Pot Roasted Chicken With Garlic and Rosemary - Manu's Chicken

I'm an avid watcher of reality TV cooking programmes - currently My Kitchen Rules where Manu Feildel is one of the judges. His catch cry is 'it need more sauce' and I have to agree! I love really rich sauces with dishes.

This recipe looked pretty easy and perfect for a cold winter evening.
I loved the sauce (...and the rest of the dish). It was really intense and garlicky.
I served it with smashed potatoes - also really garlicky!






Pot Roasted Chicken With Garlic and Rosemary - Manu's Chicken

Ingredients
1 tablespoon plain flour
2 teaspoons of sweet paprika
4 chicken marylands (leg and thigh portion)
1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
12 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
4 sprigs of rosemary
1/2 cup of white wine
1 1/2 cups of chicken stock
50 grams of butter
roast potatoes to serve

Mix together
flour and paprika with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, then coat the chicken.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
Heat an enamelled cast iron casserole dish over a med-high heat then add the olive oil. Fry the chicken, skin side down, for about 4-5 minutes or until golden brown, then turn and cook for another 4-5 minutes till golden brown.
Add the garlic, rosemary and wine, bring to the boil, then transfer to the oven to cook for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through..
Transfer to the chicken , garlic and rosemary to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm.
Place the casserole over a high heat and simmer the sauce for about 7 minutes or until reduced by half to a sauce consistency.
Whisk in the butter, then taste and season if desired.
Serve the chicken with the sauce, peeled garlic cloves and roast potatoes.

Garlic Pizza Bread

I had some pizza dough left over from making pizzas with two little ladies this week and couldn't quite bring myself to throw it out. I rolled it out - like I would for pizza, wrapped it in glad wrap and left it over night.
The next day I had a shared lunch and took the dough along.
I brushed olive oil with garlic and smoked garlic salt liberally over it, sprinkled it with herbs from the garden (thyme, oregano and rosemary) and a small amount of grated mozzarella  and baked it in a really hot oven.
The cooked bread was fantastic and disappeared really quickly.
I've since made this a few times and am looking forward to our next big group as it will be an easy starter for large numbers.

Slow Cooker Whole Lemon Chicken

I've seen loads of whole chicken recipes for slow cookers and have always been a dubious. After all part of the attraction of a whole roasted chicken is the browned crispy skin.

I decided to give one a go this weekend and found the results really good. No the skin was not crispy and brown, but the meat was really succulent and the lemon used to cook with gave it a really nice flavour.

As usual my 'slow cooker' was too fast! When the recipe said X hours, I reduced it to about 4 and it possibly could have had a little less.

This would be a good recipe for cooking chicken that will be used cold for lunches or salads. We had it hot with gravy which was nice too although I took the skin off mine because it was too pale looking.

I also added potatoes and jerusalem artichokes to the slow cooker to make sure I had most of the meal cooked at once.

Slow Cooker Lemon Garlic Chicken

Ingredients

• 4 lemons
• 2-3 heads of garlic
• 1 whole chicken 
• Fresh rosemary, or any fresh herbs
• All-purpose steak seasoning or salt and pepper (I used smoked garlic salt)

Instructions

1. Cut garlic heads and lemons in half and lay in bottom of slow cooker.
2. Cut the bottoms off the lemons so they lay flat.
3. Add a sprig of rosemary, or any herbs.
4. Remove insides from chicken, rinse chicken and pat dry.
5. Season chicken well, inside and out, with all-purpose steak seasoning or salt and pepper.
6. Lay chicken on top of garlic and lemon slices and stuff the chicken with a garlic head cut in half, and a lemon cut in quarters.
7. Cover top of chicken with additional lemon slices and rosemary.
8. Turn slow cooker to high, and cook for about 4 hours, or until chicken reaches 165 degrees.
9. Slow cooker cooking times vary.
10. Important: Use a meat thermometer to check for doneness.
11. When chicken has reached 165, turn off slow cooker and let chicken rest for about 15 minutes.
12. Remove from slow cooker, carve and serve.
13. Liquid from slow cooker can be strained and served over chicken.

Cheese and Garlic Scrolls

These were a bit of an experiment but they disappeared from the lunch table really quickly.

I used my basic bread recipe in the bread maker.

I rolled the mixture out in a large rectangle until it was quite thin, then sprinkled a lot of crushed garlic and grated edam cheese over the rectangle.

I then rolled it up into a scroll, sliced each piece off and laid it on baking paper to cook. They cooked for about 15 minutes.

Honey and Garlic Chicken - Slow Cooker

Slow Cooker meals really appeal to me and this one even more than usual because it was so easy. I think this would also make a good 'freezer meal' too.
It took less than 5 minutes to put together and ended up cooking a lot faster than the recipe suggested but that seems to be the case with my slow cooker.








Honey and Garlic Chicken - Slow Cooker

The Ingredients.

serves 4

1 1/2 to 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs (4 or one thigh per family member)
3 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped (I used my microplane)
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 cup  soy sauce 
1/2 cup ketchup (tomato sauce)
1/3 cup honey


The Directions.
Check after 3 hours on high, 5 hours on low
Put the chicken into your cooker. In a small bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients, then pour evenly over the top.
Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3-4 (I'd go with low---). It was probably more like 2-3 hours on Low for me.
Serve with basmati rice and steamed or roasted vegetables.  I served it with couscous

Baba Ganoush - recipe

When we were in Sydney recently we ate at the  Union Hotel where my brothers friend is the chef. The baba ganoush that was part of the impressive starter selection was fantastic. It had a really smokey flavour. Greg (brother) asked for me how it was made. It seems the two secrets were charing the egg plants on a BBQ and roasting a head of garlic (top off with olive oil poured over) wrapped in tin foil in the oven until it is totally soft.
I prepared the egg plants last night while I had rotisserie chicken cooking and the garlic was cooked with our feijoa crumble dessert.

I always have tahini in the fridge (and chickpeas in her pantry) as a quick stand by ingredient for Hummus. It is a paste made from ground roasted sesame seeds. In my supermarket it is in the organic/whole foods section in a jar.

Babaganoush

For about 1 1/2 cups: 
2 medium eggplants
1/2 a head of garlic, roasted in oven
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
about 1/2 teaspoon salt

Char eggplant on BBQ until black all over.
Once the eggplant is cool enough to handle, place on a chopping board, cut in half and scrape the flesh out of the skin. 
Cur top off garlic head and drizzle with olive oil. Roast in tin foil in oven until head is soft. 
Place the egg plant flesh and garlic squeezed from head in a food processor fitted with the metal chopping blade, add the lemon juice and tahini and process until smooth.

With the motor running, drizzle in the olive oil and add the salt. Stop the processor, taste the mixture and a little more salt if required.

Serve immediately, or transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate for up to a week.

Chicken pan poached in white wine - recipe

This dish is one that I used to cook a lot but for some reason have not made for a long time. I really don't know why as tonight's version was fantastic and enthusiastically consumed by everyone!
I originally found this in the 'Quick Smart ' section of a Cuisine magazine  at least 5 years ago. It was a Ray McVinnie recipe (before he became well known as a NZ Master Chef judge!). I've always like his recipes. They are usually good quality food cooked simply....my kind of cooking. This is one of those recipes that I really need in my online recipe book that is my blog.




Chicken Poached in White Wine
Split a chicken (my preference is always organic if possible) down the backbone, flatten and place cut side down in a large frying pan.
Add some olive oil, a few cloves of garlic, fresh thyme (or rosemary), a quartered lemon, salt and pepper and a cup (or more) of white wine.
Place on moderate heat  and bring to the boil.
Cover tightly and turn heat down. Cook for an hour without opening the lid until chicken is tender.
Uncover, remove chicken and put on warm platter.
Discard lemon and herbs.

Add a cup of chicken stock and boil until syrupy then pour over chicken served on cous cous or rice. (I often thicken with four and water to speed this up)