Category: garlic

Categories
chicken food garlic lemon onion oregano paprika parsley potatoes

chimichurri chicken with patatas bravas

chimichurri chicken with patatas bravas

England may be out of the World Cup, but there’s still lots of excuses to throw a football party. For people who enjoy a cooking challenge, it presents opportunities to burrow through the regional cookbooks and get inspired. Will you serve the Nigerian jollof rice? German Bratwurst? Australian shrimp? Ghanaian fufu?

Here’s a pair of great Latin-flavoured dishes in celebration of Argentina and Spain. First up is a butterflied chicken breast bursting with vibrant lemon and garlic, partnered with a herby, sharp chimichurri sauce. And as a foil for for that, some fiery patatas bravas made with Britain’s best Jersey Royals.

These dishes scale up really well for a party, football-flavoured or otherwise: the chicken is a breast per person, and I make mine on a George Foreman grill so there’s always a couple on the go. You can make miles of the chimichurri sauce and leave it out for people to help themselves. And you can make a big vat of patatas bravas which is perfectly good at room temperature.

The brining stage for the chicken isn’t essential; but it does help keep the chicken marvellously moist and is another stage at which you can add layers of flavour.

Want more football-themed party food ideas? Check out Waitrose’s page here. My recipes are inspired by theirs:

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chimichurri chicken with patatas bravas

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

For the brine:

  • Water mixed with 8% salt
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup
  • 10 black peppercorns
  • 1 star anise
  • 4 skinless chicken breast fillets

For the chicken:

  • 4 cloves garlic roughly chopped
  • 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
  • Grated zest of 1 lemon
  • 1 red onion roughly chopped
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

For the chimichurri Sauce:

  • Pinch chilli flakes
  • 25 g flat leaf parsley roughly chopped
  • 15 g oregano roughly chopped
  • 750 g Jersey Royal Potatoes halved
  • 1 onion thinly sliced
  • 190 g chorizo diced
  • 6 tomatoes roughly chopped

For the patatas bravas:

  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • Squeeze of lemon juice
  • 25 g flat-leaf parsley roughly chopped

Instructions

  • Combine the brine ingredients and leave the chicken brining for 6 hours. Drain and pat dry when ready.
  • For the chimichurri sauce, bash all the ingredients together in a pestle and mortar. Set aside, seasoning with a little salt and a good grinding of black pepper, adding a little olive oil to bring together.
  • Cook the potatoes in a large pan of boiling water for 15 minutes until tender. Meanwhile, in a large frying pan, heat the oil and cook the onion and chorizo together for 10 minutes. Drain the potatoes and add to the pan with the chorizo and cook for a further 10 minutes.
  • Place the chicken on clingfilm over a chopping board and slice through each fillet horizontally, making sure not to cut all the way through, then open out. Add another layer of clingfilm and bash lightly with a rolling pin to flatten further. Scatter over the garlic, paprika, lemon zest then rub in with a little olive oil and salt & pepper.
  • Grill, barbecue or fry your chicken until thoroughly cooked through. Back at your potatoes, add the tomatoes, chilli and paprika and cook for a further 5 minutes. Squeeze over lemon juice and scatter over parsley.

 

Waitrose compensated me for this post and gave me some party stuff to play with.

Categories
asparagus beef food garlic rice steak

teriyaki ribeye steak with garlic fried rice

I’ve been a mild Japanophile since I was a teenager. The best games of the time came from Japan; you had to import them at extortionate prices. As such we pored over every detail and absorbed a lot of Japanese along the way. I took a Japanese module at university to bolster this further, reading James Clavell’s Asian Saga along the way. I’ve always dreamed of going to Japan some day.

It’s against this backdrop I gleefully accepted an invitation to Matsuri St James in the heart of London’s Mayfair. Established in 1993 as a joint venture between the Kikkoman soy sauce manufacturer and a Japanese rail company, Matsuri was among the first restaurant in the country offering tableside teppan-yaki, food freshly cooked on a hotplate.

With a glut of other food writers we were treated to an excellent four course meal. We sampled sushi first, as the sushi chef prepared identical nigiri at astonishing speed. He told me the first month of his training was entirely spent measuring out 15g portions of rice repeatedly, so he is now blindingly accurate. The sushi itself was just as you expect, subtle, refined and clean-tasting.   This was followed by crisp and light Tempura vegetables, with an umami-rich dipping sauce flavoured with daikon.

And then the teppan-yaki mains. And what mains they were. The ginger-scented black cod was delicate in texture but dynamite in flavour, packing an awful lot into the innocent looking portion. If you go, make sure you try this one.

An enormous steak arrived next, angry dark meat picked out by creamy yellow fat. After searing on one side the chef flipped it and CAKED it in sea salt. After a few minutes more he scraped the salt off having done it’s job, and sliced the now rare-cooked meat and served it immediately. This is where teppan-yaki works; if you’d simply been served some slices of meat you would’ve missed the spectacle of an enormous hunk of beef being served. The steak itself was excellent, served with a garlic fried rice.

The meal finished with a bafflingly underthought ice cream, crepes and pineapple, flambéed for no other reason than to make people go “ooooh” when the Grand Marnier flames licked the ceiling.

The meal was sensational. Really good ingredients treated with respect. I’d love to return but the pricing is so far out of my bracket a visit would have to be very special indeed.

As a tribute, I cooked a Japanese meal for some friends. We started with sushi…

Followed by tempura veg…

But the recipe I really wanted to share with you is my interpretation of the steak ‘n’ rice dish. A humble piece of ribeye steak (my favourite cut) cooked sous-vide (not essential but the way I like it; if you don’t have one of these contraptions you can cook your steak the way you prefer) in Kikkoman’s teriyaki sauce and egg fried rice cooked with plenty of garlic and vegetables. It’s not quite the same as a visit to Matsuri St James… but it’s a darn fine dinner.

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teriyaki ribeye steak with garlic fried rice

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 250 g ribeye steak
  • 100 ml Kikkoman's teriyaki sauce
  • 4 cloves garlic crushed
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 onion diced
  • 1 bundle asparagus sliced
  • 2 carrots peeled and diced
  • 1 mugful cooked rice cooled
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • Sea salt

Instructions

  • Sous-vide the steak with 70ml teriyaki sauce at 60C for 1 hour. Put aside until ready to cook.
  • Get a wok and a frying pan over a very high heat. Put a splash of oil in the wok and add the garlic and sugar. After just a few seconds add the onion, carrot and asparagus and stir fry for 3 - 4 minutes until starting to go tender. Add the rice and continue to stir fry until warmed through.
  • In the other frying pan sear the steak for 60 seconds on each side, adding half the remaining teriyaki sauce to the pan at the end to glaze. Remove to a board then slice into thick fingers.
  • Add the egg and last of the teriyaki to the rice and stir for another 60 seconds. Spoon into bowls and serve with the steak slices on top. Sprinkle a little sea salt on the exposed flesh of the beef.
Categories
chilli clotted cream coriander cumin garlic ginger nigella seeds turkey turmeric

turkey masala burgers

A turkey isn’t just for Christmas. It’s for all year round.

That was the message put out by the British Turkey board. Headed up by Paul Kelly – a good Essex boy – me and a bunch of others were entertained as a guest of Cyrus Todiwala to help promote the use of turkey throughout the year. Cyrus was an affable host, preparing dinner and chatting away. We were blown away by dishes like turkey heart pie and turkey cafreal tikka. All of us were stuffed with the amount of turkey dishes served, it really did showcase the bird!

It inspired me to cook an Indian-flavoured dinner. I have to be honest and say I’d not used turkey outside of December for a few years; it’s appearance in supermarkets seems to have declined. I would quite often but the breast strips for marinating, stir frying or for pies. Using mince here I made a burger with rich masala flavours, inspired by Cyrus Todiwala’s tikka recipe. I marinated mine in clotted cream, because I had some knocking about, but traditionally you’d use yoghurt.

My turkey here was succulent and meaty, and supported by spiced flavours it was a real hit. I will definitely be putting turkey in my basket more regularly.

Based on a recipe by Cyrus Todiwala

Turkey masala burgers (serves 4):

800g British turkey mince

¼ teaspoon turmeric

2 heaped tablespoons clotted cream

40g ginger

4 cloves garlic

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground coriander

½ teaspoon red chilli powder

Juice of 1 lime

½ teaspoon garam masala

For the sweet potatoes:

5 sweet potatoes, scrubbed

1 teaspoon ground cumin

For the cauliflower pickle:

400g frozen cauliflower

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

½ red onion, peeled and sliced

Burger buns and mango chutney, to serve

  1. Season the mince with the turmeric and plenty of salt and pepper. Combine well then form into 4 patties, and leave covered in the fridge while you make the marinade.
  2. Bash up the garlic and ginger with the cumin, coriander and chilli powder in a pestle and mortar until you have a paste. Add the lime juice and cream and mix well to combine. Smother the turkey patties in the marinade, cover (twice!) and leave in the fridge overnight.
  3. When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 200°C, get a saucepan over a high heat and the grill on medium high. Slice the potatoes into wedges, dust with the cumin and drizzle with oil. Roast for 30 – 40 mins, turning frequently until starten to blacken at the edges. Sprinkle salt over as they come out of the oven.
  4. When the potatoes are in the oven, put the onion in a bowl with the vinegar and a pinch each of salt and sugar. Stir occasionally.
  5. Add the cumin and nigella seeds to the saucepan and allow to heat for a minute. Add the cauliflower and jam the lid on. Toss frequently and cook for about 15 minutes or until tender. Add the onion for the last minute of cooking and check for seasoning.
  6. Grill the burgers for about 6 – 9 minutes each side, until browned and cooked through. Serve in a toasted burger with plenty of mango chutney.
Categories
food garlic potatoes rosemary thyme

roasted new potatoes

For all the different things I make on this blog, I do still love a roasted potato as often as I can. Usually fluffy varieties are the ones, but a new potato can be a great alternative if treated right. Although to be honest slathering anything in rosemary, garlic and thyme is often a good idea.

Really though, I made these as a vehicle for ranch dressing. When relatives come back from the States they bring food gifts like sweets, and the occasional sachet of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing. It’s MSG-tastic but when made up with mayo and milk makes a creamy, thick and delicious dip that goes well with crudites, salad potatoes, crisps, salad, chicken, green veg… it’s really good stuff.

Roasted new potatoes (serves 4 as a side dish):

250g new potatoes, scrubbed and halved

3 cloves garlic, squashed

3 sprigs rosemary

2 sprigs thyme

  1. Preheat the oven to 220°C. Heat a large lidded casserole on a hob and add a little oil and a knob of butter. Add the herbs and garlic, fry for 30 seconds and then add the potatoes. Turn several times in the flavoured oil to get them started, then cover and transfer to the oven.
  2. Roast for 35 – 45 minutes, turning occasionally until browned and fudgy in the middle. Serve with ranch dressing.
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