Tuesday 5 October 2010

"Texan" chicken

Very nice chicken stew. Instead of chicken stock cube, I used home-made chicken stock. This lead to a very nice taste, but it was very gloopy and nasty after keeping it in a tub ad re-heating it.
For 3:
3 chicken breasts
3 small onions
3 yellow bell peppers
1 cube chicken stock (OXO)
Ground ginger
Chilli powder
Turmeric
Tomato puree
Peanut butter
1 Saucepan
1 grill/ 1 frying pan
1 jug

1. Chop onions and soften in saucepan over a low heat.
2. Start grilling chicken breasts or butterfly chicken breasts then start frying (singly).
3. Add a big squirt of tomato puree to onions and mix in.
4. Add about 1/2 pint of chicken stock (OXO cube in boiling water) to the onions.
5. Mix about a forkful of peanut butter into the onions+stock (sauce).
6. Mix some ginger, some chilli powder and some turmeric into the sauce.
7. Chop and mix in the yellow peppers.
8. Gently reduce the sauce while the chicken cooks.
9. Once the chicken is cooked:
If it's fried, throw it into the saucepan whole.
If it's grilled, roughly chop or tear it into whatever you consider bitesize
chunks, and mix it into the sauce.
10. Keep the whole thing on a low heat until you think it's thick enough.

Volumise: Add more onions.
Add carbs: Add more peppers. Add some sugar to the sauce.
Add fat: Use almond flour instead of heat to thicken the sauce. Fry the chicken in excess olive oil.
Add protein: Fry up some bacon until it's very crispy and add to the meal just before serving (again, pig bacon for more fat, turkey bacon for less fat).
Add a severely burnt pan: Leave the sauce for too long without stirring. The peanut butter can really mess up a pan.

P.S. I just made it without tomato puree and with okra. I added the okra once the food was nearly done and mixed it in. It worked really well.

Lamb with vodka, cinammon, cayenne onions.

My girlfriend has very little useful veg a lot of the time (no offence), but a spice rack (it's actually a cupboard) that's more expansive than mine. This was a ridiculously simple meal that I'm not massively proud of, but I do like my vodka-cinnamon-cayenne onions.
For two:
2 lamb steak
4 small onions
Ground cayenne pepper
Ground cinnamon
Roughly 3 shots of vodka
1 frying pan
1 saucepan

1. Chop the onions.
2. Add the onions to a hot, oiled saucepan and reduce the heat to the lowest setting.
3. Pour vodka onto onions and break the onions up with a wooden spoon.
4. Sprinkle cayenne and cinnamon over onions.
5. Leave onions to soften slowly in pan and when they're nearly done, oil and heat up a frying pan to max.
6. Fry the lamb steak as you like them.

Volumise: Add some more onions.
Add carbs:
Add fat: Brush the lamb with extra olive oil while it cooks. Add extra oil to the onions as they cook.
Add protein: Seriously? Add more lamb.
Add bright red lips: Use too much cayenne.