Arroz con Frango

Rice dishes can be found in so many countries. This Arroz con Frango is based in Portugese kitchen. Often it is prepared with duck.
With the bacon and sausage is is a hearty meal, that is found in the country kitchen.

Recipe for 6-8:
4 chicken legs
200 g bacon
250 g Chorizo
1 large onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 l chicken stock
500 g long grain rice
3 tbsp lemon juice
Salt and pepper
150 g Manchego cheese

Finished!

Chip onion and garlic, cube the bacon and sluce Chorizo discs.
In very hot oil, put the seasoned chicken legs on the skin side down and brown them 5 min, turn and 4 min on the other side.
Take the chicken out ans a bit of the grease.
On medium heat, saute garlic, onions, bacon and chorizo.  Put the chicken on top and pour stock in. Bring to a boil and thrn simmer about 90 min.
Get the chicken out and remove skin and bones. Rip the meat into shreds.
Pour the rest through a sieve into a pot, keep bacon and sausages.

Measure the broth into pyrex container until you have a 1000 ml. If you do not have enough, top it off with water.
Cook the rice in it. When the rice is nearly done, add chicken and sausage and bacon. Keep it on a low flame until the rice is done.
Add the lemon juice and fill it into an oven proof dish.
Top it with the grated cheese and put it into the oven at 180 C on grill until the cheese is melted.

Polenta with Skrei and a variation of sweetcorn

The next series of Kitchen Impossible is just running on German TV.
Watching the episodes helps me to plan more interesting food for the next time. So many ideas to try at home.

All about sweetcorn and popcorn this time.
The chef made some Falafel balls with ground up freshly popped popcorn. This mixed with sweetcorn and spices is one of the next things to try.

But today a creamy polenta with a piece of skrei and some marinated baby corn and flamed sweetcorn.
A couple of popcorn as decoration.

Use instant polenta and season the water with Italian herbs and a little olive oil and sea salt.

Skrei is a very solid piece of fish. Do not over cook it. It should still be flaky.

Iranian Rice with a Crust

For this kind of rice you will need a special rice cooker. The Chinese or Japanese ones do not do the trick.

This rice cooker first cooks the rice, then after adding some Ghee or butter forms a crust at the bottom. It's dial at the front shows the progress.

It takes about 45 min to finish the rice.

It has to be prepared in a special way.
You best use Basmati rice for the dish.

Wash it several times until the water is absolutely clear. Then let it drain in a sieve over a bowl for at least 30 min.

You will need 1,5 times the amount of water to rice and some salt. We added some saffron along with a little water.

Use the first step of the cooker to prepare it. When the time is off, open and add Ghee to the mix.
We had some Barberry berries, soaked in water. They went into the rice too.

Now close the lid and set the timer again.

When it is ready, take the pot out and put a plate on top.
Turn it and you will have a great golden crusty rice cake.

Lemon Chicken

This is in my old handwritten recipe collection for a long time. I haven´t done that in ages.
A famous German actress has shown this recipe in an old cooking show. I have prepared it twice a very long time ago.


We are cooking Iranian food this Sunday

.

My friend bought a Persian rice cooker. The one, that makes a crust on the bottom of the rice.

She wanted to bring the cooker over to show me how it worked and make some food.
When preparing Iranian rice, you have to serve it with food from that region too. The first thing that popped into my head was the lemon chicken. But I had no idea, where I put the recipe. I checked several recipes on line, they all came close and I wanted to make one of them.

A couple of days later I searched an other recipe from my Mom's favourite for a coworker and leafed through my notes. That way I found the old recipe. The ingredient that was missing from all the others were the fenugreek seeds.
They give a distinctive taste to the chicken.

Recipe for 6:
6 chicken legs
6 lemons 300 ml
300 ml olive oil
2 tsp fenugreek seeds
2 pinches of saffron
6 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper

Put all ingredients into a large freezer bag and marinate the chicken legs for 4 hours.
Heat up the oven to 200 C.

Use baking paper and let the marinate drop off before you place it on.
Bake for 45 min.

Scholeh Zardeh or Rice Pudding

This is a dessert from the Iranian kitchen. But it can be found in other countries in the Middle East.

One of my coworkers is from Turkey. She told me that she knows that with a bit different name from home. She warned me not to underestimate the amount of sugar in this dish. Her advice was to drastically reduce the sweetness, otherwise I would hate the rice.  If rosewater would be a challenge for me, she did not guess.

I found a couple of recipes on the Internet. Some use Basmati rice some use pudding rice. I choose the last one.

Recipe for 4:
180 g pudding rice
800 ml water
1 pinch of salt
1/4 tsp yellow food colouring or aanato seed
1/4 tsp saffron
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ginger powder
100 g sugar
2 tbsp rosewater
25 g chopped pistachios
40 g chopped almonds
60 g butter

Put the rice into a bowl and cover it with water and soak it for 60 min.
Drain and get it into a pot with 800 ml of water, bring to a boil and reduce the heat to low and cook for 50 min. Stir a couple of times and add a bit more water if necessary.

In a casserole make the syrup by melting the butter and adding all ingredients, except 25 g of almonds.
Stir into the finished rice and fill into single portions and cool down completely.

Rosemary, Honey and Lemon Syrup

I am cooking an Iranian dinner on Sunday together with my friends.

It will be a lot of work to do, so I wanted to prepare a couple of things ahead of time.

Iran is a strong muslin country, so alcohol is not served there for dinner. I will go with the tradition  and banned all kinds of alcohol from this day.
I checked different websites and looked for alternative drinks. Syrups are often used and served watered down with cold water. They are refreshing and go along with all kinds of food. Some use Rosewater to flavour them, others use herbs.

For dessert I will serve black tea. Coffee is not often drunk there.

The combination of rosemary and honey together with lemon is a good base for a syrup.

recipe for 6 portions:
250 g sugar
280 ml water
3 short stems of rosemary
170 g honey
400 ml lemon juice

Slowly heat up the water and the sugar until that is completely dissolved, add the rosemary and cook on low heat for 5 min.
Drop in the honey to make it easier to dissolve too.
Let it cool down 30 min and take out the rosemary stems.
Add the lemon juice.
Pour that through a fine mash sieve into a container and put it in the fridge.
When you serve it, just add enough cold water or cold sparkling water.

Eating out at Pasta e Panini again

The food from the Italian region of Calabria is served in this restaurant and the
quality of the food always lures me in.

They produce all the various kinds of pasta in their own manufacture and it is served fresh.
On other occasions I was here, there was no table to get without a reservation, but last Friday night only a couple of tables were occupied. The reason for that is the high time of German Carnival. There are so many events around town, that people are going there instead of enjoying great food.

We started with a platter of mixed starters such as Vitello Tonnato, Beef Carpaccio and grilled squid and several veggies served with fresh baked bread and an awesome olive oil.

I had pasta with Nduja - hot red spreadable sausage meat with rocket salad and cream cheese. The slight burn and the cool cheese were a great combination.

My friend ate her favourite food there, the spaghetti turned in a whole Parmesan cheese topped with grated truffle. The waiter made a show serving her the food.

We came to our end of the evening with two different desserts. I love ice cream and choose a Tartuffo ice cream.


She had a chocolate cake with molten centre and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.

We finished with Espresso, Averna on the rocks and some Limoncello. A great evening again in Frankfurt.