Long time between posts!

Argh - I've been really bad at posting recently. I've been super busy, with applying for jobs, then getting school reports done, and then just being busy with friends and going out and shopping and and and.... Yeah it's been busy. 

I cooked up a big roast dinner for some of the teachers from my school - that was a messy night! I discovered Madhur Jaffrey's method of cooking a whole chicken, Durban style and it's become my staple method of cooking a whole chook! I don't always slash it, or spice it, or take the skin off (so I totally change it really), but I end up with a juicy delicious chicken no matter what I do! Try it for yourself, it's so easy and awesome. I chucked 2 chickens in the oven with a leg of lamb and cooked them the same way (lamb was studded with garlic and rosemary) and they were both gorgeous. Teachers are hungry and they polished off most of the food (and the wine!).

Anyway, I'm back - for now! 

On the 21st S and I are headed off to Bali for 17 days! Being a teacher I get a lot of holidays, however it's not negotiable when I take them, so S and I don't often get time off together often. This year though, were packing up and heading to Bali - neither of us have been before! I'm really keen to avoid all the drunken, Bintang singlet wearing, obnoxious bogan Aussies that flock there, and so we're avoiding some areas and are heading around the island a little bit!

One of the things I'm really looking forward to, is Christmas dinner at Mozaic, Ubud. This restaurant headed up by Chris Salans has won a number of awards, including being listed #12 in the Miele Top Asian Restaurants in 2011/12, as well as the being in the top #50 of the San Pellegrino Best Restaurants in the World in 2009. Check out the Christmas menu HERE. Would love to hear from anyone who has been here before! 

We also got a tip to head to the Gili islands as well, and upon researching decided that we were definitely going! A bit of island paradise is definitely what we need after this hectic year!

Any Bali tips that we need to know about!? We're staying in Sanur, Ubud, Gili Trawangan, Padang Bai and Seminyak!

Chicken Vindaloo - Madhur Jaffreys Ultimate Curry Bible

My darling S loves his curries, and he can be won over in an instant, when he comes home and smells a curry I become the best person ever ever ever! I decided to have a flip through Madhur Jaffreys book, the Ultimate Curry Bible, which I still havent cooked from! Its got such a great array of recipes in that book, for any lover of curry and spice its definately a book you want to look at.

I was looking through the poultry section because I had chicken breast in the fridge that needed using... I know that chicken breast isnt the best thing to be using in a curry because they dry out so easily, but we had planned on just grilling them for wraps but plans changed! I settled on the duck vindaloo, because I had everything I needed for it, and S loves vindaloos and orders it ALL the time, so I knew he'd be happy after a long day nerding out at uni! Ok so I had everything I needed cept duck... I subbed chicken. Ill let you know how that went later in the post!

First things first, heres the recipe!

Duck vindaloo

Serves 6

Ingredients

1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp bright red paprika
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp garam masala
4 tbsp corn or peanut oil
1 x 2.7kg duck, jointed and partially skinned
1/2 tsp whole brown mustard seeds
1/2 tsp whole fenugreek seeds
15 fresh curry leaves, if available
2 medium onions, about 285g, peeled and sliced into fine half-rings
2 tbsp peeled and finely grated fresh ginger
10 medium cloves garlic, peeled and crushed to a pulp
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
120ml cider vinegar
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar

Method

Mix together the turmeric, cumin, paprika, coriander, cayenne pepper and garam masala in a small bowl and set aside.

Pour the oil into a large, wide, lidded pan and set over a medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, put in as many duck pieces, skin side down, as the pan will hold easily in a single layer. Lightly brown the duck, about 3-4 minutes per side, and remove to a bowl. Brown all the duck pieces this way and remove.

  

Add the mustard and fenugreek seeds to the hot fat and, as soon as the mustard seeds start to pop, which will happen in a matter of seconds, put in the curry leaves and onions. Stir and fry them until the onions begin to turn brown at the edges. 

Now put in the ginger and garlic. Stir and fry for a minute. Add the mixed spices from the small bowl and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring, until they have softened. Scrape the bottom of the pan as you do this.

Now add the browned duck pieces, the vinegar, salt, sugar and 475ml water. Stir and bring to the boil. 

Cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook gently for 45 minutes, lifting the lid occasionally to stir. 

Increase the heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, a bit more vigorously, stirring more frequently, for a further 30 minutes or until the duck is tender and the sauce has thickened slightly. Remove as much fat as possible before serving.

Leftovers ready for lunch tomorrow! S had coriander and fresh chilli all over his but it was spicy enough for me without the chilli and I haaaaaaaaaaate coriander!!

NOTES:

Now, I changed this recipe slightly as I had no duck and used chicken instead. I found that there was too much vinegar in this recipe for the chicken. If it were duck Im sure it would have been fine, because its so fatty and you need something acidic to cut through the richness, but the chicken, and chicken breast mind, has very little fat and its not necessary to have that much vinegar. I would cut it down to 50ml next time and add more if I need it. If you choose to follow the recipe to the letter then youll find the vinegar far too strong, I had to add more sugar and more tomatoes. It was still a touch too vinegary - but it was still really nice, S actually said he really liked it that way. 

I cooked this FAR less than the recipe stated. Chicken breasts cant take being cooked for the length of time specified so I halved it. Breast isnt really the best meat for this recipe, because the sauce benefits from being allowed to thicken up and by that time the chicken has dried out a bit. I would recommend using meat on the bone for this recipe, or at the very least, thighs. It came out fine, but for me, being a bit picky, I noticed the dryness. I knew it was going to be a bit dry but had a go anyway - always the optimist!

Being that I didnt use duck, when I was frying off the spices there wasnt enough oil in the pan to do it properly, due to the lack of duck fat. Next time Id add a bit more when frying the spices, not much but just enough to wet the pan a bit more.

Smaller things, I used spring onions instead of white onions as theyre just what I had. I also used canned tomatoes rather than fresh as I didnt have any - it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I needed to use the extra liquid that the canned toms have to counter the vinegar! 

I also found out that I had no cayenne pepper - I thought I had some, I might do, but the state of my tiny little pantry cupboard, I wouldnt be surprised if its in there I just have no idea where it is! Instead I used ground chillies, as the cayenne was the only thing providing heat, so chilli seemed a suitable substitution.

Looking back I really didnt have everything, did I?!

Anyway this was a really nice curry, S loved it, it was nice and saucy and I think its very versatile - it would be great with duck obviously, as well as lamb or beef. It was really simple to make and once youve got the indian spices its a real pantry, stand by meal. Its a sauce that can handle being cooked down alot longer than I cooked it, so would work well with cheaper cuts of meat that need longer slower cooking.

Id be happy to make this recipe again - however there are so many others in the book that Id like to try I dont know when Ill get round to it!

Venetian Chicken - Nigella Lawson

How many times have you gotten a roast chicken, with all the intentions in the world of making something fabulously different with it, and just ending up roasting it or making soup? As delicious as those are, sometimes you need to do something different with the humble chicken. Its often affordable (unless you go for the high end organic, free range, massaged chickens fed organic corn, who sleep on beds of golden straw) and easy to come by. There is almost always a chicken in the shops! So I spotted some nice looking Mt Barker free range chooks at my local IGA (which turns out to be pretty well stocked for organic food, though not so much fruit n veg), the biggest was $22 dollars and looked like a turkey, it was massive. I bought the cheapest one I could find, $13 hidden at the back! I didnt know what I wanted to do with it, but considering I had a whole vege box from the Organic Collective in the fridge, I figured Id whip up something...

I got home and had decided on Venetian Chicken by Nigella Lawson, however I didnt really know what I needed for it (handy, since Id just come back from the shop...) so tried googling it, and just came back with loads of recipes with American conversions. Not useful, I cant be arsed with a mls to cup conversion on the best of days, I wasnt about the convert a whole recipe. It turned out that this recipe was in How to Eat, the only Nigella book I actually own. Bonus! But it was tucked away somewhere in the box with all my cookbooks in it, from the move. After scrounging around, putting all the books away, reading some, procrastinating and then actually looking at the book I had gone to find in the first place, I found it. Tagliatelle with chicken from the Venetian Ghetto. Meh. Its Venetian chicken from now on.

Anyway before I go on, heres the recipe.

Ingredients
1 whole chicken (1.5kg will feed about 4)
2 Tbsp EVOO
Needles from 2 or 3 sprigs of rosemary, chopped very finely
50g sultanas soaked in warm water for about 30 minutes
100g pinenuts, lightly toasted
500g tagliatelle

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180C

2) Rub the chicken with oil, sprinkle with S&P and place it breast down on a baking dish and put it in the oven for 1-1.5 hours until well browned, turning it over towards the end to brown the breast. Its done when the juices run clear, not pink, when you cut into the thigh. When the chickens nearly ready, put abundant water on to boil for the pasta, adding salt when it boils.

3) Take the chicken out of the oven and take the meat off the bone, leaving all that glorious burnished skin on, and cut it into small pieces. (Ive taken a liberty here and not included some of what Nigella has written... its nothing important, promise.)

4) For the sauce, pour ALL the juices from the roasting dish into a saucepan. Add the finely chopped rosemary, the drained sultanas, and the pinenuts. Begin to simmer the sauce when you are ready to cook the pasta.

5) When the pastas cooked and drained, toss it with some of the sauce and chicken pieces in a large warmed bowl. I like some flat lead parsely chopped over at the last minute, no cheese please!

I pretty much followed the recipe, however I omitted the sultanas, because I know S doesnt like sweet things much, in savoury dishes, and Im not mad about sultanas. Id def try it one time, but I rarely have them in the house.

I also added some leeks and a potato to the roasting pan, along with a couple of cloves of garlic, skin on to slowly cook with the chicken. I also may have added a shlug of white wine to the pan juices at the end, which tasted awesome! I cant help but mess with recipes sometimes... I think it would also be fab with some spinach added at the end!

For 2 of us, I cooked a whole chicken, but only used the meat from the breast, purely because it was easier to cut up. It left us with another meals worth of chicken, which was pretty handy, its a cheap way to make a whole chicken go alot further!

This is a great meal to make which is really easy... Theres not a great deal of thought involved, and its a perfect meal to make when you're feeding a family or a bit of a crowd, add a nice simple salad and youre set! I loved it, S liked it too, and said that he would allow me to make it again lol

Check out http://newnigella150.blogspot.com/ for a review with pics of the recipe, as my memory card packed it in last night :(