Ina's Indonesian Ginger Chicken and Jamie's Broccoli Salad

Ina's Garden's June 16th Linky is featuring any chicken recipe of Ina's and I Heart Cooking Club, currently trending Jamie Oliver where the theme is Get Fresh With Jamie, Celebrating The Best of Early Summer Produce. Put these two themes together and I have a perfect dinner, or so I thought! I'm killing two birds with one stone! :)

For dinner a few nights ago, I made Ina's Indonesian Ginger Chicken and Jamie's Broccoli With Asian Dressing, to go with plain white rice.

Ina's Indonesian Ginger Chicken is really easy and simple to put together. This recipe requires an overnight marination, but I just marinated the chicken about 8  hours or so. There are only four ingredients for the marinade and I only made half the recipe. Baked it for about an hour and the chicken turns out moist and tender. My kids love it, they love anything with honey! But this is not for me. Even my hubby says it is OK but not that great either. I find that somehow it lacks, a certain ingredient, as all I can taste is just the sweetness of the honey. I did add on the ginger and soy sauce as I feel that the flavours does not come  through. I thought that by baking with the chicken, it would be tastier with the taste from the chicken, but even though the chicken itself is moist and tender, the marinade is just lacking of something. Sorry, Ina, this is just not for me! I did thought of adding in some Worstershire sauce and a dash of hot sauce, when I tasted the marinade, before I pour it over the chicken, but decided against it and go for the original instead.

Anyway, for those who would like to give this a try, here's the recipe which can also be found at Food Network's website. The reviews at Food Network are outstanding, and that is one reason enough for me to try this out. Maybe I did not do it right, but I don't think that I'll be making this again, even if I do, I'll go easy on the honey and add on another ingredient or two. 

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Ina's Garden

Indonesian Ginger Chicken
(source from : Food Network, recipe courtesy from Ina Garten)
1 cup honey
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup minced garlic (8 to 12 cloves)
1/2 cup peeled and grated fresh ginger root
2 (3-1/2 pound) chickens, quartered, with backs removed

Cook the honey, soy sauce, garlic and ginger root in a small saucepan over low heat until the honey is melted. Arrange the chicken in 1 layer in a shallow baking pan, skin side down, and pour on the sauce. Cover the pan tightly with aluminium foil. Marinate overnight in the refrigerator.

Preheat the oven to 350 degree F.

Place the baking pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover the pan, turn the chicken skin side up, and raise the temperature to 375 degrees F. Continue baking for 30 minutes or until the juice run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh and sauce is a rich, dark brown.

(Halfway during marination, I turned chicken halfway, skin side up, and before baking, turn it back again, skin side down).

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Broccoli with Asian Dressing

Jamie uses broccoli and I add on the carrots as I only have a small head of broccoli. The Asian dressing is really nice, I did not add any sliced fresh onions, but I think that it would be really good and would be a lovely Asian touch!

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I Heart Cooking Club, Get Fresh With Jamie

Broccoli with Asian Dressing
(adapted from "Jamie's Food Revolution" by Jamie Oliver)
Ingredients and instructions :
Serves 4-6
Get yourself around 1-1/4 pounds of broccoli or broccolini or broccoli rabe.
Heat your steamer pan or put a large pan of water on to boil.
Break the broccoli up into little pieces and slice up the stalks.
Place the broccoli in your steamer or in a colander placed over the pan of boiling water and cover with a tight-fitting lid or some aluminium foil. Steam for around 6 minutes, until the stalks are tender.
Meanwhile, make your dressing. Peel a thumb-sized pieces of fresh ginger and a clove of garlic and grate into a bowl.
Halve, seed, and finely chop a fresh red or green chili and add to the bowl.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and the juice from 1 lime. Drizzle in a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar.
Whisk the dressing together and have a taste. What you're looking for is a flavour balance between saltiness from the soy sauce, sweetness from the balsamic vinegar, acid from the lime, and heat from the chili.
When the broccoli is cooked, place it on a big serving platter. Mix up the dressing one last time before pouring it over. Absolute heaven!


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