Apricot & Ginger Chicken Nibbles

Do you fancy some sticky sweet finger licking chicken.  Give this a try.

Ingredients:

Chicken nibbles – small bits of chicken from the store

For the marinade:

Apricot & Ginger Jam (or apricot jam plus ginger)

Worcestershire Sauce

Mustard

Garlic Oil

Lemon juice

Pepper

Salt/Fish sauce

½ tsp chilli

Method:

Just mix the marinade ingredients together and then mix the chicken in well and let it sit in the fridge for at least one hour.

Crank your oven up as hot as you like.  Put the chicken nibbles onto baking paper in an oven tray – in a single layer.  Brush the remaining marinade over the chicken.

Roast for 10 – 15 minutes – how long this will take will depend on how cold the chicken is.  The juices should run clear and the glaze on the chicken should be a lovely colour.

Eat with your fingers!

This resulted in a quite sweet flavour – adjust the balance of salt, acidity and sweetness to please your palate. 

Marinated Mushrooms – Give them a Go!

For a change up, I did some simple marinated mushrooms. 

I used white button mushrooms.  If they had been small ones I would have left them whole.  I quartered mine and took out their stalks.  No washing of them – mushrooms need to be brushed or wiped clean rather than washed.  The commercial ones you buy are almost spotless anyway.

Then put your mushrooms into a small saucepan along with:

1 chopped tomato – I didn't take the skin off through laziness but I did cut out the hard bit where the stalk was.

1/3 of a red chilli finely diced – I left the seeds in but you could leave them out or omit the chilli altogether

2 cloves of garlic – grated on a microplane – watch your fingers – they won't add to the marinade!

Zest of a lemon

Juice of ½ a lemon

¼ cup of olive oil

Bring all this lot to the boil, cover the pot and turn it down to a simmer for 15 minutes.

Pour it all into a clean jar and store it in the fridge.  Serve it at room temperature.  It's better left for a day or 2 before eating.

Simple Teriyaki Chicken

Today's dish is not complicated.  A simple chicken dish using a store bought sauce.

Marinade Ingredients:

Teriyaki Marinade (store bought)

Ginger – cut into batons

½ tsp chilli bean paste (or other touch of chilli)

Salt

The protein I used was chicken thighs.  So you need to do this in the morning – or even the night before.  Cut up your chicken thighs into bite sized pieces and stir them through your marinade (which is just 4 ingredients stirred together).  Leave them sitting covered in the fridge for as long as you can.  I left mine about 6 hours.

Then just fry the chicken off in a hot pan – the remains of the marinade will form the sauce.  I chose to garnish with sesame seeds and chives – and was being a bit poncy by serving it on some cabbage leaves.

Lamb Fillets Marinated in Yoghurt for a Long Time – and My Blog Of The Month

I marinaded these lamb fillets for a much longer time than I have ever tried before – for 2 days in total.  And I found that it is indeed true that the lamb becomes tenderer and cooks more quickly.

The marinade:

Greek yoghurt – one small pottle

Cumin – a pinch

Coriander seeds

Garlic oil

Lemon peel

Small sprig of fresh young rosemary

A small amount of chopped fresh mint

Salt and pepper

When ready to cook, I let the lamb come up to room temperature and then seared it quickly in a hot pan before finishing it off for a few minutes in the oven.  Easy peasy.

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm instituting a blog of the month as I go into my 5^th year of blogging.  The inaugural blog of the month is The Midnight Baker. Judy is a retired mechanical engineer who is now a cookbook writer and photographer.  Her food looks, and is, spectacular.  I suggest you check her blog out.  If you don't have time right now, you'll find My Blog of the Month over in the sidebar for you to click through later in the month.

Pork and Sage

My better half brought home some nice pork chops and I was pondering how to cook them when I remembered that I recently discovered that we have sage in the garden.  No, I'm not losing my mind, I think, but since our move I keep noticing new things.

So anyway I decided to do a pork and sage recipe.

Ingredients:

Pork chops

A fistful of sage leaves

Olive oil

Lemon juice (about 2 tablespoons – also from my garden)

Butter

First you put your pork into a ceramic or glass dish (not metal).  Make a marinade using 1/3 of your sage finely chopped, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.  Whisk it together and pour it over your pork and leave to marinade for at least an hour.

When your hour or so is up, take the pork out of the marinade – but don't throw the marinade out – you'll need it later.

Fry the pork till tender.  Put the pork onto a plate and cover it with foil.  Then in the pan you were using (without cleaning it at all) put the marinade and the sage leaves and fry until the sage is crisp.  I added a bit of butter while it was frying.  The sage started to crinkle a bit but I wasn't brave enough to let it burn, so it wasn't really crisp.

The sage went well with the pork.  A delicate combo rather than a punch in the face.