Category: carrots

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carrots chicken food potatoes

sunday grill

grilled chicken, roast potatoes, stuffing, carrots and gravy

…Instead of Sunday roast, geddit? Except it wasn’t roasted, and I ate it on a Wednesday. Simple, eh? Let me explain…

George Foreman Grills are making a comeback, it seems. They passed me by the first time around; just wasn’t in the right place at the right time. So when I was invited to test-drive their new monster 4-Portion family grill I was intrigued. I tried out a few things but they were keen for me to try cooking a delicious four person meal.

Whatever my recipe was how could I leave out my thing, roast potatoes? So a version of that was definitely going to feature; from there it was only a short step to deciding I might as well do as much of a Sunday roast as possible on the little dude. I can’t use my beloved Maris Pipers though, their texture will cause them to fall apart on the griddle. So I’m bucking the trend and using new pots here. Technically we end up with something closer to a saute potato but so much healthier.

With the potatoes sorted, it’s on to the meat. Chicken seems like the way to go. But I want to maximise the flavour, I am not actually roasting here so a few leg-ups are needed to make regular grilled foods punch above their weight. My love affair with brining told me to try it here; it provides you with excellent seasoning and gives a much ‘bigger’ flavour. The final touch for the chicken is to rub it with a stock cube to impart even more deep chickeny love.

So there it is – my quick and tasty Sunday Grill. Once your chicken has brined I reckon it will take you 25 minutes to get it on the table, so it’s a great midweek meal. Check back later this week where I’ll be giving away a grill of your very own!

If you want to go shopping for a grill now, here’s a deal for you: run over to George Foreman Grills and they’re currently offering free UK delivery and a 50% off sale. But for an extra 10% off, use the code GFSAVE10 and grab yourself a bargain!

Thanks to Sophie for going to a lot (!) of trouble getting me a grill to test on. For more George Foreman Grill inspiration, check out Helen’s lemony maple chicken thighs, and Katie’s sticky griddled plums!

Sunday grill (serves 4):

4 chicken breasts

Lots of salt

1 bay leaf

1 tablespoon honey

1 chicken stock cube

500g new potatoes, halved

750g carrots, peeled and chopped

1 shallot, peeled

50g cooked chestnuts

4 pork sausages, skinned

1 rasher bacon

3 sage leaves

25g breadcrumbs

Gravy, to serve

  1. Put your chicken breasts in a bowl and put it on top of some scales. Cover the chicken generously and note how heavy the water is. Work out 5% of the weight of the water, and add that amount of salt to the bowl. Ad the bay leaf and honey, cover and leave refrigerated for at least an hour, but no more than 6 hours.
  2. When you’re ready to cook, drain the chicken, give it a brief rinse in cold water and pat dry with kitchen roll.
  3. Pre-heat your George Foreman grill to it’s highest setting on both grill and griddle. Get a large pan of water on to boil. Crumble half the stock cube into the water. When it’s ready pop the potatoes in and boil for approximately 8 minutes or until tender enough that a knife can pass into it. Drain and allow to steam-dry for a couple of minutes. As they cool add a teaspoon of oil and toss thoroughly.
  4. In a food processor, whizz up the shallot, then add the chestnuts, sausagemeat, bacon, sage and breadcrumbs. Season well with salt and pepper and pulse several times until the whole mixture pulls together. Scoop out the mix and form into 4 balls, then flatten.
  5. On the griddle section, add the potatoes cut-side down. This will cook for about 1o – 12 minutes, until the are beautifully golden brown. You should also just about have room for the stuffing patties. After about 6 minutes the stuffing should be flipped over and cooked on the other side.
  6. Meanwhile, fill the saucepan that held the potatoes with boiling water again and get the carrots on to cook until tender to your liking.
  7. After the potatoes have been on for about 4 minutes, rub the remaining stock cube half all over the chicken and add the chicken breasts to the grill. Cook for 7 – 10 minutes until cooked through. They will take longer to colour because of the brining, but they will cook inside in the same time. Serve everything up and pour over your favourite gravy.
Categories
brussels sprouts carrots food gravy parsnips potatoes turkey

roast turkey with all the trimmings

Sometimes, blog posts I write are to spread the news of some great recipe I found. Other times it’s about crazy experiments. But the aim has always been to be a log of what I cooked, and that’s what this Christmas Day feast is about: to remind myself what worked and what to fix for next time.

Perhaps surprisingly I’d never cooked a whole turkey before: on previous years when hosting someone else provided the turkey on another occasion I went for chicken. So on your maiden voyage into turkey cooking, what technique do you follow to ensure no-one is disappointed (least of all me!) ?

I was initially tempted by Matthew Fort’s method for slow-roasting the bird, especially given my previous success with long roasting times. But I just couldn’t take the risk and instead went for the technique of that doyenne of domesticity, Nigella. I grabbed a copy of Nigella Christmas from the library and swotted up. She favours a brining followed by a hot, quick roasting. I’m a big fan of brining poultry and with trusty meat thermometer in hand I had to follow this one. And I’m so glad I did. It was no bother to prepare as it is done a couple of days beforehand, and by using a foil roasting tray I could chuck it on the recycling pile and not have to scrub the pan after cooking. I had a 5.5kg bird and anticipated a cooking time of 2½ hrs and bang on then it was done. In fact I probably could have removed it 15 minutes earlier as the very outer skin was a little tough and the internal temperature was in the mid 80s, well within the safe range. That aside the flavour was lovely and texture great, so I was very pleased with bowing down to Queen Nigella’s recipe.

So that was the main event. The roast potatoes, well you might recognise that recipe. Sprouts were also cooked to a previous tradition in my house, while carrots were simply steamed – there’s more than enough flavours going on to bother with tweaking these too much. There were also maple-roast parsnips, Jamie Oliver’s “get-ahead” gravy which I’ve made before and is absolutely terrific (a friend of mine commented that it “tastes of everything you put into it”), and on this occasion raised its game with turkey roasting juices and a quick turkey stock.

Other people may raise an eyebrow at packet stuffing, but I grew up on the stuff and a roast poultry dinner just isn’t the same without it. Yes, I know it is little more than a packet of dust mixed with water making it no more sophisticated than a Pot Noodle but I love it.

I can’t remember ever having bread sauce before but read this recipe on Recipe Rifle which, reading between the lines must be a Josceline Dimbleby recipe and therefore failsafe. However after hours of cooking it was watery. The flavour was gorgeous but unfortunately just too wet. I suspect I used rubbish bread which wasn’t in the mood to absorb liquid but I would definitely like to try it again.

Bread sauce apart, all in all a success. Very pleased with the results. Merry Christmas!

(I’ve presented it below as an itinerary as a reminder where I saved time for next year. I aimed for a 2.30pm dinner)

Roast turkey with all my trimmings  (serves 7 with leftovers):

For the gravy:

6 chicken pieces (wings, thighs etc)

3 onions, quartered

3 celery sticks, chopped

3 carrots, chopped

2 sprigs rosemary

2 tablespoons flour

1 pint boiling water

Turkey giblets

For the turkey & brine:

5.5kg turkey

10 pints water

125 grams table salt

3 tablespoons black peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick

4 cloves

2 tablespoons juniper berries

4 star anise

2 tablespoons mustard seeds

200g caster sugar

2 onions, quartered

1 piece ginger

4 tablespoons maple syrup

4 tablespoons clear honey

1 orange, quartered

For the bread sauce:

1 large onion, very finely diced

150g wholemeal bread, crusts on

6 cloves

4 cardamom pods

½ a nutmeg

75g butter

900ml milk

300ml double cream

For the yorkshire puddings:

4 eggs

4 heaped tablespoons flour

Milk

Vegetable oil

For the potatoes:

1kg potatoes

200ml goose fat

3 cloves garlic

Peel of 1 orange

1 sprig of rosemary

For the maple parsnips:

6 parsnips, peeled and quartered

2 tablespoons maple syrup

Red wine vinegar

For the brussels sprouts:

500g brussels sprouts

2 rashers bacon, diced

1 vac-pack of chestnuts

Etc:

6 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 packet stuffing

Sausages wrapped in bacon

    • 3 days before: GRAVY – Preheat the oven to 180°C. Chuck the veg and herbs in a roasting dish and top with the chicken pieces. Roast for about an hour then transfer to a hob. Shake over the flour and stir all around until a thick paste forms, then pour over the water. Allow to bubble away for about 45 minutes and then sieve the solids off. The gravy can be frozen until needed.
    • 2 days before: TURKEY – chuck the turkey with all the brine ingredients in a large lidded container and top with water until the bird is covered. Leave in a cold place (I kept mine in the garage).
    • 1 day before: BREAD SAUCE – Preheat the oven to 130°C. Combine all the ingredients in a baking dish, cover with foil and bake for 2 hours. Refrigerate until needed.
    • 1 day before: YORKSHIRE PUDDINGS – Whisk the eggs and flour together with a pinch each of salt and pepper in a measuring jug and add enough milk to make a thin custardy-textured batter. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
    • 1 day before: ROAST POTATOES – peel the potatoes but keep the peelings. I boil the peelings with the potatoes to impart super-earthy flavour, by putting them inside my cheapest (clean) dishcloth tied at the top. Cut the potatoes into golf ball-size chunks. Get a pan of water on to a rolling boil with a hefty hand of salt and boil the potatoes + skins for about 15 mins, or until they are super-tender. Drain and return to the hot pan (off the heat) to steam dry. When cool cover with clingfilm and refrigerate until needed.
    • 9am that day: TURKEY – remove the turkey from the brine, drain and pat with kitchen paper. Leave on a rack over the sink to continually drip-dry and come up to room temperature.
    • 9.30am: GRAVY – put the giblets, neck, any turkey trimmings you have into a pan with a quartered onion and barely cover with water. Leave on a low simmer for a couple of hours.
    • 10am: CARROTS & SPROUTS – put the carrots into a steamer, with the sprouts on the top tier. Halve the sprouts if they are on the large side. You are bonkers if you put crosses into the bases.
    • 10.30am: PARSNIPS – toss the parsnips in a little oil along with the maple syrup, plus a dash of red wine vinegar. Pop them in a roasting dish until needed. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
    • 11am: TURKEY – stick it in the oven. I recommend a disposable roasting dish to avoid dishwash insanity.
    • 1.15pm – 1.30pm: TURKEY – you should be checking this to see whether the bird is done around this time. When ready bring it out and cover with foil and a tea towel. When it comes out, stick the goose fat in a large roasting dish and put in the oven for a couple of minute to get sizzly hot.
    • 1.40pm: POTATOES – put the potatoes into the hot fat.
    • 1.45pm: STUFFING – mix the stuffing mix with boiling water and leave to sit. Put the parsnips in.
    • 2.00pm: LOTS – dot the stuffing with butter and put in the oven. Cover the bases of a yorkie tin with a layer of oil and get in the oven to heat up. Get the gravy and bread sauce into saucepans warming up. Tip the turkey stock into the gravy too. Depending on how salty they are, you might want to add some of the juices from the turkey roasting tray. Bung the sausages in bacon into the oven too. Give the potatoes a quick toss and add the garlic, orange and rosemary.
    • 2.05pm: YORKSHIRES – carefully pour the batter into the sizzling yorkie tin.
    • 2.10pm: VEG – Pop the steamer on for 20 mins.
    • 2.20pm: SPROUTS – get a frying pan over a medium heat and fry off the bacon. When coloured tip in the sprouts and chestnuts, seasoning liberally. After 5 mins take off the heat and add a drizzle of maple syrup.
    • 2.25pm: TURKEY – carve (or better still, get someone else to do it).
    • 2.30pm: Serve and eat!
Categories
carrots chicken cinnamon cloves coriander cucumber cumin curry food garlic ginger lemon nigella seeds potatoes red onion

empire chicken with indian gravy and bombay roasties

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.

I cannot recommend this recipe enough.

Jamie’s original recipe is here.

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

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
Categories
bacon brussels sprouts carrots chestnuts chicken food garlic maple syrup marjoram parsley polenta potatoes

sunday roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts

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

  1. 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.
  2. Pre-heat the oven to 220°C. This temperature will really blast the skin and make it golden.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. If you’re using frozen yorkshire puddings, they’ll need their 2 minutes in the oven now.
  12. 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!
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