CookingAndRecipeTips.com

Archive for July, 2009

This is suitable for BBQs and tastes great.

Honeyed Chicken

Ingredients:

6 chicken breasts
pepper
¹/₄ cup chablis (or other dry white wine)
2 tsp french mustard
4 Tbsp honey

Method:

1. Cut each chicken breast into 4
2. Season chicken breasts with pepper.
3. Gently add chablis to mustard and mix until smooth.
4. Add honey and blend well.
5. Place chicken breasts on greased foil on the barbeque, cook over medium heat. Brush with honey mixture during cooking.
6. Cook 12-15 minutes or until cooked, turning frequently and brushing with honey mixture.

Tips:

You may find it easier to combine the honey if it has been warmed first.

Chicken and corn go together very well whether as a BBQ chicken with salad, corn, pineapple and beetroot, or as a soup such as described here.

Chicken And Corn Soup

Ingredients:

1 kg chicken pieces or 1 small chicken
1 large onion
8 cups water
2 cups hock (or any dry white wine)
2 tsp salt
¹/₄ tsp saffron
1 large can (440 g) whole corn kernels
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 egg yolks
150 mls cream
chopped parsley
bread croutons

Method:

1. Simmer the chicken pieces and onion in water, hock, salt and saffron for 1 hour.
2. Remove chicken, allow to cool then shred meat from the bones.
3. Remove onion from stock.
4. Replace meat in the stock and add drained corn kernels. Simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Remove excess fat and season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Lightly beat egg yolks and add cream. Stir a little of the soup into the beaten egg yolks and cream, then stir back into the soup.
7. Reheat but do not boil.
8. Serve garnished with parsley and bread croutons.

Serves: 10

Preparation time: around 1 ¹/₂ hours

Tips

If you do not have 90 minutes to prepare this, you can cheat a little by buying a barbecued chicken and using chicken stock. Add the stock powder to the water and hock etc and bring to the boil. Strip the meat off the chicken and add it to the stock.

Unless there is a real reason to use just yolks or whites I tend to use the whole egg. Otherwise I end up with a collection of whites or yolks that gets thrown out a few weeks later when they are discovered at the back of the fridge. So, although this recipe calls for egg yolks, I use the whole egg. The saffron already gives it the nice rich yellow colour.

Variations

You can also use crab meat for this recipe. You can use chicken stock and then add the crab meat at the simmering stage.

There are many variations in spring roll recipes. This one originates from Vietnam and makes truly excellent spring rolls. The spring roll shells or pastry sheets used in this recipe are quite large and so are cut into quarters.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Ingredients:

1 pkt spring roll shells – quartered

Filling:
1 kg finely minced lean pork
3 cloves garlic – finely minced (or crushed)
250 g carrot – grated
8 dried mushrooms – soak and sliced finely
2 medium onions -  finely minced
1 cup soaked mung bean vermicelli
2 ¹/₂ Tbsp sugar
1 ¹/₂ tsp salt
¹/₂ tsp pepper
oil for deep frying
a little plain flour and water made into a paste

Sauce

6 Tbsp Fish sauce
2 Tbsp sugar
juice of 2 lemons
6 Tbsp water
3 cloves garlic – finely minced
2 red chillies – finely chopped
1 small carrot – cut into fine julienne strips

Method:

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water until soft then drain and slice finely.
2. Mix all of the sauce ingredients together in a bowl until sugar is completely dissolved and let stand for around 30 minutes.
3. While the sauce is standing, mix all filling ingredients together in another bowl.
4. Take approximately 1 tablespoon of mixture and roll up in shell.
5. Seal the edges with the paste made from water and flour
6. Deep fry in hot oil until golden brown (around  7 minutes).
7. Serve with the sauce as a dip

Variations

If you don’t have mung bean vermicelli, you can substitute rice vermicelli.

There are many recipes for  rissoles but this is one of the tastiest I’ve found. I think that is possibly because the onion is cooked before it is added to the rissole mixture.  It is a fairly healthy meal since the rissoles include lots of veges so it’s one way to get the kids to eat veges.

Rissoles

Ingredients:

500g mince
2 onions, diced
1 cup grated carrots
2 cups shallots cut into small pieces
1 cup diced capsicum
2 Tbsp parsley finely chopped
6 slices bread broken into small pieces
2 eggs beaten
1/3 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
oil for frying (not canola)

Method:

1. Fry chopped onion till translucent.
2. Combine bread, eggs and milk in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Add remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. You can use your (clean) hands to mix everything and ensure it is at a good consistency.
4. Shape into rissoles and fry.

This is a very quick and easy recipe to make. It uses lots of garlic which means you probably don’t want to have it for lunch just before an important meeting. However, garlic is a great aid to health. The active components are antiseptic and kill those cold and flu causing bugs. (Mind you, part of its effectiveness may be because no one comes close to you after eating it!)

Fettucini With Mushrooms

Ingredients:

400g mushrooms
4 – 6 cloves garlic
300 ml sour cream
400g fresh egg fettucini (if not available use regular packet fettucini)
salt and pepper to taste
oil for frying
chopped parsley for garnish

Method:

1. Clean and slice mushrooms. Some people like to wash the mushrooms, others like to just wipe them with paper towel.
2. Heat oil in a saucepan and add crushed garlic. Fry for about 30 seconds then add the sliced mushrooms.
3. Fry gently until the mushrooms are soft.
4. Add sour cream, mis through and heat gently. Do not allow to boil.
5. Cook fettucini in boiling salted water until al dente (usually 8-11 minutes depending on brand and how firm you like it).
6. Drain fettucini and add mushroom sauce. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped parsley.

Variations

You can use butter instead of the oil for frying. You could also use about 100g butter instead of the sour cream to make the sauce.