Fake Blueberries

I have just come across a rather worrying video about how blueberries are 'faked' in cereals and other breakfast products.

I never really thought that a product that claims to contain blueberries, or any other berries for that matter, might not actually be telling the truth. I just this morning had the last of my breakfast cereal allegedly containing raspberries and have unfortunately thrown away the box so couldn't analyse the ingredients.

I tell you one thing for sure though; I will never again be buying pop-tarts for my children - no matter how much they nag! See what you think.

http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=7EC06D27B1A945BE85E7DA8483025962

The Queen's Coronation Chicken

Let’s get RETRO!!

Wow I haven’t been here for ages, slackest blogger on the planet it would seem but anyway, I’m back!

So for The Wedding last month I was asked to make a very large vat of Coronation Chicken to feed some ridiculous number of people. From some dim recess of my memory I recalled a recipe with red wine, apricot jam, mangoes etc I tried to recreate it and the general verdict was that it was quite a success.

You will need (for about 20 people!!)


10 chicken breasts
350ml red wine
2tsp turmeric powder
3 star anise
1 stick cinnamon
10 cardamon pods
1 tsp black peppercorns
200ml mango chutney
200ml Apricot jam
10 dried apricots chopped into small pieces
2 tbs mild curry paste (like a korma)
200ml double cream
200ml mayonnaise
200ml natural yoghurt
lots of chopped coriander
chopped almonds


for the poaching liquid:

star anise
cinnamon
cloves
peppercorns
bay leaves
cardamom pods
whole bulb of garlic (not need to peel)

And then you need to:


Fill a big saucepan with water, throw in a few of each of the spices listed under the poaching liquid, bring to the boil and let simmer fast for about 10 minutes. Your kitchen will start to smell like Christmas!

Throw the chicken breasts into the boiling liquid three at a time and poach for 20 minutes. Remove the chicken, set to one side and once cool slice into bite sized chunks. Do the next batch until all cooked. If you can be bothered this poaching liquid actually makes a really good base for a delicious Asian styled soup or noodle broth.

Whilst this is going on pour the red wine into a large saucepan and add the star anise, cardamom, cinnamon, peppercorns. Bring to a simmer and reduce to about 150ml.

Strain and return the liquid to the pan. Add the apricot jam, dried apricots, mango chutney, turmeric and curry paste. Simmer gently for about 5-10mins until thick and syrupy.

Remove from heat and leave to cool.

Stir in mayo, cream, yoghurt and you should have a thick yellowish curry sauce.

In a big mixing bowl add the chicken, half the coriander and the sauce. Mix really well and transfer to your serving platter. Sprinkle remaining coriander and the chopped almonds on top and voila! You are ready to go. A dish fit for a beautiful Queen.

This time it's not thyme

Roast Chicken. It used to be one of the best known comfort foods. Delicious, easy to cook, dripping with juicy salty goodness. Then the supermarket rotisserie came along and spoiled it all for everybody. They sold cooked chooks for less than a fresh one, and so all the sensible people went and purchased them instead.

Or were they sensible? A supermarket rotisserie has great skin, but that's where the comparison to a home-cooked chicken stops. They're dry, spindly little battery-hens, often overcooked, flavoured either too simply or with truckloads of horrible stuff like MSG.

Wouldn't you rather have the juicy free-range one in this picture?

The other day, I found savoury at the local hypermarket. Here, they call it thyme, but it's not thyme. It's not rosemary, although that's what it most closely resembles in appearance. It tastes like something in between, maybe with a touch of fragrance like dill, and it's heavenly with roast chicken. And even better, it propagates easily. The cut herbs I bought have now started to grow on their own in some potting mix - simply cut off the bottom of the stem at an angle and plant. Let's hope it continues, because this herb is something special!

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken (no need to remove giblets unless they are in a plastic bag inside)
• 1 lemon
• 1 garlic bulb, halved parallel to root (so it exposes the inside)
• several stalks of savoury
• sweet paprika to sprinkle
• salt and pepper
• 1 tsp butter and 1tsp flour combined for gravy

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180ᵒC. Wash chicken inside and out, pat dry, and then stuff with lemon, garlic and savoury, then generously sprinkle bird with salt, pepper and paprika (particularly salt)
2. Roast for 1 hour, or until the breast is cooked through, basting at least once during cooking (timing will depend on size of chicken - I use a 1400g to feed a family of 4)
3. Reduce juices with the mix of butter and flour while the meat is resting, flavouring with extra salt and pepper if necessary, and chopped savoury.

Notes:
I like to lay the bird on salted potato pieces in a non-stick pan. After it has been cooking for about 20 minutes, I prick the underside of the thighs, and all the fat rushes out, so the potatoes cook in the juices of the chicken. While the chicken is resting and you are preparing the gravy (with juice strained out between the potatoes), blast the potatoes on the top shelf of the oven at top heat if they need crisping up. I also serve with the pumpkin in the previous post, and roasted whole onions, which are simply peeled and added to the same pan as the chicken and potatoes at the same time. Oh, and some frozen peas - cooked of course. What an easy dinner!

Fish Vindaye from Mauritius

This is a slightly famous dish from the island of Mauritius. The name is said to be a corrupted form of vindaloo, but I don't really see the connection, except that a large portion of the population of Mauritius is of Indian origin. Good stuff for a starter on warm day, with lots of beer or wine. You can adjust the acidity to taste, with the vinegar.

You will need:

500 g Firm, white fish that won't break apart easily, preferably line fish of some sort. Tuna is excellent, as is barracuda or other line fish.

2 Large onions peeled and sliced.

2 fresh green chillies sliced in half lengthways.

A handful of fresh garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped.

3 cm of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped.

1-2 cups good quality white wine or apple cider vinegar

Sunflower oil

Tumeric

2 Tsp Black Mustard Seeds (kalwanji)

Salt.

Pepper.

Fresh Coriander leaves.

Proceed as follows:

Put into the sliced onions into a bowl bowl and cover with the vinegar for an hour or so.

Pat the fish dry with paper towels. Cut into large porthions, take out any bones and season with salt & pepper.

Heat about 5 mm of oil over a low heat in a large, heavy bottomed frying pan. Fry the fish for a few minutes on both sides, just to crisp the outside. Don't overcook or it will dry out. Remove the fish from the oil, and allow it to drain on paper towels. Wipe the pan clean

Put the peeled and roughly chopped garlic and ginger into a blender with the mustard seeds and grind to a pulp or use a mortar and pestle (better). Crush as many of the seeds as possible.

Pour 5mm of fresh oil into the frying pan and warm through slowly and gently. Important - don't heat the oil too much, you are not going to be frying this, just coaxing out the the flavour. Add the drained onion, the garlic/ginger/mustard seed mix, the sliced chillies, and the turmeric (say about 20 ml). Stir well, and add several tablespoons of the vinegar that the onions were soaking in. The aroma will be fantastic. Cook and stir for about 5 minutes, just until the onion is soft. Add 5 cc of sugar stir well. This is your marinade.

Remove the marinade from the heat. Add the pieces of fish and spoon the marinade over, try not to break the fish up. Check the seasoning and add salt, pepper, and possibly some more of the vinegar.

Cover. cool and refrigerate for 48 hrs, if you can wait that long. It will be worth it.

This is served at room temperature, depending of course where your room is, take it out of the fridge a good while before serving. Just before serving stir in some chopped coriander to taste. If you don't like coriander, leave it out. Put some good crunchy french bread and lots of butter on the table to mop up the juices. Beer or chardonnay to drink.

Souk, Souq, Suq

Cinnamon

You can smell it as your abra touch-parks at the riverbank. The aromas lead you stumbling up the gangplanks and into a throbbing intersection. You ponder for a moment - safe stroll through the subway, or manic death-wish rush through Deira traffic? You opt for the road - the thought of darkness, dankness and urine assaulting your senses is unbearable.

Suddenly you find yourself on the other side, and snicker at the fools coughing and spluttering while collapsing out of the vile tunnel. You are already striding ahead into a different cloud of air pollution, the kind you find at a spice souq.

It's my favorite of all the markets here in Dubai - sure, it's ripe with the standard pitfalls of a tourist trap - cheap rubbish dressed in clever disguise, laughably high prices that are never offered to the locals, spruikers offering fake (and substandard to karama) designer goods. But this, to me, is the closest we get to a traditional Arab market, and the atmosphere is intoxicating.

tumeric, ginger, star anise, rose petals and buds

There are fewer westerners here than in the Old, Textile, or Gold Souqs, particularly as you delve into the deeper, narrower aisles. On many visits I am a lone white face, and the only unveiled female. The stall holders always think I'm German, and when I don't respond to their greetings, the switch to French, then finally English. I skirt them expertly, I have "my guy", the man who's prices start halfway up the scale now he knows my face.


Read more on the hedonista here...

Chicken Tikka

It's been a while since I posted something curry-ish. Actually, it' been a while since I posted anything! (Sorree!) So here's a real treat - so fast and simple to make and yet spectacularly, sumptuously tasty with a fine kick in the tail. If you thought chicken tikka should consist of mildly tangy bits of chicken steeped in aniline dye and slapped onto a skewer before being grilled to death, here's another world view - these little kebabs are much more complex and a great deal more fun. This recipe bakes them, but you can always skewer them up and cook them on the barbecue.


One of the few 'cooks cheats' I allow to sneak guiltily into the store cupboard is a pot of pre-fried onions, which makes dishes like this a great deal faster. If you're going to be an ultra-purist, you'll have to finely slice an onion and then fry it gently in a little oil until it browns deeply - but doesn't burn. I prefer the pots myself...

How big are chicken cubes? For this recipe, and using local chicken breasts, I'll usually detach the little strip of meat with the tendon in it and use that for something else, lop off the tail end to about 2/3 of the length of the breast and then quarter the remaining meat to end up with five sort of similarly sized chunks of chicken.

I'm a sucker for serving this with plain basmati rice, a dal (or try this one!) and dry-fried Kerala poppadums, but a tomato salad with a smattering of fried spices is also great. I get my poppadums from the local cold store, where they're tickled to death by the Brit that eats pappad for some reason!

Ingredients

• 500g chicken breast in cubes
• 1 bunch coriander, chopped
• 4 cm fresh ginger, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 5 red bird's eye chilis, chopped
• 150g natural yoghurt
• 50ml cream
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 tbsp fried onions
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1/2 tsp salt

Sling everything but the chicken in the bowl of your blender, processor, whizzer or whatever you use. If you include the chicken at this stage, life is going to get pretty messy. Whizz it and then combine the mixture with the chicken to marinate - ideally overnight, but you can get away with shorter. Line a roasting tin with foil and give it a light brush of oil, then space the chicken chunks evenly on the foil, topping them up with any remaining marinade. Roast them in the middle of a 200C/400F/GM6 oven for 25 minutes or theareabouts, turn off the oven and leave them in for a further five minutes before serving.

Modernist Cuisine.

I have been trying really hard not to do this post. So much is being mentioned about this heavily hyped and praised romp through the world of cooking, that any post here seems trivial. But just a short post to draw the attention of those who have been away on another planet.

This 6 volume, 2400 page "book" took Nathan Myhrvold, the ex-Microsoft billionaire and his team of 15, five years and "More than a million, but less than 10 million" dollars to develop. 1,500 recipes, which you will never make. But if you are interested in food and cooking, and are a trust-fund baby, you will get this book. Amazon price - $421. That is less than Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese per kilo. But this is much, much more than just a book. Chroma centric inks. Stochastic screening. Mindboggling

The book is backlogged on orders, but here are some links.

NYT

Modernist Cuisine

Description of the book

eGullet