Category: Poultry

Terry Durack’s Thai Chicken and Basil

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves 4

This is a Terry Durack recipe from his book Yum, a $1 purchase from St Vincent de Paul. (Seriously, St Vincent de Paul has to be one of the best cook book chains in Sydney!)

Up until I tried this recipe, I had admired Terry Durack as a food critic though had been less impressed by his recipes. Though I am sure that this was about me and not you Terry!

He opens his book with this dish and describes it as one that changed his cooking life just because it is so unbelievably simple; I have to agree that cooking this and tasting it, it really did open my eyes too. Genuinely, like tasting the snow-egg at Quay or eating at Per Se in New York, cooking this recipe really is one of the seminal moments in my cooking life.

It is hard to believe that this recipe could taste combined, complex or even good. Instead, it really is an amazing dish that demonstrates that with only a few of the right flavours, you can produce a wonderful dish without any complaints.

To put it as Terry Durack does, ‘this dish taught me that you could toss things in the wok while half-drunk and without a care in the world, and still be able to feed people without killing them…’

I have always been lazy with this dish and substituted 3 chicken breasts for the a whole chicken (and I’ll keep doing it) and I have altered (as I usually do) the recipe to be slightly easier to follow.

Ingredients

1 small chicken, meat from the breast, thighs and legs removed, sliced into strips
3 or 4 green (or red) chillies, deseeded and sliced into thin slivers
2 tbsp of finely chopped parsley
Bunch of basil leaves, removed from stem
4 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp fish sauce

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a wok and cook the chicken over a moderate heat for a few minutes, then add the chillis, most of the basil and the parsley.
  2. Cook, stirring as you go for another 3 or 4 minutes.
  3. Splash in the fish sauce and stir through.
  4. Add remaining basil and serve with jasmine rice.

Jamie Oliver’s Arrosto Misto with Gravy

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Serves: 8

This is a really cool roast, bringing together two meats – lamb and duck – and roasting them side by side.

Cool right?

Better still, the gravy that is produced as part of the process is rich and flavoursome and it really is a pillar unto itself in the meal.

The last time I served this up, I served it with pan-fried parmesan polenta and pan sautéed asparagus with balsamic.

Next time, I’d try a cabbage gratin to cut through the richness of the roast; perhaps some buttered beans.

Whatever you serve this with, people will know it is going to be special and that means they’ll bring better wines to dinner.

Cool right?

Right.

Ingredients

4 celery stalks, roughly chopped
4 carrots, roughly chopped
2 red onions, roughly chopped
A head of garlic broken into cloves
A few bay leaves
A small bunch of fresh rosemary separate into sprigs
1.5kg shoulder of lamb
Olive oil
Bottle of red wine (750ml)
1 large (2kg) free-range or organic duck
1 thumb sized piece of ginger
2 tbs of flour

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 170c.
  2. Divide the chopped vegetables, garlic cloves and bay leaves between two roasting pans. Scatter half the rosemary over the vegetables in one pan, retaining the other half of the rosemary for stuffing in the duck.
  3. Season the lamb shoulder and duck and drizzle with olive oil.
  4. Slice the ginger and stuff inside the duck with the remaining rosemary.
  5. Place the lamb on top of the vegetables in the roasting pan with the rosemary, and the duck on top of the vegetables in the roasting pan without the rosemary. Pour a third of the wine over the lamb, a third of the wine over the duck, retaining a third for the gravy.
  6. Place the lamb in the oven for two hours, checking periodically to see if it is drying out. If so, add a little water; this is important as the vegetables in the lamb roasting dish will make the gravy and so must be moist.
  7. After two hours of cooking, add the duck to the oven and cook for a further two hours. After four hours, the meat should be falling off the bone of the lamb and the duck will be golden and cooked.
  8. Remove the meat from the oven and set aside covered in foil. Add the remaining wine and flour to the sauce and vegetables in the lamb’s roasting pan, and place the roasting pan directly over a medium heat, stirring to combine into gravy. Try to mash up the vegetables. Do not use the duck’s roasting dish for the gravy as it will be too fatty.
  9. Shred the meats and combine on a platter. Serve the gravy in a bowl.

Chicken Stew with Mushrooms, Turnips and Kale

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4 – 6

It might seem odd to cook a stew in the middle of summer, though months since my last stew, I didn’t really care how hot it was outside. After a long day, served with a cold beer, a warm stew is a really nice, stout, filling meal among a summer of prawn salads, watermelon and frozen yoghurt.

I have adapted this recipe by doubling the mushrooms and removing the cornstarch.

You can never have too many mushrooms and the cornstarch adds a nebulous thickness to the stew as well as merely adding calories and processed food to what is otherwise, a healthy, 260 calorie dinner.

As with all stews, the cooking times really are approximate only. I let the mushrooms and onions cook down for 25 minutes and as long as you don’t overdo it and end up with mush, the longer and slower you cook a stew, the better the stew.

Season well, chopped parsley to serve, awesome.

Ingredients

750gm chicken breasts but into 2cm pieces
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 large turnips, peels and cut into 2cm pieces
500gm sliced mushrooms
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup dry white wine
4 cups chopped kale (Coles sell chopped, fresh Kale in the vegetable aisle)
750ml chicken stock
1 tsp fresh chopped rosemary
Salt and cracked pepper

Method

  1. In a heavy saucepan, heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil over a medium heat; add the chicken, stirring until lightly browned. Around 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate.
  2. Add the remaining olive oil to the saucepan; add the turnips, onions, mushrooms and garlic. Stir and cook until the onion is limp: 10 – 20 minutes or more. Add the wine and stir in for a minute before adding the stock, rosemary and kale. Bring to the boil and return the chicken (and any juices) to the saucepan. Reduce the heat and let simmer for 10 minutes or until you have the consistency you are after.
  3. Done!

Gok Wan’s Leftover Roast Duck Noodles

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 2

This is a cracker of a dish.

From go to hero, it is the fastest way to whip up a great tasting Asian dinner using your left-over meat; duck, chicken or in my case, three small leftover pork scotch fillets. Shred your meat, get your noodles ready and five minutes of wok time later…

Kid friendly too!

This is not the original recipe as I have altered some of the ingredients up. You could tone it down a notch though I really like the fun, fresh taste.

Ingredients

1 tbsp groundnut oil
200gm leftover duck meat, shredded (or pork, chicken, lamb etc)
1 cucumber, deseeded and cut into batons
4 spring onions, finely sliced into 4cm lengths
3 – 4 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
150gm dried fine egg noodles, cooked and drained according to instructions (I used Wokka Thin Egg Noodles (Shelf Read).

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a wok over a high heat. When the oil is smoking, add the duck meat and stir-fry for 2 – 3 minutes, until the meat is beginning to turn golden and a little crisp.
  2. Add the cucumber and spring onions and continue to stir-fry for 2 mins, then add the Hoisin sauce and a splash of water, Mix well.
  3. Add the cooked noodles, with the soy sauce if using and toss everything together. Serve immediately.

Light chicken korma

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 4

This is a simple and healthy take on chicken korma, save that unless you told your guests, they wouldn’t know.

The ground almonds are reasonably high in calories, though they pack so much other goodness (vitamins, minerals, good fats) that I didn’t (and wouldn’t) take it out of the recipe. Balance and moderation and all that.

Serve with basmati rice and plenty of coriander and this is two weekday dinners – and next day’s lunch packed.

I cut and steamed a whole head of broccoli and added it in at the last minute and you could of course do this with pretty much any vegetable, extending how much food you’re cooking and getting extra vegetables into the picture.

(And despite eating healthy, you’re eating the world’s greatest invention: curry!)

Ingredients

1 tbsp canola oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
Thumb-sized piece of ginger, roughly chopped
4 tbsp korma paste
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
50g ground almonds
4 tbsp sultanas
400ml chicken stock
¼ tsp brown sugar
150g pit 0% fat Freek yoghurt
Big bunch of coriander, chopped

Method

  1. Put the onion, garlic and ginger in a food processor and whiz to a paste.
  2. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot to a medium heat and add the paste, cooking for 5 minutes until soft.
  3. Add the korma pasta and cook for another 2 minutes until aromatic.
  4. Stir the chicken into the sauce, then add the ground almonds, sultanas, stock and sugar. Give everything a good mix, cover and cook for 10 minutes until cooked and reduced. Reduce further if need be.
  5. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the yoghurt and season. Serve on top of steamed basmati rice sprinkled with the coriander.

Spicy meatballs with chilli black beans

.Reading time 3 minutes.
Add more chilli and spices to dial the meatballs up even further.
Add more chilli and spices to dial the meatballs up even further.

Serves: 4

Ok, so this dish is unlikely to feature at Est. or Rockpool, though if you had it at a local café or bistro, properly seasoned, you probably wouldn’t have any qualms.

So why am I typing it up? Not because it’s easy and not because it contains mince, one of my favourite foods.

It’s here because it’s healthy, in so far that it has only 376 calories per serve, which in context of a normal, man’s daily diet of 2,500 calories, is a huge win! The dish is low in GI and it fills you up. Which for a weeknight dinner, is awesome, especially as it reheats up just fine the next night.

And it tastes good.

I adapted the recipe to make the meatballs a little more flavoursome by adding the red onion and chilli and you could cut out the avocado to save on a few more calories. Though the avocado/lime accoutrement adds a really nice visual flair, especially if you have friends around.

Just quick note regarding the canned cherry tomatoes. I hadn’t heard of cherry tomatoes in a can, though upon closer inspection, I was able to find a can of baby Roma tomatoes at Coles. If you can, find whole baby tomatoes as they present really well. Otherwise, any canned tomatoes will do.

Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 red onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 large yellow pepper (capsicum) diced
1 tsp ground cumin
3 tsp chilli paste (I used fresh chilli paste)
300ml chicken stock
400g can cherry tomatoes
400g can black beans or red kidney beans, drained
1 avocado, chopped
Juice ½ lime

Meatballs

500gm minced turkey breast
2 chillies, seeded and chopped
1 red onion, chopped
50g porridge oats
2 spring onions chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp coriander
Good handful of coriander (stalks and leaves) chopped
1 tsp olive oil (or avocado oil, rapeseed oil)

Method

  1. First, make the meatballs. Combine all of the meatball ingredients (except the olive oil) in a bowl and knead together until well mixed. Shape into 12 ping-pong sized balls.
  2. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the meatballs until golden brown, turning frequently. Remove from the pan.
  3. Tip the onion, garlic and yellow pepper into the pan and cook, stirring, until softened. Stir in the cumin and chilli paste and then the stock. Return the meatballs to the pan, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cover the pan for about 10 minutes.
  4. Stir in the tomatoes and beans and cook, uncovered for a few more minutes.
  5. In a bowl, toss the avocado chunks with the lime juice and serve the meatballs topped with the avocado and coriander leaves.