Chicken Stew and Baked Rice

I've made two more recipes for Potluck Week at I Heart Cooking Clubs, with recipes from two of IHCC's past featured chefs, Jamie Oliver and Mark Bittman.

Jamie Oliver's Chicken Stew is delicious. Taken from his book Jamie's Food Revolution, he has given  the basic stew ingredients with four options to select from, with different meat and booze, to make four different stews. I've made Chicken Stew, using chicken thigh meat and white wine. I've followed everything in the recipe but I have used a fresh sprig of rosemary from the garden pot instead of fresh thyme and added an extra stalk of celery. This stew can either be cooked on the stove or in the oven. I cooked mine on the stove, for about 1 hour 15 minutes. It was easy and very flavourful.

Wanted to serve the stew with rice, I've made Mark Bittman's Simpler-Than-Pilaf Baked Rice, basmati rice cooked with cinnamon stick, cloves and cardamom pods. The spices are sauteed with a little butter and oil, then the rice is stirred in with some salt and pepper. Add the water, let it come to a boil, cover the pot and place it in the preheated oven to bake for 10 minutes. I actually baked the rice for 30 minutes, as I have always cooked my rice in the oven this way. Once the rice is done, leave it for 15 minutes, fluff with a pair of chopsticks. Since I've cooked the rice much earlier, I simply transferred the cooked fluffy rice to the rice cooker, switched on with the "Keep Warm" function. Rice will be kept fluffy and hot until serving time.

Jamie Oliver's Chicken Stew and Mark Bittman's Baked Rice.

We had the Chicken Stew and Baked Rice with Diana Henry's Slow-Cooked Garlic Courgettes for dinner. Delicious!

Chicken Stew
(adapted from Jamie's Food Revolution by Jamie Oliver)
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 pound diced, boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 cups white wine
2 stalks celery
2 medium onions
2 carrots
olive oil 1 heaped tablespoon all-purpose flour
1x14-ounce can of diced tomatoes
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

If using the oven to cook your stew, preheat it to 350F. Trim the ends of your celery and roughly chop the stalks. Peel the carrots, slice lengthways, and roughly chop.

Put a Dutch oven on a medium heat. Put all the vegetables and your chosen herb into the pan with 2 lugs of olive oil and fry for 10 minutes.

Add your meat and flour. Pour in the booze and canned tomatoes. Give it a good stir, then season with a teaspoon of sea salt (less if using table salt) and a few grinds of pepper.

Bring to a a  boil put the lid on, and either simmer slowly on your cooktop or cook in an oven for 1-1/2 hours. Remove the lid for the final half hour of simmering or cooking and add a splash of water if it looks a bit dry. When done, your meat should be tender and delicious. Remove any herb stalks before serving, and taste it to see if it needs a bit more salt and pepper.

Baked Rice
(adapted from How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman)
2 tablespoons butter or 1 tablespoon neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn
One 3-inch cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1 teaspoon cumin seeds or 5 white cardamom pods (optional)
1-1/2 cups long grain rice, preferable basmati
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oven to 350F. Put half the butter or all of the oil in an ovenproof pot with a lid over medium heat. When the butter is melted or the oil is hot, add the spices and cook for about a minute. Add the rice and some salt and pepper and cook, stirring for about a minute.

Add 2-1/2 cups water, bring to a boil, cover, put in the oven, and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the rice from the oven, but do not uncover; let it rest in a warm place for another 10 minutes. Remove the cinnamon and cloves (the cardamom pods are good to eat); taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary, stir in the remaining butter if you are using it, and serve immediately.

I'm linking this post with I Heart Cooking Clubs IHCC), theme for this week

October 2017 Potluck

and

 I'm linking this post with Cookbook Countdown #22 hosted by 

Kitchen Flavours and Emily's Cooking (Makan2) Foray

Slow-Cooked Garlic Courgettes

It's Potluck week at I Heart Cooking Clubs (IHCC). I've not made any of Diana Henry's recipes for quite a while, and it's time I revisit her book, Food From Plenty. I bought two zucchinis a few days before and was looking for recipes to use them up, found this delicious sounding dish, Slow-Cooked Garlic Courgettes. There's garlic, so it must be delicious!

The only ingredients required for this dish are just courgettes and garlic. Can never get simpler than this! Diana Henry uses 6 garlic cloves, but I have used 10 fat garlic cloves, might as well since it is all about the garlicky flavour! Peel and slice the garlic thinly, and the courgettes are sliced into thin rounds, the thickness of a coin. Heat some butter and olive oil, then saute the garlic slices until soft and fragrant, tip in the sliced courgettes, increase the heat so that the courgettes get a bit of colour, then reduce heat and continue to cook until the courgettes are soft and almost collapsing. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The courgettes will release some its own water, so this dish is fairly moist.

Yum yum! The courgettes is very soft, tender and smells so nice from the garlic. I can understand why Diana Henry says she could eat a plateful on its own! I serverd this as a side dish with some stew and pilaf rice, sharing that in next post.

Slow-Cooked Garlic Courgettes
(adapted from Food From Plenty, Diana Henry)
"Heat 15gm (1/2oz) unsalted butter and 3 tbsp olive oil in a very large frying pan and gently cook 6 garlic cloves, very finely sliced, until soft but not coloured. Now add 500gm (1lb 2oz) courgettes sliced to the thickness of a pound coin, and turn over to coat. Increase the heat a bit so the courgettes get a little bit of colour, then reduce the heat, season and cook slowly (you almost "stew" them in the butter and oil) until completely soft, almost collapsing. This tastes purely of courgetts and doesn't need anything else. I can eat a plateful on their own."

I'm linking this post with I Heart Cooking Clubs IHCC), theme for this week

October 2017 Potluck

and

 I'm linking this post with Cookbook Countdown #22 hosted by 

Kitchen Flavours and Emily's Cooking (Makan2) Foray

Chocolate Kugelhopf

This month, at The Cake Slice Bakers, the four recipes selected from the book World Class Cakes by Roger Pizey, which we are currently baking from are ;

Ginger Cake
Scandinavian Cardamom Coffee Cake
Chocolate Kugelhopf
Tarte aux Pommes

Members can choose any of these cakes to bake, and my choice is Chocolate Kugelhopf, since I am drawn to yeasty bakes!

This Chocolate Kugelhopf has a chocolate ganache swirls in it. It bakes into a soft and nice kugelhopf, but the process of making it is rather frustrating (to me!).

The recipe uses 1 whole egg and 2 egg yolks, but the instructions says to mix in the egg yolks without any mention of the whole egg, and I was wondering whether should I use the whole egg as well or was it a typo error in the instructions. I went ahead and add the whole egg, assuming that it has been left out in the instructions.  The dough is like very thick batter, and I have to add almost half a cup of extra flour so that it is a little doughy, and even then, the "dough" is still very soft and so, so, sticky. I thought of adding more flour but am afraid that the bread will be dry, as I've added about 30% extra to the original amount. Honestly I almost gave up and thought of dumping the dough. But I went ahead anyway and hope for the best! I left the dough to proof for the first rising, punch it down, and it was supposed to be rolled on a floured counter. No way I could roll the very soft, very sticky dough without it sticking onto the counter, and it would definitely stick to the rolling pin from the looks of it, even if I flour the top, I would need quite an amount of flour, and I am not confident that I could transfer the very soft dough onto a baking sheet, which is to be refrigerated for 30 minutes. I placed the dough on a large sheet of plastic, which I placed on an upturned baking sheet, then place another large sheet of plastic over the dough, and use a rolling pin to roll it into a large rectangle. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, keeping fingers crossed that it will be easier to work with later on. 

Remove from the refrigerator and immediately spread the ganache all over. Roll the dough, swiss roll style. Still too soft to roll, and with the help of a wide pastry cutter, I tried rolling it but it was difficult to roll as the dough was sticky. In the end, it looks like a misshapen lump of log, rather than a nice rolled up smooth log of a dough. I know definitely that there will not be any pretty swirls in there! Bring the two ends together into a ring, adjust the dough, by shaping it gently, with floured hands, so that it is more or less the same thickness all around. Gather the dough and place in the greased bundt pan, with a whole almond placed in each ridge at the bottom of the bundt pan. Cover with greased cling wrap and left to rise until doubled in size. It certainly rises well! Bake in a preheated oven for 35 minutes, though I baked mine for an additional 5 minutes to get that really brown colour on the crust. It looks really huge after baking and I do hope that the kugelhopf will turn out good!

Let the kugelhopf rest for 10 minutes in the pan, then unmold onto a wire rack, glaze while still warm with some glaze, with a recipe provided for it. Since I have a container of apricot glaze, I used that instead. Allow the kugelhopf to cool. I could not wait to slice, to see the inside and taste it. But I was rather pleased with how it looks like from the outside!

Once it has cooled down, the glaze disappeared, no longer glossy! But I'm not concerned with that. I am eager to see the inside!

No pretty swirls! But the taste makes up for it! This Chocolate Kugelhopf is soft and fluffy. Tasted really good with the addition of chocolate ganache.  The kugelhopf was still soft the next day when we had it for breakfast, and we enjoyed slices of it with our morning coffee. That being said, I will not be making this again, but I was glad that I have given it a try.

Note : I've used 1 teaspoon instant yeast instead of the fresh yeast calls for in the recipe. For the ganache, I've used dark chocolate instead of semisweet chocolate. I baked in a 6-cup Nordic Ware bundt pan. 

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