Roast Chicken with Chestnut Stuffing - Recipe

A roast chicken is usually a weekend meal since no one gets home early enough to start it cooking in time for our early dinner time. Today I spent the day at home with a sick little person, so had the perfect opportunity to cook a roast chicken and also to use the last of the chestnuts from a previous week's Ooooby box as part of the stuffing.

The original stuffing recipe I used had chicken livers in it - not at all appealing to me, so in my usual fashion I have modified this recipe to suit us.

The stuffing is great, really nutty flavoured. If you like it quite solid and able to be sliced add an egg to the mixture in the food processor.

Chestnut Stuffing Recipe

3 Tbs butter

1 onion , finely chopped

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

4-6 slices of bread (I used Vogels or sour dough)

200g chestnuts, roughly chopped

1 Tbs fresh thyme

Handful parsley

zest from a lemon

Melt butter and fry onion and garlic till soft without browning.

Bread, chestnuts, parsley, thyme into food processor, pulse until combined and roughly chopped into pieces about the size of lentils. Add the onion and garlic and pulse to combine.

Stuff inside cavity of chicken and roast.

Now that it is recorded within this blog I can finally throw out the screwed up scrap of paper this recipe was on!

Oooby Box - My excitement for a Monday

Every Monday an Oooby Box of about a dozen different fruits and vegies gets delivered to our front door. I get an email a few days before telling me what will be in it. The idea is the food is sourced as locally as possible - it cuts down on the carbon foot print and it is organic or has had minimal sprays in the growing process.

Some weeks (like this week) the contents are pretty standard fruits and vegies that you would get at the supermarket. Other weeks there are things in it that I have never cooked with before...Daikon Radishes were an example recently, chestnuts were another (I made a yummy chicken stuffing and also caramelised some).

I really like the concept and the challenge of trying new things. I do have to admit that there have been a couple of things that I haven't been up to the challenge of cooking...cavolo nero and chokos...but they feed our worm farm and compost so I guess I can live with that.

Oooby (http://ooooby.ning.com/) have a road side stall in operation in Grey Lynn where you can take any surplus from your garden to sell. Maybe one day I'll have enough of something to do that?

More to Japanese Food than Sushi - Daikon Radish Salad Recipe

This week's Oooby Box contained a few challenges...one was Daikon Radishes. The whole appeal of getting a box of fruit and veges delivered is forcing me to experiment with new things rather than sticking to the tried and true.

This salad was amazing. Incredibly easy, a real Japanese flavour and I'm sure incredibly healthy too. It's just a shame I didn't have more family here to appreciate it.

Ok the photo is from the internet...the finished product wasn't hugely attractive.

Daikon salad with Wasabi dressing – serves 8

2-3 cups grated daikon (peeled)

2 cups grated carrot

1 pear, peeled and grated

1 Avocado, peeled, destoned and diced

Dressing

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

½- 1 teaspoon Wasabi paste

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon rice vinegar (or white vinegar)

1 teaspoon sesame oil

3 tablespoons rice bran or vegetable oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Place grated daikon in a sieve and sprinkle over a teaspoon of salt. Stand for 30

minutes then squeeze out any excess liquid. Place in a bowl with the remaining

salad ingredients.

Mix all the dressing ingredients together and toss through the salad just before

serving.