Category: onion

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
batter mushroom onion pork

pork & mushrooms with onion yorkshires and creamed onion gravy

Snuggle down, because it’s cold and wet out there. Time for a sausage ‘n’ starch dinner to both fill up and warm up.

This started, as many of my recipes do, from a single ingredient and spiralled out from there. Knorr sent onion gravy pots to try. You whisk a blob of jelly into simmering water and it creates a savoury sauce. The flavour is nice although it has a faint flour back note to it. Some years ago in New York I tried a creamed gravy and it was the business, so creme fraiche is a nod to that amazing condiment.

I paired it with pork and mushrooms to make a satisfying, meaty dinner. Onion gravy was always destined to go with Yorkshire pudding, so an onion-flavoured Yorkshire seemed to be the perfect partner.

If you’re looking for something to make you snuggle up of a brisk evening, this should tick the boxes. It’d be great with sausages too.

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pork & mushrooms with onion yorkshires and creamed onion gravy

Prep Time 5 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 20 minutes
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • Vegetable oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons heaped flour
  • Some milk
  • 1 red onion sliced
  • 2 pork loin steaks sliced
  • 250 grams chestnut mushrooms sliced
  • 1 leaves sprig thyme picked
  • 1 Knorr onion gravy pot
  • 1 tablespoon creme fraiche

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 180C. Add a thin layer of oil to a casserole dish and pop in the oven to heat up.
  • While the oil heats, whisk the eggs and flour together then add enough milk to make a gloopy batter. Season with a little salt and pepper.
  • When the oil is smoking hot, add the onion slices and then the batter on top, then return to the oven for 20 - 25 mins until the pudding is puffed and browned.
  • While the Yorkshire bakes, fry the pork, mushrooms and thyme together over a medium heat until the pork is cooked through and the mushrooms tender.
  • As the pork finishes, make up the onion gravy as per the packet instructions and then whisk in the creme fraiche. Serve a slice of the Yorkshire pudding with the pork and mushroom mixture, with a helping of the creamed onion gravy.
Categories
cheese food onion potatoes

cheese and onion mash

The other week, I got my hands on a Masha. It’s a new potato mashing device that looks pretty much like a hand blender. I’m sure you’ve heard the horror stories when using a stick blender on mashed potato: you get glue. The fibres tear, leaking starch everywhere and the whole thing coagulates.

This gadget comes with a fabulous verb though. It extrudes. In other words, it pushes the potato through some holes. Doesn’t sound that revolutionary but it really does make some pretty fine mash. Sexy looking device too, and it washes up dead easy to boot.

Would I use it much? Probably would actually. I surprised myself. I was absolutely certain this was going to a once-only toy but the speed and ease with which it makes smooth mashed potato is impressive. I prefer mine smooth to chunky and this is much quicker than mucking about with a sieve, which is my usual weapon of choice.

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Cheese and onion mash

Something a little different from regular mash.
Course Side Dish
Servings 2
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 250 g white potatoes peeled and chopped good old Maris Piper would be great
  • ½ onion sliced
  • 1 star anise
  • 20 g Comté cheese grated
  • Butter and milk to taste

Instructions

  • Put the oven on to 180°C. Put the onion slices in a baking tray with the star anise, drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Pop in the oven for 20 - 25 mins, stirring every now and then until starting to catch.
  • Meanwhile cook the potatoes in boiling salted water, for 15 - 20 mins until knife-tender. Drain well, add a knob of butter, a splash of milk and use a Masha for a few seconds to mash. Stir in the butter and onions (discard the star anise) and season to taste.
Categories
bacon food mayonnaise onion potatoes

garlic and bacon potato gratin

We get through buckets of mayonnaise in this house. I kinda like it – particularly with store-bought pizza for reasons I don’t understand – but the rest of the family demolish it. If my son was asked the legendary question: “you’re handed a sausage sandwich. Will it be red sauce, brown sauce, or no sauce at all?” he’d reply mayonnaise in a heartbeat.

So to receive some samples from Hellman’s of their flavoured mayonnaises was set upon by the family quite quickly. First the packaging – there’s much made on TV of their no-mess resealing cap. And sure enough it works a treat. As long as you don’t mind sacrificing a third of the bottle. By the time you work your way down there the rest refuses to come out. I took a knife to it to free the captive condiment. But what about the taste?

There was a black pepper one which I found nice and prickly, and worked really well in a ham salad wrap. But the garlic one was disappointing – slightly tangy but not flavoured with garlic at all. So that’s why it ended up in this gratin.

This type of recipe works great as a side dish, or can be had with a simple salad on the side.

Garlic and potato gratin (serves 2):

5 – 6 medium sized floury potatoes, cut into thick coins. Peeling optional

1 onion, sliced (I used frozen ready-sliced onions)

2 rashers smoked streaky bacon, chopped

5 tablespoons garlic mayonnaise

Milk

A little grated parmesan

  1. Preheat the grill to high. Get a large pan of salted water on to boil and add the potatoes. Simmer for 10 minutes or until just tender.
  2. While the potatoes cook, fry the onions and bacon in a pan with a little oil until the bacon has coloured and onions softening.
  3. Drain the potatoes and add to the onion and bacon pan, seasoning as you go. In a shallow dish mix the mayonnaise with a little milk until you get a creamy dressing, and then stir the onion, bacon and potatoes through it until well coated. Grate a little parmesan over the top and put under the grill until golden.
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