Chicken Curry

One of the best curries I have made todate. Made of combination of store-bought curry paste and fresh ingredients.

For 8p
1.5kg of chicken thigh fillets, cut into half each.
1 packet of Tean's chicken curry paste (Malaysian product)
1 cm of fresh tumeric and ginger.)
1 stalk of lemon grass                  ) blend these till fine
1 carrot, cut into small pieces      )
6 pieces of kaffir lime leaves
2 large ripened tomatoes, chopped
1 very large red onion, chopped.
40g of gula melaka (about 2 tbsp)
3-4 tbsp of soy sauce
250-300ml of coconut milk.
4 stalks of fresh mint and of basil leaves
Beansprouts (taugeh) - about 8 handfuls
Oil (olive or peanut or veg oil)

Gently fry the blended ingredients in oil in a heavy based pot till softened.
Add Tean's paste, continue frying till oil separates.
Add tomatoes, onions, gula melaka, soy.
Add 1 cup of water.
Continue cooking on small to medium heat with lid on for about 1 hour, occasionally stirring.
Add chicken and coconut milk.
Cook on same heat till simmering.
Cook for 1/2 hour on small heat - for chicken to remain tender
Turn heat off.
Served with fresh taugeh, mint and basil.
Delicious with either noodles or steamed rice.

Optional:
I added 1 packet of tau fu pok, and 12 pieces of seaweed fu chook to the curry once simmering after adding chicken and coconut milk.

Bon Appetite!

Malaysian Curry Laksa

Rick Stein is my favourite Chef. I love his cooking/travel shows, and his cooking - very local, fresh, yummy.

He made this during Masterclass last nite on Masterchef, in Kuala Lumpur! I have to say I was impressed. It is made from fresh local ingredients, and I would say more authentic than some. What strucked me most was that he fried up the heads and shells of the prawn to create the stock, something which I never imagined for laksa - yum yum! I can imagine, a real seafood taste in the laksa. So, this is a must try for me.

250g raw unpeeled prawns
Vegetable oil for frying
200g firm tofu, cut to 1cm thick slices

Laksa spice paste
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, for frying
20g piece ginger, chopped
3 fat garlic cloves
2 stalks lemongrass, chopped
75g shallots, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons dried shrimp, rehydrated in boiling water for 5 minutes and drained well
1.5 teaspoons shrimp paste
20g cashew/candle nuts
2 teaspoons fish curry spice
20g fresh turmeric
4 fresh long red finger chillies
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

SoupLaksa spice paste
Prawn stock
400ml coconut milk, fresh if available
1 tablespoon palm sugar
160g chicken breast, cut into 1cm slices
Reserved peeled prawns
2 tablespoons fish sauce
400g fresh egg noodles, loosened
To serve100g bean sprouts
100g cooked fine green beans, halved
3 spring onions, trimmed and thinly sliced on the diagonal, to serve
A handful of mixed mint and coriander leaves, to serve
Lime wedges, to serve
Sambal oelek, to serve

Peel prawns, reserving the heads and shells. Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok or frying pan, add prawn heads and shells and stir-fry for a couple of minutes until they are crisp and golden.

Add 1 litre of water, bring to the boil, reduce heat and leave to simmer for 30 minutes. Strain liquid into a large jug and discard heads and shells.

Cut tofu into 1cm thick pieces and fry in hot oil until crisp, drain well on a paper towel-lined plate.

For laksa spice paste, place chillies into a mortar and pestle and pound into a paste. Add the remaining ingredients and pound to a smooth paste.

For soup, heat oil in a large frying pan or wok over a high heat, add all the spice paste and fry gently for 2-3 minutes, stirring continuously until mixture starts to smell fragrant and split. Add prawn stock, coconut milk and palm sugar and begin to reduce. Add chicken and prawns and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Pour in 1-2 tablespoons of fish sauce and stir to combine.

Drop in the fresh egg noodles and leave to heat through for a few seconds.

Taste Laksa and season with more sugar and fish sauce if desired.

To serve, arrange bean sprouts, cooked green beans, fried tofu and noodles in the bottom of a serving dish. Ladle over curry soup, trying to divide the prawns and chicken pieces equally between each bowl. Garnish with spring onions, mint, coriander and a squeeze of lime juice. Serve with a spoonful of sambal oelek.

Bon Appetite!

Maggie Beer's Roast Chicken with Garlic and Verjuice

Last Friday, (2.5.2011) Maggie Beer gave some MasterChef contestants a class on making roast chicken with roast garlic. It looked really good, nice golden brown, very moist and tender, melts in the mouth, including the chicken breast!. Here are the notes I took.

1 large size range free chicken (2kg)
50ml olive oil
About 30 cloves garlic unpeeled (4 cloves peeled and chopped, the rest blanch in boiling water for 4 minutes)
About 1 tsp sea salt and pepper
125ml verjuice
125ml water
1 cup chicken stock
3 rosemary sprig
1 lemon, cut into half

Preheat oven to 200deg

Prepare chicken to be at room temperature (so that it cooks evenly).
Place chicken on a trivet/rack sitting on top of a shallow oven baking tray (5cm deep). (a deep oven tray would trap some heat at the bottom of the tray, distorting heat circulation throughout the chicken)
Massage into the skin of the chicken the olive oil and the chopped garlic, sprinkle with sea salt.
Stuff the rosemary and squeeze the lemon juice into chicken cavity, leave lemon in
(Note: The chopped garlic is my personal choice/addition to the recipe.)
Tucked the wing tips under the chicken, for even cooking.
Place chicken, breast side up on the rack.
Cover breast (from neck to bottom) with foil, leaving only the legs exposed. This protects the breast from overcooking/drying.


Bake in the oven for 40 minutes.
After 40 minutes. remove chicken from the oven.
Pour verjuice all over chicken.
Baste the chicken with the juice in the tray.
Shift foil, so that it now exposes the breast, cover the legs.
Place blanced garlic onto the oven tray.
Pour water into base of tray to prevent garlic from burning.
Return to oven, cook for 20 minutes.
Remove immediately from oven to rest chicken.

Remove foil and turn chicken upside down, ie breast facing down.
This "returns" the moisture in the chicken back into the breast keeping it moist.
Loosely cover (not wrap) the chicken with foil.
Let chicken rest for at least 20 minutes (40minutes preferred) in room temperature. I guess it depends on the season!
Chicken will continue to cook in own heat while resting.

To make the jus, pour all the pan juices from the baking dish into a small saucepan and add 1 cup of warm chicken stock, pour into a narrow serving jug, then refrigerate this while the chicken is resting. Just before serving, scoop away the fat that has risen to the top, warm the remaining jus.

Carve the chook, then pour over the jus and serve accompanied by the roasted garlic, parsnip and pear mash and salad.

Bon Appetite!

Roast Chicken with Apples, Herbs, Curry Leaves / Juliened Young Celery with Cranberry, Greens, Wasabi Mayo dressing

Bon Appetite!

Poached hainanese chicken with wine, served with chicken mushroom risotto

This technique creates super tender and moist chicken, even the breast is moist.

I make use of the stock from poaching the chicken to produce all the sides that complements this meal:-

- chicken mushroom risotto

- prawan chawan mushi (see recipe under "Label - Japanese").

Can be served with Asian salad of lebanese cucumber and mini roma tomatoes.

Ingredients for poaching the chicken

1 whole chicken

1 large onion - cut into small bits.

1 whole bulb of garlic  - which usually have about 12 cloves of garlic. Smashed the garlic.

300ml (cc) cups of chinese cooking wine

2 tablespoon of palm sugar OR 1 tablespoon of normal sugar

4 tablespoon of light soy sauce 

1 pot big enough to put the whole chicken in

About 2 litres of water (or enough just to cover slightly more than 1/2 of chicken).

Ingredients for making the risotto - 4 people

2 cups of arborio rice

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 big French shallot or a few small ones (the small red onions) - sliced finely, or chopped

2 large portobello mushrooms - cut into small 1cm cubes

30g butter

chicken stock made from poaching the chicken above (the usual amount that you would put for steaming rice)

chicken fat cut off the chicken

1/2 cup of chopped parsley

Ingredients for Salad

2 lebanese cucumber - each cut into half lenghtwise, then sliced up.

12 mini roma tomatoes - cut into 4 quarters

1 cup of fresh parsley chopped

Salad Dressing

1 tbsp sesame oil

1 tbsp Braggs soy protein (or light soy)

2 tbsp caramelised balsamic vinegar

Juice of 1/2 a lime

1 big tbsp palm sugar

Poaching Chicken

After washing the chicken, cut off the big lumps of fat near the chicken bottom and the neck. Keep the fat for making the rice.

Stuff 1/2 the garlic into the chicken stomach.

Pour cold water into the pot.

Put all the ingredients into the pot of water.

Put chicken into the cold water.

Turn on heat - slow simmer heat for 30 minutes. Do not put on high heat or boil. This way chicken will be very tender and soft. If on high heat, chicken become tough and dry.

After 30 minutes, turn the chicken upside down, and cook another 30 minutes. (As the chicken is only half in the water, we turn it at half time so that both sides get cooked in the water). Only half water is used, so that stock would have good chicken flavour and not too dilluted.

After cooking total of 1 hour, immediately take the chicken out of the stock, put into a big bowl ( I used a steel mixing bowl), cover with clingwrap, and put into fridge freezer! Leave in freezer for 45 minutes. This is to remove heat from the chicken and stop the cooking process.  

After that, carve chicken and serve with some stock, garnish with coriander leaves.

Chicken Risotto

Sautee the chicken fat in a little bit of oil - to release the chicken flavour into the oil. When chicken fat turns golden, remove from pan.

Slightly fry garlic and shallots in the chicken fat oil.

Add mushrooms.

Add butter.

Add rice.

Fry for about 5 minutes to fragrant the rice.

Add about 2 cups of chicken stock into rice, or enough to just cover rice with stock. Stir. Cover for about 5 minutes on low heat, or until stock is mostly absorped into rice. Stir. Add stock to cover rice again. Cover for 5 minutes. Repeat process another time. (ie about 20 minutes process in total).  

Leave rice cover with lid for another 10 minutes. Stir in parsley, and serve.

For time management, I would prepare the chawan mushi while cooking the risotto. Chawan mushi is ready to be steamed when I start serving the guests with the rice and chicken and salad. Guest get chawan mushi piping hot halfway through their meal.

Bon Appetite!

Claypot Corn Chicken

This was the dinner that Andrew made last night! It's simple, uses one pot, no oily splitter splatter, we make full use of the whole chicken, AND importantly, it's yummy! When the chicken is cooked, the whiff of roasted chicken, garlic and herbs smell just floated in the air filling the house with a heavenly smell.
The chicken tasted like steam chicken and more, with a good "roasty" flavour. The claypot sealed all the flavours beautifully giving an intense and aromatic chicken with rich broth. We often add potatoes and last night we experimented with fresh sweet corn as well. The potatoes having absorbed all the rich broth while cooking was so flavourful. We used a few of the large potatoes we had in the pantry, but if buying them, we'd use several new (ie baby) potatoes instead as baby potatoes hold together better in the heat since the skin need not be peeled.

Cooked in a Rometoff clay pot.

1 Whole Chicken (corn fed if available).
2 large fresh cobs of corn (or a 4 pack of small ones), cut the sweet corn off the cob and put both aside.
2 large potatoes, quartered (or several new potatoes).
1/2 cup of white wine.

Marinade / rub
4 cloves of garlic, crushed.
1 or 2 teaspoons of salt.
1 tablespoon or so of olive oil.
2 teaspoons of chopped oregano (dry if no fresh available).

Mix marinade well and push under the chicken skin with a teaspoon, and spread around. Rub the remainder on the outside of the bird. Fill the cavity with the corn cobs. As an option you could also put a few lemon wedges into the chook as well, plus more garlic cloves and fresh oregano.

Put the chicken into a soaked claypot. Spread the potatoes around, then add the white wine. Put the lid of the claypot on and put into an unheated oven for 1 hour at 220. After 45mins, scatter the corn all over the chicken, then return to oven for another 15 mins. Remove and let rest with lid on for 10 - 15 mins.

To serve, cut the chicken as preferred and scoop corn and juices over the meat and potatoes. If you don't have potatoes, use white rice - this is especially delicious with the left over corn and juice!

This time we had the chicken thigh and wings and potatoes for dinner, with plain white rice. The remaining chicken breast we may save for making sandwiches or noodles the next day.

The carcass, we used to make stock, adding the bones, skin, corn cobs plus one onion and a couple of bay leaves to a stock pot, bring to boil then simmer for a few hours, cool & skim. It's placed in freezer in tubs, and to be used another day for making soupy noodle, or simply used as stock for cooking. Its good savings considering a carton of 500g Campbell chicken stock costs about AUD3.50. We ended up with over 2 ltrs of stock, plenty to use fresh and to freeze for later. We made a few ice cube trays of stock so I can just use as many or as little cubes as I like :-)

Bon Appetit