Roast Chicken with Lemon, Thyme, Garlic & Smashed Potatoes

Sometimes I crave a good hearty roast. I like them because they are easy to do and I never really follow recipes to prepare a roast. I did last night though. It was different from our usual roasts but oh so yummy... And yes, it is another Karen Martini recipe - I sure am getting my monies worth out of her cookbook!!

*Taken from Karen Martini's 'Where The Heart Is'*

Ingredients

8 medium Desiree potatoes

1 x 1.3 to 1.6 kg free-range chicken

60g butter, chopped

8 sprigs thyme, crushed

salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

200ml extra virgin olive oil (I didn't use that much!)

1 lemon, halved

3 bulbs garlic, unpeeled and separated into cloves

1 brown onion, sliced into thick rings

1/2 cup (125 ml) water

green salad to serve

Method

Place unpeeled potatoes in a large saucepan of lightly salted water over medium heat. Bring to the boil, then cook for 25 minutes or until tender. Drain.

Preheat oven to 240C. Gently separate skin from the chicken breasts. Slide knobs of butter and half the thyme under the skin. Rub chicken with salt and pepper. Pour half the oil over the chicken. Squeeze half a lemon over chicken then place squeezed lemon inside cavity. Use the back of a large knife to lightly crush about a quarter of the garlic, then place crushed garlic in cavity. Scatter onion rings over the base of a baking dish and place the chicken on top. Slice remaining lemon half. Scatter lemon and remaining garlic around the chicken. Sprinkle the remaining thyme over chicken and into cavity.

Gently press potatoes with a potato masher until skins burst and they are about 2 cm thick. Place around chicken in baking dish, drizzle with remaining olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Pour water into baking pan. Roast chicken for 1 hour or until the juices run clear when flesh is pierced with a skewer. Remove from oven and set aside to rest for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Carve the chicken, drizzle with the pan juices and serve with roast potatoes and garlic and a dressed green salad.

Serves 4

Michael's Baked Cannellini Beans with Chirizo, Egg & Fetta

This is a lovely fragrant dish and is apparently a very good hangover fix! Considering once how much I hated cannellini beans, they really add to this delicious dish. It is easy to make and would actually make a delicious topping to some pasta. I will add though, for future reference, that Monet said, "don't like it".

(I actually halved this recipe and cooked it in 2 individual clay pot dishes I own, so we each sat on the couch with our own dish and indulged...)

*Taken from Karen Martini's 'Where The Heart Is'*

Ingredients

Olive oil, for cooking

8cm spicy chorizo sausage, diced

3 golden shallots, finely sliced

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

4 sprigs oregano, torn

1 bay leaf

2 x 400g cans cannellini, drained and rinsed

1/3 cup (80 ml) red-wine vinegar

4 tbs tomato paste

1 x 400g can crushed tomatoes

salt flacks and freshly ground black pepper

4 free-range eggs

150g fetta

50ml extra virgin olive oil

toasted sourdough fingers, to serve

Method

Heat a little oil in a heavy based saucepan over medium heat, add chorizo and fry for 3-5 minutes. Add shallots, garlic, oregano and bay leaf and cook, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes. Stir in beans, vinegar, tomato paste, tomatoes and 2-3 tablespoons water and simmer for about 15 minutes or until thick. Season to taste.

Preheat oven to 170C. Pour mixture into a medium (1.5 litre capacity) ovenproof dish. Use the back of a spoon to make 4 holes in mixture. Crack eggs into holes.

Crumble fetta over the top, drizzle with olive oil and bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes or until the eggs are cooked but still runny. Serve with toasted sourdough fingers on the side.

Serves 4

At The Lagoon Last Night

Watermelon and Pineapple Juice

With an abundance of fresh cheap fruit available to me, thanks to Rusty's, literally around the corner from where we live, my blender gets a good work out. With lots of tasty fresh pineapple sitting in my fridge, along with a big slab of cool watermelon, I made the following, which the three of us enjoyed after lunch. With the leftovers I have frozen into an ice-cube tray for Monet to enjoy...



Ingredients
Half a small watermelon
Half a large pineapple

Method
Cut into chunks and blend until smooth. Drink and enjoy immediately. Delicious.

Monet's New Dress

I know. It's not like Monet needs more clothes (goodness knows she has enough for the time being!) but one thing she lacks in her wardrobe is dresses. Summer dresses at that. She has loads of t-shirts and skirts and a few dresses but in continuous hot weather like we have, she needs them. That's my excuse anyway.

My mother used to be a right keen sewer and she has been known to 'whip-up' dresses for my sister and I and neighbours daughters (our playmates) when we were little, in a couple of hours. We have photographs of Kim, myself and girlfriends in matching cute little dresses. Because of this memory, I decided that I could probably sew dresses like that.

I rang up my mother who told me what to do. Yes, she gave me sewing instructions over the phone and told me it was easy. Hmm. I was unsure about the 'easy' part but I gave it a shot.

Eight dollars later, after a quick visit to my local Spotlight store (material and craft shop), I walked out with a 75cm length of material (chosen by Little Miss Monet), a reel of cotton and some elastic.

Two hours later, Monet was walking around the apartment in her new dress, which she LOVES. And my mother was right. It was easy to make. I was a little worried that once I made it she'd refuse to wear it, but Monet proved me wrong. Yippee. Proudly she said to Lyndon when he walked in the door after work "Mummy made it!"

This morning, I could hear her in her room crying. I went in and found Lyndon in there with her. She was crying because she was trying to reach up into the wardrobe for her new dress (which mummy made) but couldn't reach. Oww...

So, guess who will be gaining a lot more dresses in the weeks to come? For under $8, Monet will be. That's who!

Fragrant Green Chicken Curry

With inspiration from Kimbofo, I decided to make a Green Curry for last night's dinner. Hunting through my own recipe books I came across this Jamie Oliver recipe. It was very easy to make and very, very authentic tasting. However, compared to the photo in Jamie's book and that of my own, it looked completely different! Mine actually looked like the Green Curry from the Thai restaurant across the road from us. (Yes, we live virtually opposite a Thai restaurant.)

*Taken from Jamie Oliver's 'The Naked Chef'*

Ingredients

4 chicken breasts, skinless and boneless, each cut into 5 large pieces (I used 2 and cut into thick strips)

1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk

1 handful of chopped pistachio nuts (I didn't add these, after all, Monet was to be eating this)

1 can bamboo shoots (This wasn't in Jamie's recipe but I added these)

For Green curry paste

6 spring onions, washed and trimmed

4-6 medium green chillies, deseeded and finely chopped (I used 2)

2 cloves of garlic

1 tbs fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped

1 tbs coriander seeds, pounded or crushed

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Half a handful of lime leaves, torn

2 lemon grass stalks, trimmed back and finely chopped

2 good handfuls of fresh basil on the stalk

3 good handfuls of fresh coriander on the stalk

3 tbs extra virgin olive oil

zest and juice of 4 limes (I used 2)

Method

Put all the green curry paste ingredients in a food processor and whizz to a smooth green paste. Marinate the chicken in a little of the paste for 30 minutes, then ass a little oil and the chicken pieces to a hot casserole-type pan or wok. Fry for 4 minutes, then ass the remainder of the marinade - it will sizzle and spit. Stir in the coconut milk, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 8 minutes until the chicken is cooked. Season to taste. The flavour should have a kick but be reasonably mellow - very fresh and fragrant.

Sprinkle with the pistachios and some coriander leaves and serve with steamed rice or noodles.

Serves 4

Play Time

We had to move Monet's 'Dora' cubby inside.

It is getting way too hot and humid outside to have a plastic made cubby house for our daughter to play in. So Lyndon brought it inside. (He had to disassemble it partly to get it through the door!)

Monet has now a busy little corner of our apartment which she has been playing in a lot more than she ever used to. She sits at her little table and plays with play dough, or draws, or does jigsaws. She busily plays with her 'Elmo' Kitchen, pretending she's eating, baking, cooking. She sits in her Dora cubby and plays peek-a-boo with herself.

I love it when she entertains herself.

She likes to go and sit in her room, sometimes behind closed doors and plays. Or reads.

Her favourite book that she reads to herself at the moment is 'The Snail and the Whale', which was given to her from her Auntie Kim and Uncle T. I have only read that story once or twice to her but I swear she knows the whole story back to front. It is a gorgeous story book. I actually found it moving. Yes, a child's book pulling at my heart strings! I know!!

She sits on her bed (ready and waiting for her to sleep in it in the coming months) and plays with her Barbies. I really love that.

What are you enjoying at the moment?

Butter Cut-Out Biscuits

Monet loves to help me bake, so I decided to make up a batch of these buttery cookies. Quick and easy to make and the dough freezes wonderfully. Half of this mixture is now wrapped in clingfilm and freezing away until a rainy day... Monet got a collection of cookie cutters from us for Christmas, so making this was an excuse for Monet to tryout her new cutters. Lots of fun, well it would have been a lot of fun if Monet didn't 'crack it' halfway through and walked away...

*Taken from Nigella Lawson's 'How To Be A Domestic Goddess'*

Ingredients
175g soft unsalted butter
200g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
400g plain flour plus more if needed
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
300g icing sugar sieved and food colouring

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and moving towards moussiness, then beat in the eggs and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter eggs and mix gently but surely. If you think the finished mixture is too sticky to be rolled out, (chances are it will be), add more flour, but do so sparingly as too much will make the dough tough.

Halve the dough, form into fat discs, wrap each half in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for at least an hour.

Sprinkle a suitable surface with flour, place a disc of dough on it (not taking out the other half until you are finished with the first) and sprinkle a little more flour on top of that. Roll it out to a thickness of about 1/2 cm. Cut into shapes, dipping the cutter into flour as you go, and place the biscuits a little apart on lined baking trays.

Bake for 8-12 minutes, until they are lightly golden around the edges. Cool on rack.

To make the icing, put a couple of tablespoons of just-not-boiling water into a large bowl, add the sieved sugar and mix together, adding more water as you need to form a thick paste. Colour as desired and decorate biscuits...

(I divided the icing mixture into little zip-closing plastic bags, coloured the icing, closed bags up, snipped a little corner off the bag and used like a piping bag. Very little mess this way.)

Makes 50-60