Chicken Enchiladas

Wow, it's completely apropos that my last post... SIX MONTHS AGO... was complaining about juggling work and daycare. I literally have no time at all between waking at 6 (if I'm lucky!), breakfast, nappy bag, changing baby, feeding baby, cycling baby to daycare, cycling on to work, shower, work eight solid hours, cycle home via daycare, empty dishwasher, cook dinner, refill dishwasher, put baby to bed, then crash back to bed at 9pm. I've taken to making my dinners in advance at the weekend, so that the "cook dinner" part of that deluge is just a 5-10 minute reheat and serve. That means a lot of repeated, tried-and-tested recipes, and a lot of pretty boring staple food, like beef stew or lasagne.

I was at a friend's birthday party / pot luck, and another friend wanted to know more about the food I was preparing: huevos rancheros. I explained what I was up to, and she asked me if it was on my blog. I said yes... but I haven't been updating it recently. We had leftover refried beans and I said I'd probably make some enchiladas to go with; so here is the recipe, for my friend who wanted to know what exactly I DO with leftover refried beans :)

Ingredients

• a medium roast chicken (ready-roast from the supermarket is fine)
• two red peppers (capsica)
• a large brown onion
• four cloves of garlic
• 1 flat tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 1-2 tsp chilli flakes (to taste)
• a cup or so of tomato salsa
• 8 tortillas
• cheddar, colby, or monteray jack cheese
• 3 spring onions
• sour cream

Method

Strip the meat off the chicken, roughly chop, and reserve. If the chicken came with stuffing, feel free to eat it, or chop it in, too. Dice the red peppers; halve, and finely slice the onion. Fry them together in a little oil for 10-15 minutes over a low heat until extremely sweet and tender. 

(Or, you could roast a chicken whole, surrounded by halved onions and red peppers, then dice everything up afterwards. Your call!)

Crush the garlic into the red pepper and onions, and fry for another minute, then add the cumin, cocoa, and chilli, if using; fry for another minute, until fragrant. Stir in the diced chicken, and half of the salsa.

Spoon the mixture into the tortillas, rolling them up and pushing them together in a deep roasting tray. Scatter grated cheese and finely diced spring onions over the top. You can cover and refrigerate it at this stage, and it'll keep in the fridge for a few days.

Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes (or 20 from the fridge), until the cheese has melted and the edges of the tortillas are just beginning to crisp.

Serve hot, with the rest of the salsa, sour cream or guacamole, and refried beans, if you like :)

Spiralizer Week: Day Four: Ginger Egg Drop Soup

This was the evening of another exercise class and I knew that the very simple soup we had in mind was just not going to cut it. So I beefed it up with some extra ingredients, while keeping the rest mostly the same. I was really unsure about adding vinegar to a soup, but it worked *really* well. In fact I can't quite believe how smooth and tasty this dish was. Of course it helped that I had made a really great chicken stock with the chicken carcass I had left from jointing a chicken earlier in the week. I think that is crucial for any non-puréed soup. The photo really doesn't do this soup justice!

Ingredients

• a thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
  
• 3 tbsp dried wakame
• 4-5 spring onions, shredded
• 1/3 tsp chilli flakes
• 4 tsp sherry or apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 3 cups really good chicken stock
• 2 large eggs, gently beaten
• two chicken thighs or a chicken breast, cooked, shredded
• two grilled corn-on-the-cobs, kernels cut
• 1 zucchini, spiralized into thin noodles

Fry the ginger gently until golden and beginning to crisp, then add the wakame, spring onions, chilli flakes, vinegar, soy sauce and chicken stock. Let it come to a simmer and cook for a few minutes, then add in the eggs, stirring as they cook. Add in the shredded chicken, corn kernels, and zucchini, and bring back up to temperature. Serve!

Spiralizer Week: Day Two: Zucchini Noodles with Chicken, Feta and Spinach

Day two saw me head to my usual Tuesday night Sh'Bam exercise class, so I was in need of a little more protein than a vegetarian meal would provide. Earlier in the day I bought a whole chicken and diced the breasts, so we could easily put this together after my class. (Oh, things that are going to be impossible when I am working in the office again!)

I have no idea what cuisine this was supposed to be, I just nabbed it from this blog. I replaced the spinach with sweet potato leaves from my garden, since they are totally out of control, and are much tastier and less soggy than spinach. Overall it was pretty tasty, if not super-memorable. The noodles are still fun!

Chicken and Fennel Stew

More yummy winter comfort food! I really love the combination of chicken, sausages and fennel in this stew. To accentuate the fennel flavour, you can add a teaspoon of crushed fennel seeds. I have been using this recipe for so long that it exists as a print-out from 2007 in my recipe binder, since tablets and smartphones had not yet come into common usage. While it is a good recipe, I have changed the order and cooking times of things a little to suit my own tastes.

Ingredients

• 1 large or 2 small bulbs fresh fennel, cut into ~16 wedges
• 1 large brown onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 large potato, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch dice
• 6 chicken thighs
• 3 links sweet Italian sausage (about 1/4 pounds)
• a small wine glass of dry white wine
• 500ml homemade chicken stock
• 1 sprig fresh rosemary
• 1 tsp fennel seeds (optional)
• 1 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar, more if needed
• freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, more for sprinkling

If you do not already have chicken stock lying around, use the bones from inside the chicken thighs, some bay leaves, any leftover stalky tough bits of fennel and the roots from the onion in this recipe, and carrot and celery if you have them, to make a chicken stock (set this going first thing). Otherwise, stock powder is OK, although not *quite* as good.

Prepare all of the vegetables. Reserve some outside layers from a couple of the fennel wedges, and all of the feathery green leaves, for garnish. Skin and debone the chicken thighs, and cut the sausages into ~4cm pieces.

Fry the sausage pieces in a little oil in a deep Le Creuset until crisped and browned on the outside. Then, add a little more oil to the pan, and fry the chicken thighs for a minute or so on each side, until golden. Remove the meats from the pan, scraping it a little to remove most of any stuck bits. Add a little more oil and fry the onion and fennel for 4-5 minutes, until the onion has softened, then add the garlic. Pour in the white wine and use a wooden spatula to combine it with the sticky bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the stock, rosemary, fennel seeds (if using) and potatoes and simmer for 10 minutes, until the potatoes are just cooked.

Remove a ladleful or two of the onion, broth and potato (and any bits of fennel that happen to come along too) and set aside, allowing to cool. Meanwhile, return the meat to the pan, and cover, aiming to cook for a further 25 minutes. When the set aside vegetable mixture is cool enough, blend to a paste using a food processor, then scrape back into the pan. Stir the stew occasionally to prevent further sticking. When the chicken is tender, add 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and taste and adjust the seasoning.

To prepare the garnish, use a very sharp vegetable peeler to shave the reserved layers of fennel into very thin strips. Add the feathery leaves and season with a little salt, pepper and olive oil.

To serve, ladle the stew into individual bowls, top with the garnish, and serve with grated parmesan for people to add.

Sali Murghi (Chicken and Apricot Curry with Matchstick Potatoes)

Happy New Year!

I have no good excuses for not posting. I was lazy at the end of November, in the US for most of December, and then ate nothing but BBQ and leftover Christmas ham during the holiday break. Yesterday saw the seventh-hottest day ever recorded in Perth, so all I could face was the usual Thai beef salad, thrown together from whatever salad vegetables I had, plus half a bag of fresh beansprouts and a big bunch of mint, for extra cooling effect. Nice to use a post-BBQ extra T-bone steak as well; never have I had such deliciously chilled and soft beef.

Anyway! Last year, just before I left for the States, a surprise present arrived from a friend in the UK: Rick Stein's India, a really fantastic compilation of Indian recipes from all over the subcontinent. On Sunday I decided to try out one of the more challenging looking recipes, sali murghi, or chicken and apricot curry with potato straws. The ingredients list is moderately long, but of course the spices are essential. We found that they combined beautifully with the apricots and other vegetables to form a thick and sweet-sour sauce that complemented the chicken and potatoes perfectly. From a single chicken, there was easily enough for six people, or for us, two dinners and two lunches. (We had the second dinner with perfect pilaf rice and quick-friend coconut vegetables.)

Ingredients
For the matchstick potatoes (sali):

• 250g of Chat (or other chipping/new) potatoes, julienned and soaked in cold water for at least 15 minutes
• a deep fryer or heavy-based pan full of vegetable oil for deep frying
• salt

For the curry:

• vegetable oil
• 8 black peppercorns
• 6 cloves
• 3 green cardamom pods, lightly bruised with a rolling pin
• 2 dried chillies
• 4cm piece of cinnamon stick
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 100g tomatoes (about 1 large, or 2 small), finely chopped
• 1 tsp salt
• a thumb of ginger, finely grated
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1.5 tsp ground cumin
• 1.5 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 chicken, jointed into 8 pieces (get the butcher to do it!)
• 2 tsp jaggery, palm sugar, or brown sugar
• 150g dred apricots
• 3 tbsp white wine vinegar
• handful of fresh coriander, leaves torn off

Bruise the whole spices in a mortar and pestle and fry in a large casserole / Le Creuset for a minute until fragrant. Add the onion, turn the heat down, and fry for 10 min until softened and golden. Stir in the tomatoes, salt, ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander and turmeric, and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the chicken pieces to the pan and turn in the spce mixture, then add the sugar, apricots and vinegar.

(At this point, Stein suggests adding enough water to cover; if you do this, you will likely need to remove the cooked chicken and then vigorously boil down/reduce the sauce for ~10 minutes at the end, unless perhaps you remove the lid, but then the chicken may cook unevenly. I suggest instead adding 200ml of water, covering, and turning over the chicken pieces a few times until they are cooked, and leaving the lid off for the last 15 minutes of cook time.)

Bring to the boil, lower the heat, cover the pan and simmer for 30-40 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is reduced. Meanwhile, drain the potatoes, dry in a colander, and deep-fry at 180C for 2-3 minutes per batch until crisp and golden. Drain on kitchen paper and season with salt, then use to top to the finished curry, along with the coriander leaves.

Moroccan Braised Chicken

Back in Cambridge, we bought a second-hand copy of a One-Pot Cookbook which was really useful in the series of tiny kitchens where we prepared our meals. One of the standout recipes, which I always go back to, is probably incredibly inauthentic and doesn't even rate a photo in the cookbook (and you can probably see why, from mine). But it perfectly embodies the spirit of one-pot cooking. You literally only need a knife, a board, and a single large casserole dish to make this, and it will serve four or more (depending on the size of your chicken). Easy, no-fuss, and totally tasty.

Ingredients

• a ~1.6kg chicken (giblets removed, etc)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 large onion
• a thumb of root ginger
• 2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground paprika
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 725ml of chicken or vegetable stock (from powder is fine)
• 3 medium courgettes
• 1 medium red pepper
• 4 medium carrots
• a 340g tin of chickpeas
• 225g cous-cous
• 50g seedless raisins
• 30g pine nuts

Peel and finely chop the onion and ginger, then add to the large casserole and fry with the spices for a couple of minutes. Add the chicken and turn so it gets covered with the spices. Pour in the stock, salt, and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes. Dice all of the vegetables, then stir them in and simmer for a further 30 minutes, until the chicken is cooked. Mix in the chick peas and then pour in the cous-cous and raisins. (You can remove the chicken first, if you prefer -- it certainly makes serving easier.)  While the cous-cous absorbs the liquid, toast the pine nuts gently either in the hot oven or on a small frying pan. Serve the chicken and vegetables topped with the toasted pine nuts.

Buffalo Chicken, Blue Cheese Carrot Slaw and Corn Bread

When I was little, we used to have buffalo wings, but I was too young to really enjoy the spicy sauce. Now I've found out what I'm missing, and I will be making this again! I used this authentic recipe to coat a simply-grilled chicken breast, and served it with a couple of julienned carrots slathered in a blue cheese dressing, and some yummy cornbread (halving the sugar).

Chicken and Lemongrass Patties

Got home from Zumba and needed a fast, protein-rich meal. Whizzed a stalk of lemongrass and a handful of mint in the new blender and combined it with 500g of chicken mince, then formed the mix into small patties and bbq'd them for 3 minutes a side. Egg-fried some rice and topped the lot with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce and the juice of a lime. That's what I call fast food!

Sticky BBQ Chicken Wings

Another one from Nigel; I popped the jointed chicken wings and legs into a bowl and immediately covered with the marinade. Refrigerated, they were happy for four days, after which the marinade had completely permeated the chicken.

Ingredients:

• two chicken wings and two chicken legs, or roughly the same quantity of whatever chicken pieces you have to hand

For the marinade:

• 1 tsbp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 clove of garlic
• half a stalk of lemongrass
• 1 tsp sugar

For the dipping sauce:

• 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 3 tbsp white sugar
• half a thumb of ginger
• 1 chilli (optional)
• juice of a lime

Crush the garlic and finely slice the lemongrass, then mix together with the other marinade ingredients; cover the chicken pieces and refrigerate for 1-100 hours. For the dipping sauce, finely dice the chilli and grate the ginger into a very small saucepan, and add the other ingredients. Heat gently to dissolve the sugar, then take off the heat.

BBQ the chicken pieces for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through and crispy at the edges. Serve with the dipping sauce, over plain steamed rice with some stir-fried vegetables.

Baked Chicken with Tomatoes and Olives

We bought a whole chicken this week, which contributes to over half of the meals in the week: a hearty chicken stock for a perfect risotto, the bony wings and legs for some finger-licking marinaded bbq goodness, and the thighs and breasts for a big bbq'd tray of goodies which easily serves us for two nights. I went for a very calm carb to contrast the strong, acidic flavours: a handful of breadcrumbs fried in olive oil stirred through some tiny pasta, for a nice contrast in textures.

Ingredients:

• Two chicken breasts and thighs, or 500g of chicken pieces
• five large tomatoes
• a small lemon
• a generous handful of olives
• half a head of garlic

Cut the tomatoes into quarters and pit and halve the olives. Peel the garlic and crush lightly; halve if large. Pop the chicken, tomatoes, garlic and olives in a large roasting tray, squeeze over the juice of the lemon, and season with salt and pepper. Roast (~200C) or bbq (moderate) for 30-35 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the tomatoes are blackened at the edges.

Hot and Sour Chicken Broth

We spent most of the day playing board games with the Western Australian Boardgames Association, who have an ENORMOUS collection of games and loads of friendly people to play with. Learned three new games: a sailing/trading/collecting game a bit like Bohnanza, a game about trading and selling tea (my favourite! But maybe because I won :) and a game about defeating Cthulu using schoolgirl powers, like a British Buffy.

The upshot for dinner was that we didn't go shopping, and I had to use all my powers of improvisation on the remaining sad vegetables in the fridge to create a decent meal. Fortunately I had also used my power of foresight and left a chicken breast defrosting in the fridge, knowing I'd need some protein after morning Zumba.

Overall this worked pretty well, even the courgette (carefully not overcooked). Not a patch on fresh Chinese greens of course. The heart of cauliflower just needed using up; you could easily sub this for something more tasty, like some broccoli or sugar-snap peas.

Ingredients:

• a thumb of ginger
• a stick of lemongrass
• a handful of coriander stalks
• a couple of bay leaves
• 1 tsp vegetable stock powder
• a chilli (optional)
• juice of half a lemon
• a large carrot
• a heart of cauliflower
• a large courgette
• a chicken breast
• 2 x 75g bundles of dried egg noodles

Cut the ginger in half and slice perpendicular grooves into the flesh, to increase the surface area without breaking the ginger up into small pieces. Simmer with the lemongrass, coriander stalks, bay leaves, stock powder and chilli if using, in around 300ml water, for 20 minutes or until the stock is fragrant.

Meanwhile, peel and dice the carrot and cauliflower. Halve the courgette lengthwise and scoop out the soft seedy interior. Chuck, eat, or feed to the worms. Dice the remaining firm shell of courgette into the same size cubes.

Drain and reserve the stock, discarding the ginger etc. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Fry the carrot in a little vegetable oil, leaving it to sear just a tad. Add the stock and simmer for a couple of minutes. Finely shred or slice the chicken and add with the courgette, cauliflower and noodles. Bring back up to the boil and simmer for a minute or so, until the noodles are soft, the chicken is cooked through and the courgette is barely done. Top up with hot water if  the noodles have absorbed too much. Serve and drizzle over with very dark soy sauce.

Butter Chicken

When I visited India, we had one particularly amazing meal out at a rather fancy restaurant, where the meals cost a whole $10! A friend of mine ordered this and I remembered that it's often cited as the measure of an Indian restaurant; if the butter chicken is good, then everything else is probably good too. His was excellent. We've had a couple of chicken breasts in the freezer for a while and I've been intending to do 'something Indian' to them. Then at the Good Food and Wine show I picked up a really nice 'butter chicken' spice mix and all the pieces fell into place. I don't normally use spice mixes but I tried a bit with some bread and olive oil and it tasted so much like the real thing from India that I couldn't resist :)

I used this taste.com.au recipe for a starting point, although we dropped the amount of yoghurt since I was worried cooking it would make it separate, and we found the overall result bit too tomatoey, so this recipe has a reduced amount of puree. We couldn't bring ourselves to pour in the amount of cream they said to use, but feel free if you weren't using those arteries anyway! We served it with some plain rice and spicy & sour green beans: perfect counterpoint.

Ingredients:

• two large chicken breasts
• 2 tsbp yoghurt
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp garam masala, 1/2 tsp chilli flakes, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground cardamom, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 2 tsp of paprika (or 4 tbsp of butter chicken spice mix!)
• 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 125g cashews, roasted
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 Indian bay leaf or normal bay leaf
• 200g can tomato puree
• 150ml chicken stock
• 125ml double cream (double the quantity for extra richness)
• fresh coriander, to garnish

Slice the chicken breasts into bite-size pieces. Put in a bowl and toss with the yoghurt, lemon juice, spices, ginger and garlic; marinade overnight, or for a couple of hours if possible.

Blitz half of the cashews in a blender until well-ground. Gently fry the onion in a little oil, then add the chicken and toss about until the spices are fragrant. Tip in the ground cashews, tomato puree, bay leaf and stock, and simmer for fifteen minutes, until the chicken is cooked. Stir in the cream and warm through; serve over rice, topped with a handful of coriander leaves and the remaining toasted cashews.

Roast Chicken Drumsticks with Oranges

This is one of those super-convenient meals that you can just throw together with very little effort. It's also finger-lickingly sticky and messy and wonderful! We served the drumsticks with mashed potato and a few leaves of lettuce, but they'd be great with fresh bread or rice as well. Wings would also work - take ten minutes off the cooking time.

Ingredients:

• 4 plump chicken legs
• 2 large oranges
• a head of garlic
• olive oil
• black pepper

Set the oven to 185 C. Arrange the chicken legs in a large roasting dish, so they have some space between them. Slice the oranges into medium-sized wedges and nestle around the chicken. Put the garlic somewhere in the middle of the tray. Drizzle with olive oil and grate over black pepper; roast for thirty minutes, then flip the drumsticks and roast for a further 10-15, until the juices run clear.

Serving advice: get a spare plate for the bits, and plenty of napkins! Eat the orange wedges and chicken wings with your fingers, and squeeze out the sweet roasted garlic with your teeth or between your fingers. YUM.

Honey and Soy Chicken Drumsticks

Super-husband actually made this on Monday, but I was so zonked from gliding that I forgot to take a photo. Fortunately he made loads, so we had more cold tonight, with some corn bread slathered in mayonnaise and a quick salad made of roasted peppers, torn basil and olive oil. The chicken was simply skinned, marinaded in soy sauce and honey, with a tsp of chilli flakes for a couple of hours, then bbq'd for about 20 minutes until cooked through. For the last five minutes, baste on a little more honey and then sprinkle over sesame seeds. (Or if you are a very funny man, uncooked quinoa...!)

Chicken and Lemongrass Patties

It takes longer to type this than to actually cook it. We simply blended a chicken breast with the tenderest parts of a lemongrass stick and half a slice of bread, made small patties, lightly oiled and BBQ'd them for a few minutes a side. A dressing of the juice of a lime, a few tbsp of sweet chilli sauce and a dash of soy sauce gave a pleasing sweet-sourness to drizzle for the patties and a dressing for a herby salad, and we rested the patties on a bed of deep-fried rice vermicelli, which I have made a little video of since I love making it so much!

Rice Paper Rolls

I was amazed to find that I hadn't yet blogged this recipe, as it's become such a family favourite over the last few years. It's a meal best prepared by two or three people, as there are many stages that can be performed in parallel. After a couple of times making it, you'll find it takes less than an hour, and it's also a lot of fun!

Rice paper can be purchased in Asian grocery stores - usually one pack is enough for eight people, and costs only a few pounds / dollars. The rolls end up being about as long as half the diameter of the rice paper, so if you want small ones, buy small rice paper; large, buy large!

You can use whatever dipping sauce you like; I often use satay, but hoisin, plum or even just a little light soy sauce would all work perfectly. The filling ingredients can also be varied easily, and you don't need to make all of them the same. We often serve these rolls with hameul pajeon in a kind of Pan-Asian feast, but they work equally well with steamed rice or a light Asian-style salad, or just alone (and preferably, a bit smaller than shown here) as starters.

Instead of giving a guide to making an exact number of rolls (impossible!), I give examples of fillings, which you can use in equal volumes and just scale how much you cook depending on how many people you have. Don't feel like you need to include all of the ingredients, just pick the flavours you feel like using. The ones in the picture use carrot, cucumber, rice noodles, tonkatsu, mint and coriander.

Filling ingredients:

• fresh herbs: mint, coriander, basil
• cool crisp shredded vegetables: carrot, cucumber, lettuce
• protein: tonkatsu, cold shredded beef, crispy duck, cold lemon chicken, deep-fried marinaded tofu, fresh tofu, tamagoyaki (sweet Japanese omelette), cooked shitake mushrooms, cooked prawns
• carbs: cold rice, cold coconut rice, cold sweet rice, thick azuki bean paste, cooked rice noodles, fried rice noodles

You will also need:

• a stack of dry rice paper rounds
• hot water (boil a kettle and leave for at least 30 seconds)
• a frying pan, deep enough to take some hot water and wide enough to easily place in and remove the rice paper
• soft tongs, a wide slotted spatula, or asbestos fingers
• two large, clean, flat plates

Start by preparing all of your ingredients - wash and pick leaves from herbs, shred the vegetables, cook your protein and ready your carbs. It's helpful to arrange these in small bowls or plates around the work surface where you will be making the rolls. Prepare any dipping sauces ahead; chill if needed.

Pour hot water into your frying pan and place a single rice paper round in it. Leave for 30 seconds or so, until malleable, then remove using the tongs, spatula, or just your fingers. If it tears easily as you remove it, you have left it in too long, so discard and leave the next one in for less time. If it is not easily flexible and malleable, put it back in. If the water goes cold, discard it and refresh with new hot water. If you run out of water, top it up! It's really nice to have one person readying rice paper and one or two others filling the rolls.

Place the ready rice paper round on one of the plates and add your fillings. I found this beautiful guide to rolling them perfectly, so check it out if you're not sure how much to add or how to roll. When it's all rolled up, place on the other plate. If you need to wait before serving them, make sure to sprinkle them with water and cover with cling film, or cover with a very damp teatowel, so that they don't dry out. They will last several hours unserved, but if you refrigerate them over night, the rice paper has a tendency to stick to itself, so they may tear as you pull them apart. If you really needed to keep them and not let them tear, you could put cling film between each one, but it's a bit of a waste of plastic :) Just eat them and enjoy!

Quick Thai Coconut Chicken

A quick one after a long day at work, again based on a tasty pre-marinaded meat available at our local butcher's. I'm pretty sure it was just a couple of chicken thighs, deboned, marinaded in garlic, chilli, coriander leaf and ginger for 24 hours. I cut them into bite-sized pieces, fried in a hot wok, then covered in 100ml of coconut milk and the juice of a lime, bubbled through and served over egg-fried rice, with a slightly more generous amount of peas than usual to make up for the lack of vegetables.

Gnocchi and Peppers

... or capsicums, as I need to learn to say! This was just a quick modification of my usual pasta-and-peppers fallback, with a little shredded cooked chicken mixed in at the end for extra protein. And some wonderful grated Parmesan that makes me salivate just looking at it!

Peri-Peri Chicken and Sweet Potatoes

Tuesday - telecon day - and the lovely SO cooked again: he rubbed jointed chicken wings and thighs in spices and roasted with sweet potatoes for 40 minutes, then served on a bed of lettuce. A nice simple meal that admittedly, I'd have done slightly differently, but still lovely.

My advice would be to slice the sweet potatoes into long wedges, rather than cubes as shown here, so you can dip them in sour cream with your fingers, since you're going to be eating the chicken with your hands anyway. I also prefer to remove the skin from my chicken, and rub the spices directly onto the meat; since I don't eat the skin, that means I get to keep all the nice flavour. Also, we used a little spice rub from a new market we discovered, and while it was ok, it really needed a bit more saucy heft, so I think next time I'll whiz up a little peri-peri sauce to go with.

Pad Thai

Tuesdays I have an evening telecon, so the lovely husband takes over the reins in the kitchen. I find the best results are achieved by giving him a detailed recipe, and placing all of the ingredients out where he can find them. And giving him about twice as long as I would need ;) Tonight he absolutely excelled with this recipe, again from taste.com.au. Although we halved the proteins, this was still a generous quantity of food, and I took some to lunch the next day. So cut down on the noodles if you're not super-hungry.

Ingredients:

• 250g packet flat rice noodles
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 chicken breast, thinly sliced
• 250g prawns, peeled, deveined
• 3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally
• 1/2 inch of small red chilli (or more, to taste), deseeded, finely chopped
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, finely chopped, optional
• small bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• lime wedges, to serve

Place noodles into a heat-proof bowl and cover with hot water. Stand until nearly tender - you still want a little bite to them, so that they stand up under stir-frying. Drain and rinse under cold water.Combine lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar in a jug. Heat a wok over high heat, with a little oil. Add the chicken.and stir-fry for 2 minutes until golden. Add the prawns, onions and chilli, and stir-fry for a further 2 to 3 minutes or until the prawns turn pink. Add the part-cooked noodles and stir-fry for another 2 minutes.

Add the lemon juice mixture to wok and toss to combine. Pour the beaten eggs over the noodles and stir into the noodles as they cook. Turn off the heat, add the bean sprouts and half the coriander, and toss well to combine everything together. Serve on plates topped with the remaining coriander leaves, peanuts, and lime wedges.