It’s long established that cocoa bean flavours work really well with chilli, such as mole, and coffee is often added out in Mid-West America to “a bowl of red”. So as part of the Lavazza Coffee, Set, Match challenge I thought I’d chuck some in a chilli today! It lends the spicy meat a dark and fruity tone, a really interesting character.
It was also handy using espresso for this chilli as this was all about speed: I got in late and needed to fix up a chilli on the quick. I used a couple of shortcuts to help me get there, caramelized onions and hot sauce to get me a few steps ahead.
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Express espresso chilli (serves 4):
800g beef mince
200g caramelized onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon chilli powder
100ml espresso coffee
1 tin tomatoes
200ml beef stock
Get a large casserole pan really hot and add a splash of oil. Brown the mince, in batches if necessary. Add the onions, crush in the garlic and add the spices. Stir fry for a couple of minutes.
Add the coffee, tomatoes and stock and bring to the boil. Lower the heat, pop on a lid and simmer for about 20 -30 minutes until thick, rich and tasty – you may need to add a little salt or vinegar to balance out the flavours (or more chilli if you’re so inclined). Serve with flour tortillas, creme fraiche and a zingy salsa.
WordPress have really improved the sharing and following aspect of their blog networks; it promotes posts being propagated around the network and readership increases all round. I saw a post featuring potato dauphinoise fly past my nose and it reminded me how long it had been since I had a decent dauph.
The really clever part with this dish is raising the temperature of the cream up first to get the seasoning right – all too often a dauphinoise can be bland as it takes much more salt than you expect.
It comes out lovely and thick, spikes of garlic just offsetting the richness beautifully. Just make sure you don’t eat it all and save a bit for while you’re doing the washing-up, as an hour spent cooling down allows the potato to soak all that cream back up again…
Bring the cream, milk to a simmer with the garlic. Add some seasoning and keep tasting until it tastes right. Add the sliced potatoes and simmer for 8-10 minutes until tender.
Put a splash of the cream into the base of a large baking dish, add the potatoes then pour over the remaining cream. Make sure everything gets covered, and dot with butter. Bake for 30 minutes until the potatoes are knife-tender and the top is golden-brown.
What a triumph this is. Just when I was feeling a bit indifferent to Jamie Oliver’s Great Britain along comes this absolute belter. Jamie introduces this by saying most people when asked about their favourite foods will mention roast chicken and curries, and this utterly unites the heart of both of these.
With blackened, tangy skin the chicken comes out juicy and tickling on the tongue, although be warned it will make a mess of your oven as it sits on the rack.
Being the kind of blog this is though, I have to talk about the roast potatoes. They are a triumph. I used to get “spicy spuds” from a dubious takeaway near me and these are very, very close to those – crispy, spicy and fluffy.
I’ve made a few changes to the spices in the potatoes based on what I had, and used floury over new pots to get them really crispy. I’ve served mine with a refreshing salad.
Empire chicken, Bombay roasties, Indian gravy and refreshing salad (serves 4):
For the chicken and marinade
1.4kg free-range chicken
1 heaped tablespoon each finely grated garlic, fresh ginger and fresh red chilli
1 heaped tablespoon tomato purée
1 heaped teaspoon each of ground coriander, turmeric, garam masala and ground cumin
2 heaped teaspoons natural yoghurt
2 level teaspoons sea salt
For the gravy
1 stick of cinnamon
2 small red onions, peeled
10 cloves
3 tablespoons each of white wine vinegar and Worcestershire sauce
3 level tablespoons plain flour
500ml chicken stock
For the Bombay-style potatoes
800g new potatoes
sea salt and ground pepper
1 lemon
2 or 3 tablespoons olive oil
a knob of butter
1 heaped teaspoon each of nigella seeds, ground coriander, garam masala, fenugreek and turmeric
1 bulb of garlic
Pinch of chilli flakes
For the salad
½ a cucumber, peeled
3 carrots, peeled
1 red onion, peeled
½ lemon
Slash the chicken’s legs a few times right down to the bone. Mix all the marinade ingredients together and smear all over the chicken. Leave to marinate overnight.
Preheat the oven to 200°C and organize your shelves so the roasting tray can sit right at the bottom, the chicken can sit directly above it, right on the bars of the shelf, and the potatoes can go at the top.
Cut the potatoes into golf-ball size pieces then parboil them in a large pan of salted boiling water with a whole lemon for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked through. Drain the potatoes then let them steam dry. Stab the lemon a few times with a sharp knife and put it right into the chicken’s cavity.
Roughly chop the onions and add to a roasting tray along with the cinnamon stick, cloves, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce, then whisk in the flour. Pour in the stock or water, then place this right at the bottom of the oven. Place the chicken straight on to the bars of the middle shelf, above the roasting tray. Cook for 1 hour 20 minutes.
Put a roasting tray in the oven for five minutes to get hot. Add the olive oil, butter, the spices, halve a bulb of garlic and add it straight to the pan. Add your drained potatoes to the tray, mix everything together, then season well. After the chicken has been in for 40 minutes, put the potatoes in.
Once the chicken is cooked, move it to a board to rest. Pass the gravy through a coarse sieve into a pan, whisking any sticky goodness from the pan as you go. Bring to the boil and either cook and thicken or thin down with water to your preference (I had to add some boiling water to deglaze the surface and make a sauce out of it.
For the salad, use a vegetable peeler to make thin strips of the carrot and cucumber. Then finely slice the onion and add this to it. Add a pinch each of salt and sugar, then squeeze over the lemon and toss to combine. Leave for 15 minutes while everything else finishes off.
Get your potatoes out of the oven and put them into a serving bowl, then serve the chicken on a board next to the sizzling roasties and hot gravy.
Sunday lunch is when you want to just go for it. I grew up in one of those lucky houses where my Mum cooked a Sunday roast every week without fail, and recently it’s been nagging at me to do this much more regularly for my own family. But my Mum didn’t have Twitter to distract her. Or Facebook. Or Dave Gorman’s Absolute radio show. But I’m trying.
This is a fairly typical roast for me, and when you do more involved roasts with a few side-dishes, I think you should forgive yourself a few shortcuts. Why not use packet stuffing, or frozen yorkies? We all know you can make them, but the extra timing, oven space and graft is more worthwhile concentrating on getting the big stuff right. So I took a few liberties.
And I know what some of you are thinking. “Yorkies? With chicken?” Yes. They were made to float on gravy of any description. Try and stop me.
The chicken here was excellent, from those fine chaps at Farmers Choice. It gave brittle, savoury skin with plump and flavour-packed meat. A real treat.
If the thought of making a Sunday roast scares you, and just seeing that list of things is too daunting, don’t panic. I bet you could cook all those things on the list individually. So it comes down purely to timing. If it helps, write a list. Start with the thing that takes longest to cook, and count things in from then – see below for a guide. Don’t forget to allow the roast time to rest. But be bold, and always remember that the gravy will heat everything back up again 🙂
Sunday roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts (serves 4 – 6, + leftovers):
1.6kg chicken
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 onion, quartered
20g butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon parsley, finely chopped
500g white potatoes, peeled and diced into golf ball-sized chunks
1 tablespoon fine polenta
25g butter
2 bay leaves
Dash of red wine vinegar
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
250g brussels sprouts
100g cooked chestnuts
4 rashers back bacon, rind removed and reserved and sliced
1 tablespoon maple syrup
A few hours before, sprinkle the marjoram over the bird. Spread it all over generously with salt and black pepper, then place on a rack over a roasting dish and pop in the the fridge for about 3 hours. This step draws flavours down into the chicken, while at the same time drying out the skin to make it super-crispy.
Pre-heat the oven to 220°C. This temperature will really blast the skin and make it golden.
Get the chicken out of the fridge and add a few more flavourings: put 2 quarters of the onion inside the carcass and the other two on the base of the roasting dish you’re going to use. Mix the butter, parsley and garlic together. Work your fingers under the skin of the chicken to release it from the meat, then slowly push the butter into this little pocket you’ve created. Put into the oven and leave there for 15 minutes, before turning the heat down to 180°C.
Meanwhile, get the potatoes on. Get a large pan of boiling water on and salt generously. Par-boil for 10 or so minutes, until a knife can slide in and out easily (I usually jab a knife into a wedge then suspend it above the water – when it can fall off within a few seconds they’re ready). Drain well and leave to sit in the warm pan without a lid for a few minutes to steam dry. Put the butter with a splash of rapeseed oil into another baking dish and place in the oven to heat up. Toss the potatoes in the polenta and then tip out into the now hot fat. These are going to need about 45 minutes, which will cross over with removing the meat from the oven. When you remove the meat, turn the heat back up to 200°C for the potatoes’ sake.
When the chicken is cooked (look for juices running clear when probed), remove to a wooden board and cover loosely with foil. Pop the roasting dish on a high hob and add a tablespoon of flour, stirring well. After a minute add about 300ml boiling water to cover the bottom of the tray and get scraping to get all that good stuff. Sieve into a jug for serving, and give it a short blast in the microwave to keep the heat up right at the end.
If you’re using packet stuffing like me, you’ll probably need to do the boiling-water-and-stick-in-the-oven thing here. Let the instructions on the box guide you.
When the potatoes have had about 20 minutes, add sea salt, a little white pepper, the bay leaves, red wine vinegar and the bacon rind. Return to the oven.
Get the carrots and sprouts on to cook. When you are cooking multiple veg I recommend a multiple-tier electric steamer. It gets everything going at once and frees up a space on the hob. The carrots will need around 15 minutes.
While the sprouts cook, get a frying pan on medium hot and add a little oil. Throw in the bacon and wait til it colours on one side before adding the part-cooked sprouts and chestnuts. Stir fry well for five minutes.
The potatoes might need a final blast of seasoning, otherwise they’re good to serve. Take the chicken to the table, pouring any spare juice into the gravy jug, and get someone else to carve. You’ve done enough.
If you’re using frozen yorkshire puddings, they’ll need their 2 minutes in the oven now.
When the sprouts are tender, take them off the heat and add the maple syrup. Toss well to coat and serve, and don’t forget the carrots!
