Fusion Food - Curried Mango and Black bean Pizzarepa.

Ok, let me preface this post by saying I know this whole thing sounds weird. Even when I was putting this dish together in my mind, I wasn’t 100% sure it was going to work. But it does. The original idea was born out of two things; one, what weird random things are left in the fridge (remedied this weekend gone after a hugely successful visit to the farmer’s markets). And two, Lance making an offhand comment that he thought I would’ve made something a bit more interesting with a few of the mangoes from our tree, like a curry. This was after about a week of mango salsa and tacos. So in my mind I’m picking up and rejecting ingredients and flavours and just the general ‘idea’ of what to cook for dinner. And I came up with this. So a Mexican-Cuban-Indian-Italian pizza. Fusion food at it’s most-fused!

I somehow settled on wanting pizzas. But I didn’t have any pizza bases, or Lebanese breads with which to make them. So I immediately went to making my own. But a lot of recipes for pizza dough are yeast driven, and I didn’t want to wait for it to proof. When I thought of arepas. These are flat breads made out of cornflour the same kind as you use for tortillas. I also remembered the half tin of black beans I had in the fridge leftover from tacos a few nights earlier. Add a little mango, a little curry powder (I went the lazy route and used a pre-made curry powder blend – feel free to mix your own). A little cayenne for an extra kick, then grilled chicken, sliced mushrooms and some cheddar cheese. The black beans I used were actually pre-seasoned frijoles, so in the recipe I’ve just put salt to taste for if you use plain cooked black beans which are so much easier to come across in Perth. And the saltiness also depends on what is in your curry powder, if you use a pre-made mix.

This sauce made more than required for the pizzas.

Arepas
(makes 2 individual size pizzas)

1 cup corn flour (masa lista)
1 cup warm water
¼ tsp salt
oil to fry

Curried Mango and Black Bean Sauce

½ tin black beans

1 mango
3 tbs curry powder
¼ tsp ginger
½ tsp cayenne
¼ tsp turmeric
Salt to taste

Toppings

2 mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 chicken thigh, grilled, then sliced
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
Baby kale leaves, olive oil and lemon juice to serve

Mix all of the arepa ingredients together, knead until a smooth dough forms, the set aside for 15 minutes.

Mash the black beans and mango together in a bowl until completely combined, add the curry powder, extra ginger, cayenne and turmeric then check for seasoning. Salt if needed, or add more cayenne or spice if desired.

Preheat the oven to 180C

Heat a tbsp of oil in a frypan to medium-hot. Divide the arepa dough into two, and roll each into a ball. Place between two sheets of baking paper and roll out to form a disc just under 1cm thick.

Carefully place into the hot pan, cook for 2-3 minutes or until golden on that side. Flip over and sprinkle arepa with black pepper. Cook for a further 3 minutes or until golden.

Slide onto a lined baking tray and repeat for the second arepa.

Spoon and spread the curried mango and black bean sauce, then layer the ingredients and sprinkle cheese on top. Pop in the oven for 15 minutes or until cheese is golden and melted.

Serve topped with baby kale leaves, a drizzle of olive oil and a wedge of lemon for squeezing.

Using Leftovers - Ricotta and Chicken Stuffed Silverbeet

As often as we can, my husband and I try to drive “down south” to Molloy Island. It’s a little residential island in the Blackwood River in the Augusta/Margaret River area. It’s about a 4 hour drive from where I live, so to make it worth it, we’ll only go if it’s for a whole weekend. To make it even more worthwhile, we do what my husband calls the ‘gun down’. As soon as we get home from work on a Friday, we pack the car and ‘gun it down’ that night. We’ll stop for dinner on the way, then usually get to the island just before midnight, leaving us to wake up and have one whole day away. It’s a process that has served us very well. Sometimes it’ll be just the two of us, sometimes we take friends.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition and a joke that Lance will order dinner and then hum and har the entire time we eat it about whether or not to buy a whole BBQ chicken to take away, in case he gets hungry when he gets there. And anything he doesn’t eat can be used the next day. If we don’t have much planned the next day except lazing around the island, I usually let him buy one. If we’re going out for lunch/dinner then I try to talk him out of it – and invariably we’ll get to our house and he’ll be STARVING. But he’s taken this concept in to our everyday world. If we’re in the rare situation of needing to buy takeaway because it’s the only food available to us - he will inevitably steer us towards getting a whole BBQ chicken, so we can also have leftovers. Which is awesome for me. I shred the remainder of the bird and then use it for salads, or sandwiches or soups or tacos or whatever. It’s great having on hand for really quick meals.

We had such a circumstance recently, and after Lance had eaten the wings and a drumstick, the rest of the chicken I shredded, rolled into silverbeet I bought at a market on Sunday and baked with a basic tomato sauce. 10 minutes prep time, 20 minutes in the oven while I showered after the gym and a delicious meal waiting for me.

 
Ricotta and Chicken Stuffed Silverbeet

8 silverbeet (chard) stalks

2 cups shredded cooked chicken
4 small jalapenos (or to taste)
250g tub ricotta
500mL bottle passata
12 olives, pits removed and sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried parsley
1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 tsp smoked paprika
Olive oil

Dice the jalapenos really finely. Put the ricotta, shredded chicken and chillis into a bowl and mix really well to combine. Taste for seasoning. Mine didn’t need any as the chicken was already fairly seasoned.

Cut the stalks out of the silverbeet, then place about ¼ cup of the chicken mix at the top of the leaf. Fold the sides over, then roll up to create a parcel. Sort of like you would for a spring roll/rice paper roll. Place seam side down into a long rectangular casserole/lasagne dish. Continue with all of the mixture/leaves until all used up.

In a new bowl, mix the passata, garlic, olives and herbs. Pour over the top of the silverbeet parcels. Sprinkle the top with panko, then sprinkle the smoked paprika over the top of that. Drizzle with a little olive oil.

 

Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are golden.

 

Comfort Food - Avocado Soup

Have I told you about "The Nanna Shop" before? I'm not sure, but it's very likely as I shop there all the time. It's actually called Cannington Fresh Markets, but my nanna used to live just down the road from there. Growing up, my siblings and I used to walk with her down to The Nanna Shop to buy her a newspaper and us some lollies. It's changed a lot over the years, it used to have a butcher and bakery inside the store but now it's just the one big shop. It has lots of good fresh produce, imported sauces, tinned goods, continental fare, cheese and smallgoods. Usually, if a recipe calls for a slightly left-of-centre ingredient, my first port of call to try find it is The Nanna Shop. Funnily, now my husband and his sister, along with various friends and even my work receptionist now refer to it as The Nanna Shop as well!

The main reason I shop there frequently is for the fruit and veg. And one of the best things they have a buckets of produce at the back of the store. If you can use it, these bulk buy buckets are excellent value. Especially for those things that are a little on the expensive side normally, like mangoes, mushrooms and avocadoes. Usually the produce in the buckets are slightly smaller than what is normally sold in the per kilo section, but is still excellent quality. As summer approaches, I always head straight to the back first, hoping that mango season has started. It's one of my signals that summer is on it's way.

One thing I always buy there is bags of avocadoes. Always. I love avocadoes. Occasionally, I end up with too many and the two of us can't finish them before they've gone a little too soft. Which is where this soup came in. Creamy and subtle and oh-so-easy, this is a great vegetarian soup by itself, or as served here, awesome with the chipotle chicken as an extra kicker. Especially in this got-cold-again weather. And it would be remiss of me to not mention that crispy bacon would then make it a Vegetarian Recipe Improved By Bacon.

The wine in the last photo is from Darlington Estate. I highly recommend you eat there at some point. Awesome food.

Chipotle Chicken
2 chicken thighs
1/4 cup chipotle sauce
1 tbsp rice bran oil

Avocado Soup
adapted from here
1 tbsp rice bran oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
5 cups vegetable stock
3-4 small ripe avocadoes
2 stalks silverbeet, centre white bit removed and shredded.
Handful coriander leaves for garnish
2 jalapenos, sliced, for garnish

Pour the chipotle sauce over the chicken thighs and allow to marinade for 20 minutes or so. Heat the oil in a frypan, BBQ or grill and cook the thighs until done, about 5 minutes per side. Set aside, but keep warm.

Heat the second lot of oil in a pot over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Add the garlic and cook another few minutes until very fragrant.

Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low, add the silverbeet and simmer for 5 minutes. Take off the heat.

Add the avocado and blend the whole thing with a stick blender until smooth. Return to a low heat and simmer for 5 minutes, or until warmed through.

Slice chicken, then put in the bottom of the serving bowls and pour the soup over the top. Garnish with jalapenos and coriander.

Serve with corn chips, if desired.

One Pot Meals - Yummy Chicken with Squash, Quinoa and Popcorn

During the week, as much as I love a quick meal, I also love an easy to clean meal. Especially since our dishwasher died the other day. I used to hate the idea of dishwashers. I thought they were a pointless waste of time and money. When we bought our house, it had a dishwasher already and in the first year or so of living there, we only ever used it about 4 times. They were when we had a big dinner party that used pretty much our whole cupboard at once. I'm not sure why, but sometime after that first year, something changed and we started using it all the time. There's only the two of us, so generally it takes 4 days or so to fill - but it's awesome. A revelation. So much of my life was being wasted at the sink! And now it's broken, and folks, you can't go back. It's impossible. So I'll be spending the next few weekends shopping for a replacement. My husband scratched up his hands cleaning the gutters, so he currently can't help with the dishes - but he does massage my shoulders while I do. A fair compromise, I think!

Until the dishwasher is replaced, I'm leaning towards cooking everything outside on the BBQ, or making one pot/pan dishes. Like this one. The flavours for this were inspired by a dish my aunt makes that she calls something technical like yummy chicken sauce. It's basically a mixture of whole-seed mustard and peanut butter, that she puts in the pan as she cooks her chicken breasts. It is yummy, so it's well named. I've changed it up a bit to allow for the extra liquid required to cook the quinoa. And added the veges so it all cooks together in the one pan. I swapped peanut butter for cashews, used a different mustard and added maple syrup. So, it's not exactly 'yummy chicken', but it is yummy chicken. I only tell you all of these substitutions, because I remember her once offering me a slice of carrot and walnut cake. Only she didn't have carrot, so she used zucchini. And she didn't have walnuts, so she used pecans. But it was still a 'carrot and walnut cake'. So I think she'd be ok with my substitutions.

And, in a fit of pure craving-based inspiration, I topped it off with fresh plain popcorn. Did you know you can cook plain kernels in a plain paper bag in the microwave? Chuck 1/4 cup or so in, fold the top down a few times so it 'seals' then put it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Done. No oil, no nothing else required. Which is perfect for this dish, because you get all your flavours from the sauce, and it remains a one pot meal. The popcorn is not necessary, but totally worth it.

Yummy Chicken with Squash, Quinoa and Popcorn

2 tbsp rice bran oil
1 brown onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tsp dried thyme
4 chicken thigh fillets, cut into medium-ish strips
6 yellow squash, large diced (I cut each into 8 bits)
Half a zucchini, large diced
quarter of a cabbage, thinly sliced
2/3 cup cashews, roughly chopped
4 heaped teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/3 cup maple syrup
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup quinoa (I used black, but whatever you've got)
1 1/2 cups more water
parsley, finely chopped for garnish
1 cup popped plain popcorn

Heat the oil in a tagine or deep frypan with a lid. Add the onion and garlic, cook for a few minutes until translucent. Add the thyme and mix through the onion.

Add the chicken to the pan and brown on all sides, a few minutes per side. Add the vegetables and mix through.

In a jar with a tight fitting lid, add mustard, maple syrup, 1/2 cup of water and apple cider vinegar. Shake well to mix completely. Pour into pan. Rinse out with the extra 1 1/2 cups of water, pour into pan.

Add the quinoa and cashews, then mix it all through really well. Put the lid on and allow to cook for 15 minutes or so, until the quinoa is done. Check for seasoning. If it's still a bit liquidy, leave the lid off and reduce it down for a few minutes.

Serve with a sprinkling of parsley and a handful of the plain popcorn.

Instagrams of Yumness - Roast Chicken and Vegetable Buckwheat Pilaf

This is a weird combination of leftovers/cooked-for-another-dish/new meal that I made for dinner the other night. Confused? Haha! Me too, writing that! Let me explain. Earlier in the week, we had my in-laws around for dinner. For Christmas, they had given my husband a beer chicken frame - it's a ring thing that you put a can of beer in, and place the cavity of the chicken around it and then roast it in the BBQ. The beer steams through the chicken and subtly flavours it. It's quite delicious and seeing as we had a small chicken, my husband roasted it as a taster for them before the main meal. It's something he's planning on experimenting a lot with, I think ginger beer is next on the list! Currently his favourite way of doing it is by adding chillis and garlic into the beer. So anyway, I had about 1 cup's worth of beer-roasted chicken leftover, so that takes care of the "leftovers" part.

And that night, I was making people chocolate gifts for Easter, rather than buying them eggs. I decided on two items, Chocolate Salami and Whisky Marshmallow, Caramel Bacon Bark. I absolutely fell in love with the Chocolate Salami idea when I saw the pictures on my favourite food blog, Always Order Dessert. And the Bacon Bark, which as a vegetarian dish improved by bacon, shouldn't really need further explanation. I will do a post on both of these in the not-too-distant future. It being Easter very soon! But to make the Bacon Bark, I needed to cook bacon! So I left about a quarter cup of small diced bacon in the pan to help flavour this pilaf. So that's the "cooked-for-another-dish" portion.

Add newly roasted vegetables, and that sort of explains what I meant. But after tempering more chocolate than I've eaten all year, toasting nuts, making caramel, burning caramel, making more caramel, melting marshmallow and crushing biscuits, this hearty yet light pilaf was a delightful dinner. And it all comes together with very minimal 'active' cooking time. In fact, I was calling it a 'risotto' until I realised I didn't do the constant stir, add stock, stir that comes with real risotto cooking.

Roast Chicken and Vegetable Buckwheat "Pilaf"
1 cup cooked, shredded chicken
1/4 cup finely diced bacon bits
punnet of cherry tomatoes
kernels of 3 corn cobs
1 small zucchini, diced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
splash of apple cider vinegar (or white wine)
1 cup buckwheat
2 cups water (or stock)
pecorino to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Toss the cherry tomatoes, zucchini and corn kernels in a splash of olive oil. Add the garlic slices and roast in a moderate oven for around 30 minutes. Until zucchini and tomatoes are soft and squishy and corn is golden and cooked.

Meanwhile, fry the bacon bits in a high sided saute pan or put until crispy. Add the buckwheat and stiry around to coat in the bacon fat. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar and stir the buckwheat around in it until it's evaporated. Add the water (or stock), put the lid on and cook for half an hour or so until very almost cooked. Stir through the shredded chicken and cook for an extra 5 minutes or so until warmed. Check for seasoning.

Serve with shaved pecorino, and a fresh crack of pepper.

Cheat's Nando's Paella/Spanish Rice

I’m sort of on a health kick lately. Well, by ‘lately’, I mean the last 12 months or so. Nothing too strenuous, I just aim to eat well the majority of the time, and exercise a few times a week. You don’t want to overdo these things. The eating well part can be difficult with such a busy schedule. Some nights I don’t get home til around 8:00pm and by that stage, the last thing I can be bothered doing is cooking a laborious dinner. I do, however, still want it to be relatively healthy and wholesome. What’s the point of killing myself at the gym if I come home and fill my body up with rubbish? I want a dish that is both nourishing and delicious. And after not too long of being ‘healthy’, getting takeaway to make life easier no longer feels like a ‘treat’ because your body rebels against the extra fat and salt that it’s not used to. True story.

 

On nights like this, I have a few good go-to dishes, but my current favourite is this cheat’s Nando's Paella, which in itself isn't a true paella, but more a spicy Spanish Rice served with their chicken. My mother-in-law gives us a box of spices and sauces as part of our Christmas present every year, and it always has a couple of the Nando’s ones, so it’s more ‘authentically’  Nando’s paella than it otherwise would be. I add extra vegetables just to amp up our intake, these change depending on what I have in the house at the time. The best part of this dish is that it has so little active cooking time. I chuck the rice in the microwave while I go have a shower, come back and cook/assemble in around 10 minutes.

 

 

 

Cheat's Nando's Paella/Spanish Rice

Serves 4

Two scallions

Two cloves of garlic

One green chilli

Zest/juice lemon

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp smoked paprika (heaped)

1 tsp dried thyme

¼ tsp cumin seeds

a few coriander seeds

3 chicken thighs, diced

1 capsicum/paprika

Half a punnet of cherry/grape tomatoes

Quarter head broccoli

Half cup frozen corn kernels

Half cup frozen peas

Nando’s sauces of choice

One cup rice of choice – here I used a pre-mixed product called “Rice Plus” which has brown rice, black rice, quinoa, sesame seeds, barley and quinoa. The black rice is what's turned it purple!

Fresh coriander/flatleaf parsley and a lemon wedge to serve.

Cook rice according to your preference – for me, I put 2 ½ cups water to 1 cup rice, then microwave for 22 minutes.

Fry scallions, garlic and chilli in a small amount of olive oil over a medium heat until soft and browning slightly.

Add lemon juice, zest, stir around well.

Throw diced chicken breasts into the pan and stir around to start browning, add the spices and mix well to coat the chicken.

 

 

Add your chosen vegetables, cut into small dice and stir around. Personally, I think the capsicum/paprika and tomato are almost non-negotiable. Everything else is. I also love this with lentils.

 

Cook for a few minutes until the vegetables have softened, then add the cooked rice and mix well to coat the rice with all the delicious spices and juices.

 

Serve with some the coriander/parsley, a lemon wedge and a big ol’ swirl of your favourite Nando’s sauce. I use a combination of the Lime Sweet Chilli and the “Hot” Peri Peri.
 

This would also be improved with bacon. Just saying.