Rolled chicken with craisins

It was the weekend. We'd spent it productively. We were going to go out to dinner as a gastronomic pat on the back for everything we'd achieved. Then we realised what the time was and that we were tired, grubby and just wanted to have a shower before sitting down to a decent meal and a glass of something cold and refreshing, preferably while dressed in (clean) trackies. Ah, life in the suburbs.

So, while Tim finished unclogging the down-pipe in the back yard, I rummaged through my fridge and pantry, desperately trying to find something worthwhile. Tim had been away and I'd been busy, so I hadn't done the groceries yet. I had some fresh, free-range chicken breasts. I had a packet of craisins. I had sweet potato. I had an idea!

It was as simple as stuffing the chicken with a few fresh ingredients, pan frying to a nice brown, and then letting them cook through while the sweet potato boiled and I turned it into mash. By the time Tim had washed up, dinner was on. Nice. Sometimes the best meals are the unplanned, quick jobs that you don't have time to mess up.

Ingredients

2 free range chicken breasts

1/3 cup polenta

1/4 cup craisins

1/4 cup shredded mozzarella

1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tbsp lemon zest

tsp dried parsley leaves

juice of 1/ lemon

1/2 cup dry white wine or verjuice

1 tbsp butter

olive oil

salt & pepper

Place the chicken breasts on a board with the thickest part facing you. With one palm flat on the breast (the chicken breast, not your own or somebody else's), slice horizontally through the breast until you're almost all the way through.

In a small bowl, mix all the other ingredients well, except for the butter, olive oil and wine or verjuice. Fold the chicken breasts open, being careful not to break them completely open. Take half the mixture and press it onto the bottom half, and then press the top half of the breast over the top. Cram it all in and secure at the side with a skewer. The breasts should now resemble little bulging packages.

In a heavy fry pan, splash in some olive oil and the butter and heat it up. Brown the breasts on both sides. Pour in the wine and if you want to, throw in another small handful of craisins. Turn the heat down and cook, covered, for 20 minutes or until cooked through but not dry.

To make the sweet potato mash, peel and chop up one large sweet potato. Boil it until soft, drain and mash with some butter or olive oil. Salt to taste.

When the chicken is done, remove the skewers and slice into thick pieces. Place on the mash and pour some of the juices over and sprinkle with some finely chopped, fresh flat leaf parsley. Serve with a small, green salad and a nice glass of white.

Melbourne Cup Day...or whatever...

Here in the ACT, a new public holiday was gazetted by the local government last year, much to the chagrin of cafes and caterers everywhere. It's called 'Family and Community Day' or something of that ilk. The fact that it just so happens to fall on the first Tuesday in November, traditionally Melbourne Cup Day, is merely coincidental...

That aside, what it means is that now you actually have to think about what you're going to have for lunch, rather than wait for the inevitable announcement over the office PA that signals to all that you must now surrender yourself to being herded off by your supervisor to the local club or staff common room for Melbourne Cup lunch/afternoon tea/drinks. These are traditionally disappointing affairs in terms of the food, made only slightly more bearable if you happen to have backed a winner in your own right or gotten lucky with the office sweep. (Or in the case of some people who won't be mentioned, gotten so drunk that you're beyond caring about food, the race or even know why you're huddled with your colleagues around the TV in your boss's office at three in the afternoon).

I have to admit that I'm looking forward to spending this afternoon with friends in their back yard, BBQ on the burn, champagne in hand (the decent stuff), rather than lining up with my colleagues to trawl past the $15 cold buffet that consists almost entirely of pressed chicken and coleslaw, and having to gush about whoever organised  it doing a wonderful job and pretending that the caterers have been generous and done us a good deal, while really feeling ripped off and wondering why we bothered. This little ritual is almost always followed by the act of balancing one's plate while one surrenders one's drinks ticket to a surly bartender who wishes he was at the track rather than dealing with a room full of slightly inebriated desk jockeys, for a glass of $4 a bottle plonk that would otherwise be bound for next month's school leavers heading for their first big binge. 

So really, thank goodness for the public holiday, whatever it's called!

Anyhow, I got thinking about the traditional chicken salad and champagne lunch. Believe it or not, I can't ever recall making chicken salad before. I didn't feel like making one now. So what I did was this instead - rolled chicken thigh fillets served with salad. It's still good. 

Ingredients:

4 chicken thigh fillets (I used organic free range and you can taste the difference)

olive oil

For marinade:

4 tbsp honey

1 generous tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tbsp sesame seeds

For stuffing:

4 tbsp fresh ricotta

2 tbsp polenta

2 tbsp fresh basil, finely chopped

2 tbsp roasted pine nuts, roughly chopped

1 tsp fresh or dried parsley, finely chopped

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

Mix up the marinade and set aside. Pat dry the chicken thighs on some paper towel.

Mix all of the stuffing ingredients together. It doesn't look like much but it will be enough because you're not flattening out the chicken at all. Turn the chicken over and put a couple of tablespoons of the mixture, moulding it into a cylinder shape to fit the length of the thigh. Roll the meat over it - no need to secure or anything.

Oil a small baking dish and place the four fillets in, making sure they fit snugly up against each other. This will keep the filling and the flavour in. Brush the marinade over the chicken. Use the whole lot even if it looks very thick. Cover the dish with foil and bake for about an hour on medium heat. At about 45 minutes in, remove from the over, take the foil off and baste the chicken with the juices forming. Put it back into the oven and let it brown up for about 15 minutes. When it comes out, it should have coloured up beautifully and when you open in up, the meat should be moist and full of flavour. 

I served this with a mixed salad of butter lettuce, thinly sliced radish, tomato, baby capers, boiled egg, some small blobs of ricotta, lemon zest, basil leaves and seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. It's very fresh and delicious.

Whatever you're doing today, enjoy and here's hoping you back a winner! 

An engaging evening

What a fabulous weekend it has been! Full of good food and excellent company. 

Where do I start? Perhaps with the visitors - my oldest friend, Fleur, and her extremely new fiance of one week who I've never met before, drove down from Sydney to meet and greet. Sensible, since they plan to get married soon and Fleur thinks I should be a bridesmaid. They'd travelled here partly on the promise of a nice dinner, so I thought I'd better do something special. I'd envisaged a night of candlelight, glittering glassware and polished silver, with me serving in a nice little dress to the sounds of sparkling conversation. Got most of it right. Candles burnt, glassware glittered, silver shone and conversation was mostly sparkling. Dress stayed in cupboard. 

After a visit to the beauty therapist who generously shared her floral arrangement with me after hearing that I was planning a celebratory dinner for at least one person I'd never met and was therefore slightly nervous about the whole thing, I was very nearly wiped out on the road by someone who wasn't paying attention. Not being one to dwell, I popped in to my mum's house to pick up a white damask table cloth (can anyone believe that I don't own a white table cloth myself???) and some antique silver parfait spoons. Linen and spoons in hand, I made my way to the supermarket for what I hoped would be fresh raspberries, but for the price of a single punnet of raspberries, I bought a punnet each of strawberries and blueberries. Then home, although temporarily stymied on the Cotter Road by either a triathlon in progress or road works. It was never clear which. With time ticking away, there was no time to wait, so over the island I went and did a u-turn, back through the suburbs and over the hill and finally, home. Where I got started on preparing dinner. It was 12.30pm and I wasn't sure when the happy couple were due. I needn't have worried. Shortly after I got a text - ETA 4pm.

Anyhow, I had carefully planned the menu and had even written down a game-plan for preparation.  Actually it pretty much went to plan and well before they arrived, I had prepped all the veg, made up vol au vant filling, marinated, mixed and chopped, cleaned the kitchen, washed the dog (Tim did that in truth but I had to assure the dog that we still loved her and this wasn't torture), polished the aforementioned silver parfait spoons and the candle stick, starched and ironed the damask (*%@#!), showered and even straightened my hair. Sigh.... 

Now to put the magnitude of this weekend into perspective - David (fiance) is the answer to everyone's prayers. He is nice. He is genuine. He is easy to look at. He has a job, a home, manners, appears to understand the concept of personal hygiene, can take a joke and be self effacing and funny, and perhaps most importantly, he is the antithesis of every boyfriend that Fleur has ever had at any time in the past that I am aware of. I mean it when I say 'thank God'. On top of all of this, David (or Dave to those of us who know him well) wants to marry Fleur. Soon. What a man! The upshot of this scenario is that dinner had to be good. 

When Fleur and Dave arrived, we all relaxed pretty quickly because he is so nice, well mannered, etc. We'd anticipated dressing up for dinner, but in the end, it was all too much trouble and thongs were the footwear of choice. It so didn't matter because the food and company were great and the occasion was pretty special. So as not to delay the champagne drinking, I served some baba ganoush, hummus and beetroot dip that I'd made during the week. This went down a treat. I'd never made beetroot dip before so I was pretty thrilled that it worked out. All I did was cook up some finely chopped beetroot in some olive oil with a little bit of garlic and thyme, and then whizzed it up in the processor with some Greek yogurt, lemon juice and salt. Easy.

Next, I made up a dozen vol au vants. I recall these as being de rigeur in the 1980s at any smart suburban dinner party. Being a child in the 1980s I didn't actually attend many smart dinner parties, and yet I have a strong conviction that this is what was done. I spied some in the supermarket the other week and thought it was time that the vol au vant made a comeback. But no white, cheesy sauce with tinned asparagus for me. I chopped up some smoked salmon and mixed it in with some very creamy, fresh ricotta, threw in a tablespoon of baby capers, and a pinch of black pepper. I garnished with a little more salmon, caper and some very finely chopped parsley. The filling mix is gorgeous and would translate into a nice sandwich filling. I actually had some on a savoury crepe today, having run out of bread.

For the main course, I took four large quail, butterflied them, and marinaded overnight in a mixture of lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, salt, pepper, sweet paprika and fresh thyme. These went on the BBQ until done and pretty crispy on the outside. (I also made up some organic, free-range chicken skewers just in case the quail wasn't enough on it's own. It wasn't). Having debated what to serve quail with with my boss last week, I went with his brilliant idea of an onion jam which took about 10 minutes to make and was served straight away. I added some fresh chilli. Not too hot but gave it a nice little kick. It's easy to do - take a large red onion, about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar and half each of a long red and long green pepper, sliced into rounds and with most of the seeds removed. Put these in a fry pan and cook in some olive oil until they're all soft and the mixture is thickening up into, well, into a jam. Delicious.

For veg, we had a mix of lightly pan fried asparagus, broccolini and green beans, splashed with lemon juice and some chopped bacon that I'd fried to almost a crisp. Also some baked potatoes and just to cover all bases, I took some baby Mediterranean salad leaves and dressed with balsamic and olive oil. 

To end, I served a two-tone chocolate mousse that will be the subject of another post. I will need to explain the challenge that was involved in the white part. For a while there, it was not looking good.

It sounds like a lot of different things, but the flavours all complemented each other and everything worked pretty well. If anyone has a fool-proof way of getting baked potatoes to come out crispy, please let me know. I tried the old par-boil (microwave) followed by a very hot oven and olive oil. Didn't work for me. Perhaps I need practice?

Well the weekend is just about over and it's off to another working week shortly. Congratulations Fleur and Dave and I can't wait until the wedding!