Roast chicken thighs in a spiced coconut sauce with salad.
For the thighs, I put them all in foil from frozen, then seasoned them liberally with crushed chillis, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, ground coriander and lime juice, double wrapped the foil and whacked them in the oven at 200C for about an hour- if they’d been defrosted it would have been about half that time at 180C.
I also made a coconut sauce using creamed cocunut (the stuff you buy in a box- it’s much easier to keep and use than coconut milk), stock, two cloves of chopped garlic, a splash of rancid fish sauce*
Other than that it’s just a quick salad (curly lettuce, cucumber, radishes) -the eponymous boyfriend has been keeping odd hours so it’s an easy enough thing to put together at whatever time he gets in. It was going to be with chicory but to my enormous disappointment that had rotted at the stalk. (grr, air-tight packaging + wet veg = My Silage Hell)
Vaguely relatedly; I freeze all the meat I buy, really- it keeps fine and it makes it much easier to avoid anything going off, plus it actively helps for some recipes. I’ve had joints I’ve kept for quuuuite some time that have been utterly delicious when eating but watch out if it’s anything like sausages, which the fat in doesn’t freeze terrifically for enormously long periods (as in, more than a year) but a big beef roasting joint or something is good to stick around for the nuclear winter.
(Apologies for the even-shittier-than-usual photo! I only had my work Blackberry to hand)
*This is its real name! It’s also translated as Thai fish sauce, somewhat more palatably.
Pork shoulder salad for brunch- I’m trying to remember to update Mogfood more, so here’s an everyday thing.
I cooked the pork at a low temperature in garlic butter and then added a teaspoonful of whole grain mustard and the juice of half a lemon at the end to make a dressing. The salad is pea shoots, chopped radishes, cucumber (which actually didn’t really merit being there but needs eating), sliced pear, a few chopped black olives, fresh passionfruit, fresh coriander and a tiny sprinkling of lemon thyme on the top. Pork works well with really herby and citrus flavours in a salad, as it’s so fatty, so it stood really nicely against the lemon/passion fruit an coriander/thyme. Could have probably done with mint or parsley instead of coriander but I’m lazy and the coriander plant is indoors and it was only a quick brunch, innit.
A vegetarian/vegan version of this would work really well with late season parsnips instead of pork. (use garlic oil rather than butter for vegan innit)
Last night excellent chums R and J came round for some GRUB so I naturally spent two hours creating My Masterpiece.
It’s piratical prawns- matted leek “rafts” (fried into fritters) on a cucumber sea, with king prawns, a courgette sail, black soba noodle rigging, coriander and a butter and lime juice dressing.
Then pork belly rubbed in tequila, paprika and cumin, balsamic-marinaded crackling, a slightly aborted pea shoot/pork fat emulsion (I don’t have a blender, which makes these things slightly challenging to do with a not-enormously-delicate masher…) and some caramelised onion and chopped garlic, on a pea shoot, micro-shoot garlic chives and chive salad.
Then what were supposed to be ‘black holes’ -thick, soy-salted caramel with a lemon thyme crumble and frozen stars of lemon creme but I lost my nerve with the caramel (I’d never tried it before and don’t have appropriate silicon things for dealing with it, really- it’s remarkable I didn’t burn my arm off at one point) so they turned into more fudgey pots after I added creme fraiche. The pot has a lining of thick, soy-salted caramel (so I did at least get that bit right!) cut and topped with creme fraiche and then with a lilac sponge biscuit on the top.
Pretend reverse sushi; spiced, sweetened lentils on smoked salmon with poppyseeds. The lentils have five spice, lemon juice and honey on them for flavour- they worked really well for this but would need to be much drier to do it the right way up.
The two salads are a simple pea, spring onion and caper with melted butter, topped with more smoked salmon and a retro one based on a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer, which I was reading in a very rainy Brittany last week. I think it was the Rainbow Room salad? Anyway, this one is grated carrot, chopped, salted peanuts, sesame seeds, hot sauce, cider vinegar, olive oil and black pepper.
Ribboned roast root vegetables in a roast onion, thyme and beer sauce, chipolatas and a chilli wrapped in a strip of chicken breast meat, fresh thyme.
The roast root veg ribbons would make excellent “tagliatelle” to go with a wild boat ragout, which is a fact I may hold in reserve for the self catering holiday I’m going on soon.
Katsu chicken drumsticks, spiced creamy leeks with garlic, topped with freshly chopped mint.
Shit, I’ve made like 50 of these brownie cakes with hot chocolate icing, I’m gonna give everyone I know sweet, sweet diabetus.
Mr Mogfood complained that I’d made the house smell of chorizo while I was making a pasta sauce for my work lunches next week, so I made this little ~tasting of chorizo and celery~ as an opportunity to experiment. There’s celery curried with coconut cream, sesame and poppyseeds (waaaay too many poppyseeds fell in by accident but it was really tasty), chorizo fried in its own fat with caramelised red chilli and a salad of celery leaves dressed with lime juice and the oil from the chorizo and chillis, with mango chutney and a dribble of the chilli/chorizo oil.
I know Mr Mogfood enjoyed it because he ate it as fast as I did (I am a total food bin) and then came back for more of the curried celery. There was a real mix of flavours here- the smokiness of the chorizo and chilli was extremely pleasing against the sweetness and depth of the coconut cream and seeds. Celery leaves are also really delicious, which is sort of useful information for the future.
(The plating was a disaster I tried like 5 separate things and ended up just stuffing it on a plate in a heap)
Spicy roast chicken wings and drumsticks with chicken and coconut broth, sheets of steamed celeriac and fresh mint.
