Chicken, Bacon & Corn Salad

Summery salads have been a bit of a thing in my kitchen lately. I'm loving this one. It's a salad that certainly doesn't leave me hungry and the honey mustard dressing is to die for. 

Chicken, Bacon & Corn Salad

1/2 cup frozen corn

mixed lettuce leaves

4 bacon rashers

chicken, cooked and shredded 

1 avocado, sliced

coriander to garnish

Cook corn in a frying pan until lightly toasted. Remove from pan and allow to cool. Dice bacon and cook in frying pan. While cooking make the dressing. When cooked, allow to cool then combine and toss all ingredients.

Dressing

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

1 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon lime juice

olive oil

In a small bowl, add mustard, honey and lime juice, whisk until creamy. Slowly add olive oil while whisking, keep adding olive oil until dressing is at desired thickness, taste and quantity (don't add more than 1/4 cup or other flavours will be lost)

Nasi Goreng

When we were on our honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu we came across Nasi Goreng and were informed that it was the "national dish" of Malaysia by many locals. We got to enjoy this dish on a trip into the jungle. We were taken right out into the middle of no where to this small village, we ate at a small open walled shed, the air-conditioner consisted of a water sprinkler on a tin roof. We were served Nasi Goreng with chicken that was killed only hours earlier. I was scared to eat it, so sure I would get food poisoning but in the end I couldn't resist.

Nasi Goreng 

Chicken & Marinade 
Chicken breast
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed thinly sliced

Combine all of the ingredients with the chicken and let sit in marinade for at least 30 minutes. Put chicken and sauce into an oven tray and roast in a 180 degree Celsius oven and cook for 30 minutes, until chicken is cooked through.

Nasi Goreng
2 cups white rice
1/2 brown onion, diced
1/2 carrot, diced
1 teaspoon minced ginger
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed thinly sliced
1 bunch pak choy, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Eggs

Bring 2 cups of water to the boil and add the rice, reduce heat to simmer for 15 minutes. In a wok or electric frying pan, fry carrot and onion until soft. Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and stir-fry for 1 minute. Stir through the cooked rice, add the pak chou, soy sauce and brown sugar and stir through to combine.

Fry the eggs, ensuring the yolk is still soft. Serve the rice topped with the fried egg with the chicken on the side.

Chicken Tagine

There are a few celebrity chefs that I love.

Nigella Lawson is amazing to watch. Her kitchens are beautiful, her food is delightful and she is absolutely spectacular to watch. Jamie Oliver is a kitchen whiz and I love "At Home with Jamie" where he shares all kinds of secrets about his garden.

One celebrity cook I can't stand to watch is Bill Granger. I can't figure out what it is, but on television I don't like him. That said, I have been in love with his cook books since I was in primary school. His books are gorgeous and filled with delicious and achievable recipes. While my Jamie Oliver and Nigella cook books gather dust, my Bill books stay off the bookcase and on the kitchen bench.

This is a delicious dish that is great for weekend dinners when you have a bit more time to spend in the kitchen but don't have to sit and watch while it is cooking. The other great thing is that it is super easy and is served with couscous. Couscous is my secret pleasure. I love the way it soaks up the juices of everything it is paired with.

Here is my take on Bill Granger's Chicken Tagine from "Simply Bill"

Chicken Tagine
Chicken breast or thigh
1/2 brown onion
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon tumeric
handful of diced green capsicum
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
Couscous
1/2 teaspoon butter
mixed herbs

In a large saucepan place the chicken, onion and spices in 500ml of water. Cover with a lid and bring to the boil. Once boiling reduce the heat and let the mixture simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally. The meat should be very tender. As the liquid thickens add the capsicum and the lemon juice and take the lid off until the mixture is at your desired consistency. I like mine a little more juicy to soak into the couscous.

Prepare the couscous (for 2 people I did 3/4 cup couscous to 3/4 cup water). Boil the water and pour over the couscous. Cover with a lid and let sit until water is dissolved. Stir through the butter and mixed herbs. Serve the tagine over the couscous.

Honey Chicken

This is a delicious dinner that I like to make about once every 2 months. It always seems like a lot of clean up but it is worth it and I love it.

When I was a kid we used to get Chinese food very rarely. It was always a super awesome treat for birthdays or Mother's Day. When I moved to the middle of nowhere a few years ago there was no local Chinese food shop to go to so I wasn't even able to have it on special occasions! There were times when I dreamt of honey chicken, no really, dreamt! Eventually I came to my senses and realised - it's chicken and honey.....how hard can it be?!

My Fried Rice & Honey Chicken 
Rice
2 eggs
2 bacon rashers
1/2 cup peas
1/2 cup corn
1-2 tablespoons soy sauce
Chicken breast
1 cup flour
1 cup water
Vegetable oil to fry
1/2 cup honey

Cook the rice as you wish. Whisk the eggs and put them into a frying pan with a little piece of butter. Cook like scrambled eggs, once cooked through remove from the pan and rest on a plate. Dice the bacon and fry until cooked. Add to the egg and put the peas and corn on the plate with them. Add anything else you feel is necessary to make your fried rice awesome (like mushrooms, capsicum, shallots). Once the rice has cooked drain the water out and tip the egg, bacon, corn and peas into the rice. Add soy sauce to flavour and let the whole thing sit on low heat.

Cut the chicken into smaller pieces. Mix the batter by combining the flour and water (whisk if it becomes lumpy). Add the water gradually depending on the consistency - obviously you want the batter to stick to the chicken and not drip off everywhere!

Pour about 1cm of oil into a large frying pan and let the oil heat. Dip the pieces of chicken into the batter and place *carefully* into the oil. Let the chicken cook through and brown evenly. Turn carefully and keep an eye on the oil temperature to avoid spitting and burning yourself!

After the chicken is cooked put into a large bown and stir through honey. Serve the fried rice with the chicken on top and drizzle on more honey because it amazing!

*ugly photo :(

Chicken Kofta

I have made a little pact with myself to *try* not bake anything for the next 3 weeks because, in 4 weeks, I have to be able to fit into a wedding dress and not look like I eat cupcakes every day. What?! No! Okay...most days. Especially when my students do cooking in Home Ec and bring me the delicious things they bake (especially especially especially chocolate chip filled muffins that I am totally getting the recipe for). It's bad manners to turn down cake. 

So, to avoid any wedding day wardrobe malfunctions-bulging out in weird places-back cleavage scenarios, I have got to lay off the baked goods. 

Which actually makes me sad, not only because I will be missing out on my daily sugar binge but because I  LIKE to bake. It's my thing. Right now I seem to have very little control over many aspects of my life - my transfer, the wedding guest list, moving house, my timetable - but the one thing I can control is how many chochips and how much buttercream. 

To fill the void in my oven I am trying out a few new savoury things that are hopefully healthy as well. Tonight was Chicken Kofta. These probably didn't live up to my expectations because Lamb Kofta is just heaven on a stick. That said they were still delicious, I just had higher hopes. Fortunately a drizzle of sweet chilli sauce really helped boost them along.

Chicken Kofta
1/2 brown onion
1 garlic clove
1/3 cup pinenuts
1 tsp cumin
a collection of herbs...coriander, parsley etc..
600g chicken mince 
1 egg
1/2 cup couscous

Whaz the pinenuts into little chunks, dice the onion and combine with the garlic and the cumin. Fry this mixture on low heat until it smells delicious.

Whisk the egg in a large bowl, add the chicken, herbs and nut mixture and the couscous and mix to combine.

This will be a fairly sticky mixture but try the best you can to make sausage like shapes out of similar sized chunks of the mixture. Obviously you want them to cook evenly so similar size is good. Mine were about 10cm long. Lay the sausage shapes on a tray and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. 

This gives the mixture some time to become less sticky so once they are done take them out and reshape it you need to. Insert a skewer into the centre of the chicken sausage shapes and then grill. I actually put mine on a sandwich press which worked great and then popped them in the oven for about 15minutes just to ensure they were cooked through.

Serve with salad, greek yoghurt and sweet chilli sauce. - These also work amazingly for lunch the next day on a pita wrap. 

Chicken, Bacon & Avo Filo

These filos are one of those 'special foods'. They take a while to make but they remind me of Rose and working at the shop. It was always so exciting to eat these together and the smell of them crisping up on the old sandwich press was to die for. Now I've managed to make my own that are *almost* perfection! 


What You Need
chicken breast fillets
bacon rashers
avocado
mushrooms
garlic
1 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup cream
15g butter
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
cheese
pastry sheets


What You Do
Cut up the chicken breast into little fillet strips, cook in a frypan and put to the side when done.
While cooking dice the bacon, slice the mushrooms and cook in fry pan. Add garlic and a little butter and fry together until cooked. 
In a small bowl mash the avo and set aside. 
In a mixing bowl combine the stock, cream, butter, yolk and lemon juice. Tip all of this over the bacon and mushrooms in the fry pan. Simmer until thickened.
When thickened pour bacon and mushroom mixture back into mixing bowl. Add in pieces of chicken and avo and cheese and combine.
Spoon mixture onto pastry sheets and fold sheets into little parcels. Cook in 180 oven as directed and serve with greek salad (olives, feta, cucumber, capsicum, olive oil, lemon juice, oregano leaves)

Love Day...a little late!

As our wedding day draws closer our budget gets tighter so this Valentine's Day Mr B. and I decided that instead of exchanging gifts of love we would cook each other something tasty.

Mr B., being a breakfast 'aficionado', decided to cook me some of his awesome

pancakes which were made extra special by some truly authentic Canadian Maple Syrup (rare and expensive here in Australia, especially in our remote location!). It was a super tasty way to begin the day.

After a busy day at work I came home to begin my Valentine's Day Dinner. Mr B. had requested a dish that I love but hardly every make - Chicken Enchiladas. Very easy, a little time consuming but worth it for the delicious end product.

To make the day extra special I made a new dessert - Hummingbird Cupcakes. I was so thankful to come across this recipe a few weeks ago and managed to ebay myself

some very sweet love heart shaped cupcake moulds. This was a super tasty recipe and looked extra cute. It was also inspiration for me to go out into our little town and (find) purchase my very first piping bag - something that I plan on using a lot more often!

So here's how I do mine. Mr B's, magical pancakes remain a mystery recipe -

if I knew it I probably wouldn't need to marry him ;)

Chicken Enchiladas

Chicken breast

Mushrooms

Shallots

Onion

Garlic

Mexican salsa (I cheated and got it from the jar)

Tortilla wraps

Cheese

Put the chicken breast in the oven at 180 degrees for about half an hour until it

is juicy and just starting to brown. Set aside to cool.

Slice mushrooms and shallots, dice half the onion and lightly cook in a fry pan with garlic and butter.

Place the cooled chicken in a food processor or blender and process to shred (not too small!). Tip the chicken into a bowl, add the mushroom mixture and combine. Add a small amount of salsa and mix through.

Lay the tortilla wraps out and place a small amount of the chicken mixture on to each wrap. Wrap them up and place tightly together on an oven tray and cover in grated cheese.

Put it all in the oven(150 degrees) for about 20minutes until the wraps are starting to crisp (not burn!) and the cheese looks like melted delicious heaven.

Serve with rice, bean mix (mashed beans, sour cream and lime juice) and salad.