Diet Food:Chicken Poached in Orange with an Asian Twist

I’m not one for sensible eating which is obvious from my size. I can’t bear the thought I would have to miss out on every fabulous bit of food this planet has to offer.
Of course like everyone else I have been on most of the weight reducing programmes.
My favourite which a couple of friends attempted was the wine and egg diet, it was very funny, 1 glass of wine and 1 egg at breakfast…2 of wine and 2 eggs at lunch…3 eggs and the rest of the wine at dinner...This was a 3 day programme. I don’t know who designed this diet or why they did but my friends thought it sounded fun. The outcome was a small loss of weight but a lot of hilarity was had during the day. Don’t think they did a further 3 days, that breakfast drink was too hard to handle. Of course in those days you ‘could’ drink and drive!!! And think of your poor liver!!!

Anyhow enough rambling, this recipe off Food TV falls into sensible eating and is delicious to boot. The recipe called for chicken breasts but personally, I really like chicken thighs…so moist and tender.

2 chicken breasts/thighs
2 cups of chicken stock
Juice of 2 oranges
Zest of 1 orange
3 star anise
Fresh ginger finely sliced
Salt & pepper

Baby Bok Choy cut in quarter
3 spring onions cut in half horizontally
Snow peas cut in half

Steamed rice to absorb all the beautiful juices.

Bring the stock and orange juice to the boil add the ginger, zest and star anise place the chicken in and cover, turn heat down and simmer for about 10 minutes, take out a few ladlefuls of the juice into a pot and reduce down, put to one side in the covered pan while you fix the vege.

Blanch the vege in boiling salted water for about 2 minutes drain.

To plate
First the rice, the chicken and the vege, then the sauce.

This is really superb, talk about low cal!

An Elvis Inspired Coffee Cake

If you want rich and fattening, this is it…great for a crowd.
A little goes a long way. Thank you Paula Dean.
Her Elvis addition to this American Gooey Butter Cake Classic of course is the peanut butter and banana. (By the way his famous banana and peanut butter, fried in butter, sandwiches are superb). Sounds gross but trust me.

This is really easy and I guarantee it will be a hit




You will need
The Base
1 pkt Chocolate cake mix
1 egg
125 gms butter melted

Combine all ingredients and beat well. Press the mixture evenly with your fingers into a swiss roll tin.

The Filling
250 gms cream cheese room tempertaure
3 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
½ cup of smooth peanut butter
1 whole ripe banana
125 gms butter room temperature
400 gms icing sugar
Mint leaves (optional)
Crème Fraiche (optional


I know this sounds a lot of sugar and fat but believe me combined it is great…just forget the calories on this occasion.

Beat the cream cheese until smooth, keep on beating and add eggs 1 at a time then the vanilla and the peanut butter, and then the banana and butter, then mix in the icing sugar till all combined. Pour over base.
Bake in 180° oven 45-50 minutes. Look at it after 40 mins check with knife to see if it comes clean…you want the centre to be gooey so don’t over bake. Cool in tin
Cut into squares dust with extra icing sugar and garnish with sprig of mint.

A little dob of crème fraiche just tops it off.

Poached Eye Filet with leeks and a Kumara Mash

Wow this is superb such a simple dish with sensational taste.
I saw this on Huey’s Cooking Adventures, it looked so easy so I had to try and
the eaters at our house adored it!!! It looks like a lot of work but trust me it is easy.
Apologies for the photo, the drizzling of the sauce got a little out of control, please don’t let this distract you from trying this recipe.
As long as you use Gluten free stock, this is fine for your Coeliacs, just check the packet or use homemade.



Best to go to your butcher and get him to cut 1 filet steak (about 4 cms thick per person).

For 3 people I used the following amounts of vege

2 med kumara sliced, boiled with a clove of garlic, till tender, drained and mashed with a big knob of butter

2 leeks To prepare the leeks…cut off green tops remove the tough leaves and finely slice the tender core, then slice the whites. Don't forget to rinse them well they can get dirt amongst the layers.

1 tbs Butter
1 tbs olive oil
Sea Salt
Ground black pepper
Water
Heat the fats and add the leeks, sauté gently for about
4 minutes, season S & P, then add about 50 mls of water...stir, cover and simmer about 4-5 minutes until tender
but still beautifully green. Set aside.

The Sauce
1 cup of beef or chicken stock (same as you used for the beef)
4 tsp Dijon mustard
4 tbs passata or pureed canned tomatoes
Ground black pepper

Whisk the mustard and passata with the stock and bring to the boil, turn down the heat a little and reduce down till the sauce thickens…then season with pepper and taste to check whether or not you need to add salt. Put aside. Re-heat when needed.
(You will have leftover tomatoes and stock but to use them up,just make a soup of them using the poaching stock from the meat…I also had some leftover
leeks which I also threw into my soup.)

Now the meat this is so so simple
Filet steak 1 per person
Beef Stock or chicken the packet stock is just fine for this
Sea salt, ground black pepper
2 tbs parsley finely chopped

Into a large shallow pan pour about 3 cms of stock and bring to the boil...place your steaks in the hot stock making sure they are not touching, reduce to simmer, cover and cook gently for 7 minutes, take off heat and leave covered for another 5 minutes. Turn over in stock, remove...then season with salt & pepper.

To plate
A nice little mound of mashed kumara, a good big spoonful of leeks. Your beautiful piece of eye filet, some sauce and a sprinkling of chopped parsley will finish it off.
Divine!!!

Garlic, Oyster and Mushroom Flan

We all love Bluff oysters they are supreme, and served with a little balsamic vinegar, black pepper, a little triangle of fresh Vogels bread...wow…you can’t get much better than that. Maybe a drop or two of Tabasco sauce for an extra zing. Don't waste these on this dish.

Of course there are lots of other oysters and particularly the Pacific oyster (which I personally find very soapy and bit slimy) but it works really well in chowders, and is great for this little flan. The price is very appealing as well.
Cook Like a Chef (which is a wonderful programme out of Canada, teaches all sorts of chefie techniques to us home cooks) featured this flan. I tried it out and it was delicious, very delicate and really simple to make. A nice little lunch or a starter for dinner.

The recipe called for oyster mushrooms but my greengrocer didn’t have any on that day so I substituted little white cap mushrooms.

So take
25 gms butter
100 gms mushrooms finely sliced

8 cloves of garlic boiled about 5 minutes and pureed with a knife
½ doz oysters in shell with juice (pacific or rock)
1 cup milk
½ cup cream
2 eggs
2 tablespoons chives chopped
Sea salt & ground pepper

First sauté the mushrooms in the butter till soft but not browned and cool a little.
Then into your food processor add mushrooms, garlic puree, milk, cream, eggs, oysters, chives and whiz till fairly smooth a little texture doesn’t hurt. Season with salt & pepper.

This should make 6 x 100 ml ramekins. Butter the ramekins, divide the mixture between them and prepare a bain marie (i.e. a roasting dish with some newspaper on the bottom to stop the dishes moving around)
Place the flans in the bain marie, take it to the oven and pour in boiling water to come halfway up the little dishes.
Bake 165-170◦ about 30 minutes.
To test for doneness, wiggle a ramekin around. It should be wobbly like a jelly, but not soupy. When the custard in the ramekin moves as one mass rather than as a cup of liquid cream, it's ready. If a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, then the custard is probably overcooked. If this happens, remove the ramekins immediately from the water bath and plunge them into ice water to bring the temperature down and stop the cooking.

Cool and turn out onto dish garnish with sprig of parsley and serve with some fresh bread. So smooth...and tasty.

Chili and Cheese Bread

Because of the advent of fabulous bread shops most people don’t bother to
make bread or they have bread machines which are great, but this
Chili and Cheese bread that I saw Iain Hewitson of “Huey’s Cooking Adventure”
make is so simple and definitely delicious.
The dough is very wet and little messy to handle but I guarantee it works.
The wet dough technique also works exceptional well for pizza dough
and Foccacio bread which I will post on another day

400 mls hand hot water you may not need the full 400
15 gms packet yeast these come in 8 gms packets

Sprinkle the yeast over the water stir and leave to prove 5-10 minutes.

This gives you time to assemble the other ingredients.

500 gms plain hi-grade flour sifted
4 little or 2 med chilies de-seeded and finely chopped
1 spring onion cleaned and finely chopped
240 gms grated tasty cheese buy ready grated for this recipe its easier
2 tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
1 tbs Sambal Olek optional for those with more tender mouths
1 tbs olive oil

1 loaf tin

Egg wash
1 egg beaten with 2 tbs of milk

Place the flour in a large bowl if using stainless steel warm the bowl first…
yeast likes a bit of warmth.
Add all the other ingredients mix with your hand then pour in the yeast mixture
Stir first with a wooden spoon till the liquid is blended in
don’t add it all…try about 300 -350mls first to get it to a nice wet dough,
then start to knead with your hand in the bowl, you may need to add a
little more flour so that you can handle it.
When you have a nice ball (shouldn’t take more than a 1-2 minutes) cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise till double its size (pictured below)
This will take about an hour depending on the air temperature.



Then collapse the dough into the bowl and drop onto a floured bench.
Knead for about 1-2 minutes adding a little more flour if it is too hard to handle.

Shape into loaf shape and push into a greased loaf tin
Leave to rise lightly covered probably best with a clean cloth
until doubled in size again.

Brush with egg wash and into hot oven 190◦
for 30 - 40 minutes till golden.

Turn out from tin tap…the bottom; if it sounds hollow it’s done,
if not back in oven for another few minutes.

Voila!!! This is crowd pleaser.