Braised Chicken Thighs - World Famous | Stella Culinary

Braised Chicken Thighs - World Famous | Stella Culinary: Braised chicken thighs are by far one of my favorite things to cook and eat. Working as a chef in an upscale restaurant, serving things like duck pate, prime beef and sous-vide yada yada up the yin yang, all I want to eat on my days off is something simple and comforting. For me, braised chicken thighs always does the trick.

In one of my forum posts I asked the readers to play a game with me, a little game called "the death row meal". It is a game that chefs and cooks have been playing for centuries, a good ice breaker to find out what a fellow food lover is all about.

Well, for me, this is it. If I were to die tomorrow, this is what I would eat tonight. Chicken thighs are the most used muscle of the animal, making it full or all sorts of great flavor. You see, the more exercise an animal’s muscle gets, the more connective tissue and collagen it is able to build up. This makes the cut of meat tough if cooked incorrectly (read seared rare), but if cooked low and slow in a braising liquid, all that collagen and tissue breaks down into gastronomic heaven!
Fe sent me this link, and I have had it opened for months. I wanted to try it for my Birthday celebration, but I accidentally had 14 people over, so I didn't think I had enough frying pan space to attempt this! Having said that though, I did manage to cook 9 T Bones and provide a cream sauce, a new record for me!

Microwave Bottling

I have a new book to play with!

These are bottled rhubarb and pears, plus I pickled some eggplant. I am testing out microwave bottling! I find it incredibly exciting. I'm still in the testing and learning phase. This is the first time I have tried to bottle fruit. I'm happy with jam, done that heaps of times now.

They have both sealed, however when I opened the pears they fizzed a little. I guess I need to nuke them for a couple of minutes more. I'm making mistakes at the moment, and working out the best times for my microwave. As I said, it's all testing and learning right now. I was very pleased when they sealed! Next is to make sure I cook them a bit longer so they don't fizz!

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Sarah

Tom’s Planner Dinner Chart Plans Your Day For Holiday Cooking | Lifehacker Australia

For people who like to be crystal clear with their scheduling, cooking can often be a bit of a problem. Cooking can be quite haphazard, especially if you're using new, untried recipes, or recieving help from unskilled hands.

One way to help make sure dinner runs on time is charts and plans like this one:

Tom’s Planner Dinner Chart Plans Your Day For Holiday Cooking | Lifehacker Australia

This is a Gantt chart, set up to show you visually the overlapping cooking times for items on your menu. From someone who has had parties where she needed to schedule the oven usage - this sort of thing can be a lifesaver!

Forays into Morrocco - Orange Blossom Carrots

I have been getting random vegetable boxes from Coles for some time now, so I have also been trying out their random fruit boxes. This means an influx of things I am much less likely to know what to do with!

I have never been a huge orange eater. I've never been so in love with the taste or flesh that I have bypassed the inherent messiness and sheer annoyance of having to peel and then segment the damned things. However, with four of the blighters arriving on my doorstep every other week, I had to find ways to cope!

Meet the Moroccan Orange and Carrot salad.


This is actually a pic of the left overs, since we ate it too fast to take a picture. This was lovely, and a fantastic way to use oranges! Yum!

Strangely enough, I don't mind prepping oranges to make salad out of it. I just resent it when I intend to eat it. Yes, I am a bit weird sometimes.


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Sarah P

Five Minute Artisan Bread - Recipe Three

Bread!

I have been working on my soups this year, and I have learnt a lot. I like to make the bread to go with soups too, and enjoy a lovely chewy artisan style by preference with soup. I find that sandwich bread tends towards mush, whereas artisan soup adds texture and flavour of it's own to an otherwise mushy (or pureed) dish.

I really like this dough for the simple reason that I can pull off as much or as little as I need, and let it rise and cook. There's not much wastage, and if I felt enthused I could make buns or sticks or anything. One day I could even make bowls out of bread for a good solid stoo.

I'm afraid this is the last post on *this* batch of dough. I did not finish the dough, there's still a good chunk left to use, but this is now past the 2 week limit. My diet has changed somewhat, and there's a lot less wheat at present! But when I start wheat again, I'll cover some of the other recipes.

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Sarah P

Five Minute Artisan Bread - Recipe Two

PIZZA!

I made the kids help put the toppings on, there's even tiny mini pizzas shaped by my 4yo. Yum!

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Sarah P

Stage Two of Worcestershire Sauce

Now we wait for two weeks!

Random sampling at present says "It's not as salty as Worcestershire sauce, but very good."

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Sarah P

Five Minute Artisan Bread - Recipe One

Five Minute Artisan bread after a few days and one recipe.

This is a basic flat bread. I pulled off tiny balls of dough, literally about 2 tablespoons full, dumped lots of flour on top and rolled them as flat as possible before frying in a non-stick frying pan with a tiny bit of oil.

It was just a snack, so we ate them with jam on top, and they were lovely.

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Sarah P

Vegie Win!

Tonight's dinner was awesome! Chesh and I have a couple of favourite Japanese restaurants - the kind of places where we always order exactly the same thing every time. One of these places is Mr Samurai, who does an amazing Tempura B special, which is tempura made of julienne carrot, potato and onion with a drizzle of a sweet and soy sauce, rice, and kara-age. That's what I have every time I go! Chesh has the beef rice bowl, which I believe I have already mastered!

Over the weekend I went to a lovely Hen's Night in a Japanese resturaunt, and one of the many many tiny entrees they served was a tempura fried eggplant with a dollop of tonkatsu sauce. Since I happen to be giving away eggplants more often than I am eating them, I was excited to find a new way of serving it. And it was good, but the other tempura was definitely the star of this dinner!

Mr Samurai Tempura

Batter
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 cup icey water

Vegetables - all in similar lengths and widths, julienned (matchstick size)
One small onion
One medium potato
One carrot
One eggplant, other vegies, or even a couple of prawns.

Drizzling Sauce
Honey
Soy sauce
drop of sesame oil

Method
Slice and dice your vegies. I chunked the eggplant up, and used the above batter for all of the vegies in this recipe, and the eggplant. I wanted thick chunks for the eggplant to provide a bit more aesthetic appeal, and to be able to withstand uncertain frying. I'm still learning the ins and outs of frying, but after tonight I am very happy!

Make the drizzling sauce by mixing the three items together. I microwaved it for 20 seconds to loosen the honey up.
Put the rice cooker on.
Start the oil heating for deep frying.

Make the batter last. It should still be cold when you are frying. This gives it the tempura lightness and crispiness. You just mix it up. It should still be lumpy.

Do the eggplant or extra vegies first, dipping them into the batter and then dropping them into the oil. If you are doing prawns, do them last. Also, if you want the traditionally straight prawns, you need to use a skewer with each prawn.

Once that is all done and cooling, chuck in the julienned vegies. I dried mine a little with a tea towel first, since I had kept them in water, and then used a hand to mix them up and then put small handfuls into the oil.

When all done, serve with steamed rice, and drizzle the sauce over the top! We served the eggplant with a homestyle tonkatsu sauce.

How simple, and yet awesome, is that? All I need now is some sesame icecream, and life would be perfect!

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Sarah

Zucchini and Eggplant Stirfry

Ingredients
- Trio ginger/garlic/spring onions
- Oil
- 100ish grams of beef mince

Vegies
- one smallish/medium sized eggplant in one inch cubes
- one zucchini in one inch cubes
- can water chestnuts, drained

Sauce (mix up ready to go)
- 125 mls chicken stock
- 125 mls chicken master stock (or just use normal chicken stock)
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons kecap manis
- 2 tablespoons CHILI BEAN IN SOYA OIL
- 1 tablespoon Chinese vinegar

- Cornflour slurry to thicken

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1) heat wok, add oil, add trio, fry for ten seconds, add beef mince as
crumbled as possible. Let it fry for a bit until it's mostly brown,
and then start tossing it about a bit to make sure it's all done.

2) Add vegies and stirfry for a few minutes, tossing around. Add sauce
and bring to boil with lid on. Maybe 5 minutes? Then take lid off and
check it out. Eggplant should be mostly done, so stir it around a bit
more to release more water from the sauce and finalise cooking.
Eggplant should be in cubes still, not turned into mush. (I have
learnt a lot about cooking eggplants LOL)

3) Add slurry, stifry until it's thick and done, put in serving plate.
I had fresh chopped spring onion greens on top, but I think a drizzle
of toasted sesame oil would be the perfect trick. Chesh also suggested
toasted sesame seeds instead of oil.

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Sarah P

Semi Dried Tomatoes

I had a whole lot of tomatoes in left over from my weekly veggie box last week, a mix of lovely little cherry tomatoes and some beautifully sweet black russians. One of the fun things about the random veggie box is thinking of things to do with the produce that you might not have normally gone out and bought. We are not huge tomato eaters in this family, owing mostly to their high salicylate and amine content, so while I have used a few in stews and sauces I still had plenty left over.Washed and chopped and into the dehydrator they went.


Several hours later I put the shriveled little red lumps into a jar and drowned them in olive oil and added a few cloves of garlic...


Yum!

Jelly

One of our staple snacks around here are cups of fruit juice jelly. Vegetarians avert you eyes.

I make a few batches per week and they are great for lunch boxes and just all round anytime snacks. The recipe I use is adapted from one I found on Pecan Bread, but I do it a little differently, mostly because I have been unable to find gelatin without preservative 220 in it, so I boil it to get rid of that. It is pretty simple, but it took me a while to find the right method for me so I thought I would share it here. Apart from the 220, which should boil off, if you use pure juice they are sugar and additive free.

Fruit Jelly Cups
2 tbs powdered gelatin
2 cups of water
2 cups of fruit juice (any flavour)

Boil one cup of water and mix with the gelatin in a saucepan. Boil rapidly for a few minutes. Remove from heat and add the second cup of cold water and the two cups of cold fruit juice. Stir until well combined and pour into molds. Set in fridge. Because it is made with mostly cold liquids it sets quite quickly.

So far I have only used bottled juices but I am looking forward to trying it with fresh pressed pear and apple juice.

Rhubarb Champange

I found a recipe for Rhubarb Champagne, and since I happen to like Rhubarb, I thought I would give it a go.

The recipe is from Simplesavings, and is:

Rhubarb Champagne
20 cps cold water
1 lemon
3 1/2 cups Rhubarb
3 1/2 cups sugar
11 tablesp cider vinegar
Wash Rhubarb and Lemon don't peel. Cut up roughly. Add to water and sugar. (in a plastic bucket) Stand 48 hours no longer or the Rhubarb will sour.Strain,bottle and cap. Ready in 2 to 3 weeks. Makes 9 beer bottles.
Red Rhubarb = Pink Champagne Green Rhubarb = White Champagne

I gave it a try, hoping it would be nice. I used vanilla sugar, since that was all I had, and I was pretty excited to be making something again. The recipe was so simple, and I couldn't find my steriliser so the bottles were just cleaned and then rinsed with fresh water, and then used. I used grolsh bottles with new seals, and one that was crown capped.

And it was awesome!

The first thing I noticed when we popped the first grolsh bottle was the intense bubbles! One or two later bottles even fizzed out of the top! The next thing I noticed was the lovely scent of vanilla. A closer sniff also involved other complex flavours, and on pouring, the champagne was definitely champagne like, and pink! Everything we hoped for! The bubbles stayed as well, and the drink was a really nice lemonade with something else. It really does have to be tried to understand! It was fantastic. Very refreshing, not sickenly sweet, no chemical taste, and fresh.

I'm definitely making this one again!

10/10!

Sarah P

Goat Yogurt

I have recently abandoned all powdered milks, and homogenised milk products (after reading, among other things, Sally Fallons Nourishing Traditions--a dedicated post likely coming this way soon) and have been trying to make yogurt out of raw goats milk. Since becoming pregnant I do actually heat the milk to 80 degrees c for a few minutes and then let it cool, as I currently have listeria phobia*, but this doesn't seem to alter the result at all. It seems there is not enough of something in the milk I am using, I suspect it needs more cream, and I end up with a very runny drinking type yogurt. Since I am the kind of person who likes very solid, more of a greek style yogurt I have been finding this a real barrier to my desire to eat the resulting product.

I think I may have found a solution in my last batch. To my litre of warm milk and starter I added two teaspoons of gelatin desolved in a little boiling water and then put the whole thing in the yogurt thermos and left it over night as usual.

After refrigeration the result was a much firmer yogurt that, with a little honey, was very edible.


*Ah, listeria phobia. So many huge precautions taken in order to avoid a disease that only affects 10 women in Australia per year, causing miscariges in aproimately 5. And yet, the stakes are so high, and the guilt factor from both outside and inside sources so intense that we just can't bring oursleves (me included) to not follow the rules 'just in case'.

What's in the Box? (with bonus recipe for bratwurst and sauerkraut)

Hi everyone,
I am back from my ISP enforced internetlessness and ready to start meal planning again. My Monday meal plans are more likely to be Tuesday meal plans from now on because Tuesdays are when I get my delicious box of mystery from food connect. I got my first box (a standard veggie box) last Tuesday and it was awesome. The produce was top quality fresh and tasty, and it looks like a standard size box is just about right for our family, although we are eating a lot of vegetables at the moment so we may go up to a family size box in the future.

First out of the box on Tuesday night came the potatoes. I am not sure what variety they were, but they were white skinned and very firm, so firm in fact that even after fully cooking they still had an almost crunchy quality to them--not undercooked, but not at all soggy. I used them to make one of my favourite dishes shown to me by one of my favourite friends, an Eastern European dish of potatoes, sauerkraut and pork. I did a makeshift version of the recipe that went like this:

several potatoes, diced in medium chunks;
an onion, sliced;
a big helping of sauerkraut (about half a jar);
5 or so gluten free bratwurst;
a very large dollop of extra virgin olive oil;
salt.
had I not forgotten I would have also added large amounts of crushed garlic.

I pre-cooked the bratwurst in a frypan while I chopped everything else, then chopped the bratwurst into small chunks. Threw everything into an oven dish and coated it liberally with the olive oil, then put it into a 200 degree (c) oven for about 45 minutes. Delicious!

Wednesday was gadogado style steamed veggies (broccoli, corn, carrot, beans, onion) with a sliced boiled egg each and peanut/cashew sauce.

Thursday, roast veggie stacks with a tomato oregano, basil and garlic sauce.


The veggie stack was made up of slices of roast potato, butternut pumpkin, red capsicum, zucchini, carrot and onion, and the tomato sauce was made from black/purpley tomatoes out of the box. Everything in that meal came out of the box except for the basil, which was from the garden, and the pumpkin and garlic which I had purchased previously.

Tonight we have had a request from monkey moo for chicken, so I am thinking chicken and veggie burgers (though moo has requested 'no veggies' for her please, so they may need to be hidden vegetables this time).

We still have from the box: beans; carrots; some beautiful big mushrooms; a bunch of silverbeet; cauliflower; a large chunk of ginger; a bunch and a half of broccoli; what looks like a daikon radish; onions; one potato; two tomatoes; a couple of sweet potatoes; a cos lettuce; and half a zucchini. Definitely enough for three more meals there. In addition to that list I also have on hand: garlic; a couple of red capsicums, 2 ears of corn; half a cabbage; and a bunch of spring onions. I am thinking some kind of silverbeet and sweet potato pie or fritatta for Saturday, and I will likely pickle the cabbage and radish. That leaves Sunday and Monday dinners plus a few veggie lunches. Any suggestions of the best way to utilise this delicious produce?