A Viola for Valentine's Day

I feel like a big old blog fraud because I haven't posted since last year or participated in any blog events. Just as well I hadn't made any new year's resolutions about posting more often. This past weekend I invited my friend Marti around for dinner because her husband was out of town and I thought she might like company on Valentine’s Day.

On the menu was Chicken Marbella which is a classic recipe that never goes out of date and is a great make ahead party dish. You can google it and find a frillion entries about it including one by my cooking hero Ruth Pretty. I served the chicken with chunky cut, pan fried potatoes seasoned with my current favourite condiment - smoked Marlborough sea salt from the Smoke and Spice Company. This spice blend reminds me a little of McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning and I highly recommend it, especially for steak or lamb on the barbeque. It is also great on fresh tomatoes on toast - Vogel's of course. For a bit of green we had some steamed green beans sprinkled with toasted flaked almonds.

Dessert was something quick and easy – my mum’s lemon mousse(previously posted under a Hey Hey It’s Donna Day entry) which I served in mini brandy snap baskets and decorated with canned boysenberries. The combination of sweet yet tangy mousse, crispy brandy snaps and juicy berries was fantastic. Marti asked for seconds which was a nice compliment.

My husband and I aren’t much into Valentine’s day and we didn’t even buy each other a card this year but look what I got……


This little pansy had self-seeded and was growing in the middle of our back lawn. My sweetie mowed around it especially for me - wasn't he thoughtful.

Joe Crow Chicken

As photos go, this is as uninspiring as they get, but the recipe is completely worth it.

We recently purchased a new barbeque for the summer season - a big stainless steel mothership of a barbeque. My role is the preparation of the food rather than the actual cooking and I have a major issue in that all my husband wants to cook on the barbeque is sausages, steak, meat patties and the occasional shrimp on a skewer. All in all a barbeque is just a giant and expensive kitchen appliance. My goal this summer is to encourage him to be a little creative and this recipe was my first attempt. First I had to get over my aversion to using chicken meat other than breasts. Yes I know that thigh meat is moister and more succulent than breast meat, but by the time I cut out all the fat and oogey bits, the meat that's left is very messy looking - especially when I forget to buy boned thighs. My tip for any like-minded chicken choppers is to use lots of minced garlic in the marinade to conceal any bits of fat that might be left on the meat.



Tequila Lime Chicken

Ingredients
Chicken
Olive or avocado oil
A generous slosh of tequila (I used Jose Cuervo Gold - don't waste your good Patron or Herradura on this)
Juice of 2-3 limes
A squirt of sweet chilli sauce or some finely sliced fresh red chilli
A handful of chopped coriander/cilantro
2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped

Method
Place your prepared chicken in a bowl
Add a little oil and mix with the chicken to combine
Add remaining marinade ingredients and leave to marinate for 4-6 hours or even overnight
Cook on the flat plate of your barbeque until done

This would be delicious served with a mango or kiwifruit salsa

I Heart Rachael Ray

... well at least her Chipotle Cashew Chicken Recipe.

Some friends of mine in Kentucky are fans of Food Network (aren’t we all) and in particular, the princess of perkiness, Rachael Ray. We had been discussing a recipe which used Montreal seasoning. It’s something I hadn’t heard of before as we don’t have McCormicks in NZ and I was very curious about it. The recipe was for lamb or chicken patty pockets served with lemon rice and eggplant-chickpea curry

I have no excuse not to try the recipe because my friends gave me a giant jar of Montreal seasoning to bring home. Unfortunately eggplants are hard to find right now so it’ll have to go on my to make list. For those of you reading from a non-US country you can make your own version of Montreal seasoning with this recipe from The Secret Recipe Blog. I will have to try it before long because I have become completely addicted to Montreal seasoning and use it everywhere I can; on sauteed mushrooms, on oven roasted vegetables, in my bolognese sauce; it's great stuff. Watch for it in Lis and Kelly's Salad Stravaganza event soon.

When my husband and I were in Los Angeles we stayed at the Marriott in Torrance which but a hop step and a jump from Del Amo Fashion Centre. Del Amo used to be the biggest mall in America until it was eclipsed by The Mall of America in 1992. For all you trivia buffs out there here’s some about Del Amo…

• The mall was the setting of an important scene in the Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown. In the movie a subtitle stated that the Del Amo Mall was the "largest indoor mall in the world".
  The movie Bad Santa co-starring John Ritter has most of its mall scenes filmed on the inside and outside of the mall.
• The "International" food court was used in a scene from the 1982 movie Valley Girl, starring Nick Coppola, who later adopted the name Nicholas Cage.
• The Comedy Central show Reno 911! has used Del Amo Mall for both interior and exterior shooting.

One afternoon we were working out in the hotel gym – him doing free weights and me – sitting on an recumbent cycle with my ear plugs in watching ...yep ...Food Network with Rachael Ray. I know it seems like a bit of a contradiction but in actual fact it worked really well because the show I was watching wasn’t finished by the time my workout was over so I stayed on the bike a little longer. Once of the ingredients in the recipe that was being demonstrated was…. wait for it….. Montreal seasoning. I knew I had to try it. And there was the sweet/savoury thing going on too which is always appealing to me. You can find the original recipe here

Chipotle Cashew Chicken with Brown Rice aka Park City Chicken
From Every Day with Rachael Ray
6 Servings

Ingredients
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 large onion, 1/4 finely chopped, 3/4 thinly sliced
2 cups brown rice
4 cups chicken stock or low-sodium chicken broth
2 pounds chicken meat (tenders; skinless, boneless breasts; skinless, boneless thighs), cut into 2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons grill seasoning blend, such as Montreal Steak Seasoning blend by McCormick
2 to 3 tablespoons dark soy sauce, such as tamari (eyeball it)
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
10 to 12 water chestnuts, sliced or chopped
1 cup frozen green peas
3 tablespoons canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, finely chopped (available in the international foods aisle), or 1 1/2 tablespoons ground chipotle powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin (a palmful)
2 to 3 tablespoons honey (2 healthy drizzles)
1/4 to 1/3 cup pure maple syrup (eyeball it)
2 to 3 tablespoons cilantro or parsley leaves (a handful), chopped, your preference
1 cup raw cashews

Method
In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil (1 turn of the pan) and the butter
When the butter melts into the oil, add the chopped onion and cook for 2 minutes, then add the rice and cook for 3 minutes more
Add the chicken stock and cover the pot
Raise the heat and bring the stock to a rapid boil
Once the stock boils, reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the rice is tender, about 18 minutes

While the rice cooks, make the chicken
Heat a large skillet over high heat
Season the chicken with the grill seasoning
Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil (2 turns of the pan) and then the chicken
Brown the chicken on both sides, season with the soy sauce, then move the chicken to 1 side of the pan
Add the sliced onion, garlic and bell pepper
Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, then add the water chestnuts and green peas, and mix the vegetables and chicken together
Add the chipotle chiles and cumin and toss to coat
Glaze the chicken mixture with the honey and maple syrup and turn off the heat
Add the chopped cilantro or parsley (whichever you prefer) and the cashews

Spoon the rice into bowls, top with the cashew chicken and serve
As Rachael would say Yum-o

Morven’s comments:
Other than halving the recipe I made it exactly as stated - well almost. I am not a fan of brown rice so I used white. I know it’s good for you with its extra fibre and all that good stuff but I just don’t care for it. My preferred rice is basmati which I choose because it is a low GI variety.
I wouldn’t bother with cooking the rice with butter and onions and stock because there is just so much flavour going on with the rest of the dish that rice may as well be plain.
For half the recipe I used two chipotle chillies which gave a nice mellow heat without burning your lips off.
Neither the honey, not the maple syrup were dominant but I'm sure they added to the complexity of the flavours.
I'm definitely making this again!

Fun with Filo

If anyone has recently stumbled across my blog they're probably wondering why on earth I'm bothering because I haven't posted since my first entry. We'll you see I'm having a few problems with my photos (the first problem being that they suck! and the second that I can't figure out how to upload the stupid things!) and I figure that a food blog without photos is like a cookbook without pretty pictures - not worth the bother of reading. I'm sure that just as my quilting improved with practice, so shall my photography. Please bear with me.
The main reason I plunged into blogging without having some draft posts and pictures up my sleeve for future use is that I wanted to participate in the current Blogging by Mail event, hosted by Stephanie, the Happy Sorceress, from Dispensing Happiness. The rules are simple - no blog - no play. The deadline for mailing is 15 September which sounds like a long way away but I am a terrible procrastinator. However, I'm pleased to say that my package is winging its way to somewhere overseas and has an ETA of about 7 days. Who will be the lucky recipient? I hope she likes what I chose.


I had leftover rotisserie chicken and based on the fresh veggies I had in my fridge I decided to recreate that old Pampered Chef chicken and broccoli dish that appears on many recipe sites online. It's one of those dishes that transports me back to when I was living in Kentucky and I don't make it often enough. True to the quote on my first blog entry aspects of which I attributed to my mother, I didn't follow a recipe, I was missing a vital ingredient and I didn't have a key utensil!! In New Zealand we do not have any sort of packaged bread that comes in a tube so I had to improvise. I thought I'd make little filo pies in muffin pans. Slight technical hitch - I didn't have a Texas muffin pan and had to use regular a regular size one. I am not a big fan of dill but in this recipe the dill is one of the flavours that adds oomph to the taste. The finished dish didn't taste quite as good as I remembered it but I guess that's what happens when you guesstimate your proportions. Here's the recipe if you're doing the crescent roll thing:

Chicken and Broccoli Braid

12 oz. cooked chicken, chopped (2 cups - about 3 cooked boneless skinless chicken breast halves)
1 cup fresh broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup red bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 oz sharp Cheddar cheese, grated (1 cup)
1/2 cup. mayonnaise
2 tsp dried dill
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp slivered almonds (I like more)
2 pkg (8 oz. each) refrigerated crescent rolls
1 egg white, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C)
In a large bowl, toss together chicken, broccoli, red bell pepper, garlic, cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, dill, salt, almonds and onion
Unroll crescent roll dough, and arrange flat on a medium baking sheet. Pinch together perforations to form a single sheet of dough. Using a knife or scissors, cut 1 inch wide strips in towards the center, starting on the long sides. There should be a solid strip about 3 inches wide down the center, with the cut strips forming a fringe down each side. Spread the chicken mixture along the center strip. Fold the side strips over chicken mixture, alternating strips from each side. Pinch or twist to seal. Brush braided dough with the egg white.
Bake in the preheated oven 25 to 28 minutes, or until golden brown.

If you want to make filo muffin cases take a sheet of pastry, brush it with oil or butter, fold it in half and brush with more oil, fold it in half again etc etc til you get down to a size that will fit your muffin pan (I think it was three folds for a regular sized muffin pan). Press the filo into the muffin pan and fill with the chicken mixture. Bake about 20 minutes.

I served my little pies with creamy mashed potato, partly to appease my husband who loves his spuds, and partly because I thought the creamy mash would be a nice foil to the flaky pastry.