mushrooms were destalked and chopped and the beans were drained.

Some chopped flavourings were stirfried - chilli, spring onions, garlic and ginger.

And then the mushrooms and beans were added, followed by some soy sauce and rice wine to make a sauce.

Finally, the cubed tofu was added, and it was gently heated through to take on the flavours.

 

Now the tofu was ready, the bamboo tofu sticks were added to the braised beef , just for a few minutes - again to take on the rich flavours.

This was served with boiled rice, and some tea braised eggs - as our chickens have started to lay again following their lengthy winter break.

Friday 16 January - Tinga de Pollo

Although once the kitchen was finished I promised not to buy any more cookery books, I made the mistake of popping into The Works last weekend, and they had a sale on - difficult to refuse books priced at £3!

This one caught my eye, and last night decided to have a hunt through for something different.

Decided to go for a chicken dish, as we'd spotted some real bargain chickens at half price in Waitrose. The whole chicken was popped into a pan to poach, with some onions, garlic, celery and carrot.

For the sauce, I soaked some chipotles in boiling water - the recipe stated 6 - so I soaked that number, but after a taste test decided to only use 3 of them - probably a wise decision!

The soaked chillies were then blended with some roasted garlic, onions and tinned tomatoes. I also added some chocolate which wasn't in the recipe.

The blended sauce was then added to fried onions, and simmered for around 20 minutes, before adding the shredded meat from the whole poached chicken and simmering again.

I also used a recipe for green rice from the same book.

A puree was made from garlic, onions, parsley and coriander, with a splash of water.

This was then fried gently, and added to some cooked rice, and popped in a very low oven to finish off.

The finished chicken dish was served with the rice, tortillas and some guacamole/

Definitely one to do again, and a huge pan of chicken stock is left over to make other dishes with.