Chicken Korma & Potatoes with a Courgette and Shallot Mix

Title pretty much says it all... but I'm still going to give you a play-by-play.

Side Dish: Courgette and Shallot Mix
Well, thought we needed some vegetables to go with our Korma, potatoes, and rice, so I rummaged around and found shallots (two medium) in the cabinet to go with the courgettes (two large) that my flatmate had in the fridge. Then I started chopping away, cutting both the shallots and the courgettes lengthwise because, as my flatmate says, "for some reason circle vegetables just don't taste as good." And I would have to agree....

The Main Bulk: Chicken Korma with Potatoes and Rice
Potatoes boiling away, chicken browning in the pan, rice cooking and cooking...

Courgettes and shallots in one pan with olive oil (extra virgin) and salt and pepper, which I stirred quite often so as to keep rotating the courgettes for browning....
Simultaneously (and as you can probably guess, not too much stove space, so my flatmate and I had to do a bit of cooking acrobatics in order to have the timing of everything correct....), we added our Loyd Grossman Korma sauce to the browned chicken and let that cook until adding the boiled potatoes and simmering the combination until the chicken was cooked through.

The mixture cooking away (see the lovely browning on the courgettes!)....

And the chicken and potatoes soaking up all the delicious Korma sauce....

Until at last, complete.

Nom.

Very delicious overall. The softness of the shallots with the ever so slight crunch of the courgettes complimented the curry quite well! A bit more salt here and there would have made it even better, but then again, I just love salt. 

And This Saturday.....

Ratatouille and Chocolate Chip Cookies :)

Experimenting with Stuffed Chicken

On the Menu tonight:
Baked chicken stuffed with mozzarella and pesto
Caramelised onions and chestnut mushrooms, drizzled with garlic fried in sun-dried tomato oil
Sauteed Spinach
Chive Rice

Tonight I got to have a lot of fun, as my flatmates and I combined forces for dinner, and I got to show them a few of my cooking tricks.
As with the previous post, I used the same method of browning the garlic in the sun-dried tomato olive oil then quickly frying the stuffed chicken (to be detailed below) in said oil before placing it in the baking tray and drizzling it with the browned garlic and oil and placing it in the oven! For the baking, 200 celsius (fan oven) for about 25 minutes....

For the sides, since I had to use up all of my mushrooms (200g), I thought it would be best to caramlise them with the two medium-sized onions I had lying around:

Heat up the olive oil (do the 'water test,' aka, if you drop a bit of water and it sizzles, it's ready!) then add your mushrooms and onions. Once they have cooked down a bit (softened but not browned), add your brown sugar (done mostly by eye and preference), then stir away until cooked down to just past the point pictured above.
For the sauteed spinach? Pretty simple. Olive oil + spinach --> cook down until the spinach had turned to a deep green.
Chive rice? Cook your rice as per usual then add dried chives and butter (we use an olive-oil based butter).

So with all the elements cooked (and if you like to have fun with presentation as I do), this was the final product:

Everything was delicious, but to add a bit more description than that, I'll focus mostly on the chicken and onions/mushrooms (the spinach and rice speak for themselves):

Chicken:

Nice and juicy, with the mozzarella and pesto combination oozing slightly from the deep pocket we created earlier. Could have used a bit more pesto, but then again, I'm a pesto fiend. This could be even more improved by taking slices of sun-dried tomato and baking the chicken with that as well. But then again, another variation, another time....

Onions/Mushrooms:

Perfect amount of caramlisation. When cooking and adding the brown sugar, all you have to do is sprinkle the sugar in a thin layer on the top of the mixture, mix, then do that about three times. Soft and luscious with a tint of sweetness. 

Improv Night

So, I made a version of the goat's cheese stuffed chicken again... but this time I had the company of a friend, and we added a few different bits. I do have a picture, but, as I took it on my not-so-stellar phone, it doesn't show much at all!

Normally, I would take the goat's cheese, mix it with the parsley and lemon zest, stuff it in the chicken, then wrap it in bacon. This particular time, however, with the excitement of me and my friend combined, our trip through the grocery store was equivalent to letting kids loose in the candy shop. Vegetables here, meat there - our ideas burst into the air, and most things we passed ended up in our rolling shopping basket. Eventually we managed to get an actual idea of what we wanted to cook, so...

This is what we had:
Two chicken breasts (skin on)
Goat's Cheese (soft)
Parsley
Lemon Zest
Sun-dried tomatoes
Garlic

This is what we did:
While I was assembling the chicken my lovely co-chef sliced the garlic then began frying it in a sauté pan with a tiny bit of olive oil. On my side of the counter, I took the goat's cheese, parsley and lemon zest, mixed it all together, and sat it to the side while I slit medium-sized pockets into one side of each piece of chicken. Then, I took my tasty little mixture (after getting all the bits of goat's cheese that covered my hands off) and stuffed it in those pockets with sliced sun-dried tomatoes! New for me, but I liked where my friend was going with it....

So, with the chicken stuffed and the garlic browned, we put the chicken into the pan, added some oil from the sun-dried tomatoes, and fried the chicken (on one side only) for a mere few minutes. Satisfied that all the juices were locked and loaded, we transferred the chicken into a glass baking dish, covered them with the browned garlic slices, a tad bit of the used sun-dried tomato oil and a good amount of chili oil, and baked them in the oven for a good 25-30 minutes.

They came out beautifully coloured, cheese mixture slightly oozing from the pockets, with a delicious aroma of fried garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and citrus. Nice little improv moment! Certainly tasty too....

BM Results

Now, I didn't manage to get a photo of the food before or after I took it out of the oven (I had hungry animals ready to attack and had no time to spare), but I did get one of the end result:

Very satisfied customers once again :) Review of this dish will be posted soon...

Beef Moussaka Begins

Ingredients
Potatoes
4 white potatoes peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices
1/4 cup olive oil (60 ml)
Coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper

With the potatoes. I've preheated my oven to 375 F/190 C (170 fan)... now I am peeling the potatoes, soaking them in water, and cutting them into 1/4 inch slices then tossing them with 60 ml olive oil in a large bowl.

Next, I am arranging them on a single layer on a baking tray, seasoning with salt and pepper, and roasting them in the oven until soft and starting to brown, about 35 minutes.

With the potatoes roasting in the oven, I began making the béchamel:

Béchamel

1/3 cup unsalted butter (75 ml)

1/2 cup all purpose flour (125 ml)

3 cups milk (750 ml)

Coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper

large pinch freshly grated nutmeg

3 eggs

Around this point, things began to get a bit chaotic, as I managed to overlook a part of one of the instructions giving cooking times for the sauce, so not much was documented from here! But anywho, I began making the béchamel by melting the butter in a sauce pot, adding in the flour, then stirring and cooking this roux for about three minutes, when I gradually whisked in the milk. 

After adding the milk, I kept whisking (furiously may I add, to try and keep the roux as smooth as possible) until it thickened and coated the back of a spoon. Then, I seasoned the roux with salt, pepper, and nutmeg before placing it to the side and letting it cool slightly before adding in the eggs one at a time. 

Satisified with the results, I covered it and put it to the side for later assembly.

With all the little elements prepared, I moved on to the main bulk of the dish - the meat sauce!

Beef

3 tablespoons olive oil (45 ml)

1 1/2 pounds ground beef (750 grams)

1 large onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup red wine (250 ml)

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (2 ml)

2 teaspoons dried Greek oregano (10 ml)

1 teaspoon cinnamon (5 ml)

6 cups of canned plum tomatoes, drained and chopped (1500 ml)

1 tablespoon tomato paste (15 ml)

pinch of ground nutmeg

I began by heating oil in a large pot then adding the beef, cooking until brown, and breaking up chunks with a wooden spoon. As silly me forgot to chop the onions and garlic before, I rushed over to my worktable (just opposite the stove) and chopped and minced away, returning to the pot quickly to add the onions and garlic and cook until soft. 

Once soft, I poured in the red wine, cayenne, and oregano and let reduce for about ten minutes. During this time, I checked on my potatoes and pulled them out of the oven, placing them to the side. After a quick tidy and change myself (I was, after all, covered in every ingredient imaginable, especially the next one), I returned back to the meat sauce, reduced the heat to medium, and added the tomatoes, tomato paste, cinnamon, and nutmeg. With a swift stir, my sauce was complete! Now, all I had to do was cover it and let it simmer until it turned into a nice, thick sauce, about 45 minutes.

While the sauce was simmering, I sliced the eggplants into 1/4 inch slices, seasoned with salt and pepper, and fried them in batches (in a previously heated sauté pan), adding more oil when needed. When they were all golden and soft, I took them off the heat and put them to the side.

Eggplant

1/4 cup olive oil (60 ml)

2 large eggplants cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch thick slices

Coarse salt and freshly cracked black pepper

After frying the eggplant, I turned up the oven heat to 200 C/180 and tended to my sauce until it was ready for the moussaka. Then, with all the elements created... At last! The layering begins! My moussaka was spread between two dishes due to equipment availability and the fact that our oven is just a little bit too small.

And it went like this:

Potatoes - Aubergine (Eggplant) - Sauce - Potatoes - Aubergine - Sauce

Covered in Béchamel

Then into the oven for 45 minutes to an hour! 

Brownie Taste Test

Definitely not your typical brownie. As the bowl is circular, so goes the way of the brownie. The outer circle gives a light, flaky, slightly crunchy crumble that melts instantly on your tongue. The middle circle is the cake-y, spongelike layer that has a nice fudge texture and gives some density to the brownie. The inner circle is more of a loose mixture of cake and a richly flavoured, deep chocolate molten substance that gives the whole brownie the spring in its step! Very atypical overall, but I think it works for itself and comes out in the end a very tasty treat.