Just like the picture - chicken terrine

For me, the pathway to cooking something is often pretty random. Finding a well-priced pack of streaky bacon at Moore Wilson last week led to thoughts of chicken terrine. So I bought some chicken livers there, and next day at the supermarket I picked up some boneless, skinless thighs.
          I first made this terrine a couple of decades ago, as I explained in The Colour of Food, where it appears as duck terrine:

         "The first time Harvey roasted ducks for Christmas, I made this on Boxing Day, using a recipe for chicken terrine found in a timely present from friends: The World’s Finest Chicken, by Sonia Silver and Janis Metcalfe. Delicious with quince paste and toast."

          This time I didn't have any leftover duck, but the original recipe is for chicken only, so I thought it was well worth making. I know it's a bit silly, but what I've always loved about this terrine is the fact that, thanks to having the right dish to bake it in, it turns out looking exactly like the picture in the book. But I don't slice it in the dish, because the bacon lining means that it turns out so beautifully onto a plate (see below). I've slightly revised the recipe from my book here.

Chicken terrine

220g chicken livers

90g dry white bread to make crumbs 

350g cooked chicken (and duck if you have any)

If you have it: 50g leftover stuffing, preferably made with walnuts (if no stuffing is available, use a bit more chicken meat and bread)

2 garlic cloves, crushed

good pinch of salt

1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

1 tablespoon brandy

1 tablespoon port

1 tablespoon fresh oreganum, finely chopped

1 tablespoon fresh flat-leafed parsley, finely chopped

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped

1 large egg, lightly beaten

Enough rashers of bacon (skinny streaky ones are good) to line the terrine dish - drape them across it, down the side, across the bottom and up the other side, then fill in any gaps at the ends.

The order of the instructions here is a bit different from what's in my book, because this time I did

things in a different order, to make the best use of the food processor. 
No need to clean or rinse processor bowl between these steps - do it after you've chopped the livers.

-  Preheat oven to 190°C.

- Turn leftover bread to crumbs in the processor. Toast very lightly on a flat metal tray in the oven for a few minutes while it is heating up.

- Finely chop the herbs in the processor.

- Put herbs and toasted breadcrumbs into a large bowl.

- Mince the cooked meat in the processor and add to herbs and crumbs.

- Coarsely chop the livers briefly in the processor. Use a spatula to get them out and add them to the bowl. Stir into meat, herbs and crumbs.

- Add crushed garlic, seasonings, brandy, port, and  beaten egg, and mix everything together well. Taste to check seasoning.

-  Use bacon rashers to line the base and sides of an oval ceramic terrine dish or non-stick loaf tin (approximately 25cm long, 15 cm wide, 6 cm deep).

-   Spread mixture into dish evenly over bacon lining, and smooth the top.

-  Cover with a tightly fitting lid or aluminium foil.

-  Place terrine in a large roasting or baking dish. Boil a jugful of water. Either pour enough hot water into the tin to come about two-thirds up the sides of terrine, and transfer carefully to the oven; or (this can be easier) put tin into oven and then pour the water around the terrine dish. 

-  Bake for 1¼ hours, till a very thin knife or sewer inserted into the middle of the terrine comes out clean.

·      Remove lid or foil and carefully pour off any liquid fat. Cover and refrigerate overnight. 
(It really does need to be kept overnight to let the flavours develop.)
- Take out of refrigerator at least an hour ahead of serving. Turn out onto a serving plate and slice as required.

Those pretty yellow slices on the side in the photo are mustard fruits - you can buy them in Italian delis. Quince paste is good too. I served this for lunch with a papaya, pear, beansprout and baby spinach salad.

Scrumptious spicy chicken

I don't always save the recipe pages from the Listener, but I was really glad I saved the one from 24 May. Lauraine Jacobs was featuring a new book by UK-based, multi-award-winning food writer Diana Henry: A Change of Appetite: Where Health Meets Delicious. I have a small problem with that title - it does make it sound as if "healthy" and "delicious" don't normally meet, when surely they very often do. But But the recipes sound very good, and recently I made one of them for myself. It was so easy and tasty and realtively inexpensive that I made it again as the main course for a visiting friend last week.
         I did tweak it a little bit. Even though iI was cooking for two instead of four, I used the same amount of flavouring ingredients - naughty, I know, but there still wasn't a lot of sauce and I like spicy food. I left out the star anise, because I don't like aniseed flavour at all, but I've left it in the recipe because most people probably would like it.
         One of the few foods I dislike is cooked pumpkin, so I used kumara instead, and I thought that worked really well. For the two of us, I cooked four large chicken thighs and two large kumara. I didn't have any spring onions, so I cooked ordinary chopped onion with the garlic.
         If you are making it with pumpkin I suggest that you first chop it into large chunks and then microwave it for just long enough to soften the skin. This makes it much easier to peel. As you can see from the photo (which is the one from the Listener - once again I forgot to photograph mine!) - the pumpkin or kumara chunks should not be too large, so that they cook through in the same time as the chicken.
       

Chicken and pumpkin with soy and star anise
(Diana Henry, courtesy of Lauraine Jacobs in the Listener, 24 May 2014)
Serves 4.

1 Tbsp peanut oil
8 bone-in chicken thighs
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 Tbsp fish sauce
2 Tbsp soft dark brown sugar
1 red chilli, deseeded and shredded (I used chilli flakes)
2.5cm piece of ginger, peeled and very finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, very finely chopped
8 spring onions, trimmed and chopped on the diagonal
900g pumpkin or squash, cut into chunks, peeled and deseeded, or kumara, peeled and cut into chunks
3 strips of orange zest
1 star anise
2 Tbsp orange juice (i used a bit more, and less water)
Black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C (or 170 fan-forced).
Remove the chicken skin if you prefer (I used skinless).
Heat the oil in an oven-proof casserole dish or saute pan that can go in the oven (large enough to lie all the chicken in a single layer).
Brown the chicken on both sides. Don't try to turn the thighs until they are easy to move, as pulling will tear them. Take them out of the pan and set aside.
Pour the fat out of the pan into a cup. Mix the soy sauce, vinegar and fish sauce with the sugar and stir.
Put 1 Tbsp of the reserved fat back in the pan, heat it and add the chilli, ginger and garlic. Keep some of teh greener bits of spring onion back for garnish and add the rest to the pan.
Cook over a medium heat for a couple of minutes, until the garlic is golden, then add the soy sauce mixture. Return the chicken to the pan, with any juices that have seeped out, plus the pumpkin, orange zest, star anise, orange juice and 3-4 Tbsp of water.
Grind on some black pepper. Cover the dish and put in the hot oven for 40 minutes in total. After 15 minutes, turn the chicken pieces over. (It helps to turn the pumpkin or kumara over too.) Cover again and cook for another 15 minutes. Then uncover the dish and return to the oven to cook for another 10 minutes. (The sauce will reduce to a lovely stickiness. But keep an eye on it to make sure it isn't hardening.)
Scatter with the reserved pieces of green spring onion and serve. Accompany with brown rice, quinoa or wheat berries tossed with lots of chopped coriander leaves and lime juice.
Recommended wine match: Chardonnay.

At my age I don't need masses of carbohydrate, so I didn't add the rice - instead I made a shredded carrot and cabbage salad with a small amount of Asian flavoured dressing, using lime juice, fish sauce , soy sauce and a little sugar. If I'd had any coriander I would have used that too.
          I thought this was a really successful dish, not too strongly spiced, so you get the full flavour of the chicken and pumpkin/kumara, but spicy enough to have you licking your lips with huge appreciation. Thank you, Lauraine and Diana.

Pie time

Judging for the Bakels Supreme Pie Awards began in Auckland yesterday, and the results will be announced on Tuesday. One of the categories is chicken and vegetable. Last weekend, needing to produce a main course for four friends coming for a long lunch on Sunday, I decided to make a big chicken and vegetable pie. I'd had a really good one for dinner a while ago at my sister's place in Tauranga, so I'd asked her to photocopy the recipe for me. (Apologies - I didn't make a note of who wrote it or which book it came from - I'll check up with her later.)
          She assured me that the home-made pastry top was really easy, and it was - you make it in the food processor. But while the filling is easy too, it takes quite a while, because it's got so many neatly diced veges in it. Best to start early, I thought, so I made the pastry and the filling on Saturday, all ready to assemble and bake on Sunday.

Chicken and kumara pie with thyme pastry

For the pastry:
200g butter, diced and chilled
150g cream cheese, chopped
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
2-3 Tbsps milk
For egg wash:
1 egg
Another 2 Tbsp milk

Put all the ingredients except the milk and the egg in a food processor. Process until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
Add just enough milk to bring the dough together. (My food processor is too good - the pastry never clumps. I add a bit of milk, gather some crumbs together with my fingers and test to see if they will stick together. I used all 3 tablespoons of milk this time to get the pastry right.)
Tip the pastry onto a board and shape it into a flat disc. Wrap in plastic film and put in fridge until firm. (I made this Saturday afternoon, put it in the fridge and took it out about an hour before I wanted to use it on Sunday morning.)

For the filling:
(I bought more chicken thighs than stated, with bones in, as it was much cheaper that way. You can use breast, but thighs have more flavour. I removed the bones and boiled them for a while in commercial chicken stock. Then I removed them and happily nibbled all the yummy bits of meat off them before discarding them.)
1 kg skinless chicken thighs, boneless, or 1.2 kg with bones in
1/2 cup plain flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
knob of butter
100g lean bacon, roughly chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 large leek, sliced
1 large carrot, diced
1 Tbsp dried or finely chopped fresh tarragon (I had just enough left in the garden)
300g kumara, peeled and diced (1 cm pieces)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 cups chicken stock (the recipe had 1 cup, but this isn't enough)
1/2 cup cream

Season the flour with salt and pepper and place in a plastic bag. Cut the chicken into strips about 4-5 cm long, removing the bones if necessary. If you do have bones, put them on to boil gently in the chicken stock.
Shake the chicken pieces in teh flour to coat them. Remove them and shake off the excess flour, saving 1 Tbsp to use later.
Heat oil and butter in a large saute pan and cook chicken pieces until lightly golden. Use a slotted spoon to move chicken to a shallow dish.
Add bacon, onion, leek, carrot and tarragon to pan. Cook gently until tender and starting to brown slightly.
Add garlic to corner of pan and cook briefly. Add kumara and lemon zest and cook another 5 minutes.

(If you're making the filling the day before, stop at this point, cool the veges, and put them, the stock and the dish of chicken into the fridge.)

Assembly:
(If making next day, take pastry out of fridge an hour before assembling pie. Take out chicken, stock and veges. Put veges back in pan.)
Stir reserved flour into chicken stock. Pour into pan with veges and cook gently to make thick sauce. Add cream and stir well. Add chicken and any juices in dish. Mix gently. Check seasoning.
Simmer for a few minutes to heat through and make sure sauce is cooked. Place in large 7-cup ceramic or glass pie dish.

Preheat oven to 200C.
Roll out pastry to make a rough circle large enough to cover top of pie dish and hang down over the sides.(see pastry tips here).

Make egg wash by beating 1 egg thoroughly with 2 tablespoons of milk.
Roll pastry loosely over the rolling pin. As you do this, use a pastry brush to lightly coat the outer side of the pastry with egg wash. (This is the side that will be in contact with the pie filling - the egg wash acts as a seal to stop the pastry going soggy.)
Carefully unroll the pastry over the pie dish, egg wash side down. Press the pastry down around the rim or the sides (my dish was rimless) and trim it to leave a border all round the filling of about 2 cm. Crimp border and seal it in place with the egg wash (brush a little more onto the dish if necessary).
Cut a cross into the top of the pastry and add a few pastry "leaves" for decoration.
Brush the top of the pastry with the remaining egg wash.

Place pie on oven shelf positioned so that the top of the pie sits a little above the middle of the oven.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is deeply golden and the filling is bubbling.

So, to the long lunch: a slow meander through Donna's broccoli soup and rye bread, then the pie with boulanger potatoes (chunks of potato baked in stock), and Dale's orange cake with lemon syrup. I didn't need any dinner... well, only the last couple of bits of rye bread with a chunk of cheese and an apple.

Dinner with Nigel Slater

Toast, UK food writer Nigel Slater’s autobiography, is one of the finest food memoirs ever. My gardening friend Ali loves his books, his gardens and his food.  He's the complete opposite of shouty show-off Gordon Ramsay.
       A while ago she discovered that the BBC had turned Toast into a film. When it screened in Britain last year, it was watched by over 6 million people. Needless to say, it wasn’t picked up by free-to-air TV here. So when she found it on DVD in her local library, she came up with a brilliant plan: Ali, Lesley and I would put together a dinner using Nigel Slater’s recipes, and then we would watch Toast. So on Friday night, that’s what we did.

       First, Lesley served a superbly flavoured entrée with thin slices of aubergine, grilled and dressed with red wine vinegar, olive oil and mint, and served with feta cheese and olives (not a great photo, sorry), along with Ali’s homemade foccacia (she used a special organic flour this time, so it was wonderfully crisp, golden and chewy).

For the main course (recipes below), I made Nigel’s thyme and garlic sticky chicken wings, as well as bulghur wheat cooked with bacon, onions, garlic and mushrooms. Lesley contributed beautiful baked tomatoes.

Ali’s dessert came in two parts. First we had moist, gingery ginger cake (it has stem ginger in it) and her home-grown rhubarb roasted in orange juice and honey, with creamy Zany Zeus yoghurt. 

Then came the, er, climax: Walnut Whips.  Ali had tracked them down in a store selling English goodies. Toast is piled high with confectionery, but Walnut Whips reign supreme - they get two whole chapters named after them. The culmination comes in the scene where Nigel's father discovers the sea of Walnut Whip wrappers. Sadly this was left out of the BBC version, so you'll have to read the book to understand why they're so significant - a bit like the English equivalent of Proust's madeleines...

Thyme and garlic chicken wings
Nigel Slater in the Guardian – “Sweet and sticky, and as good cold as hot.”

Serves 3-4, depending on the size of your wings. You need to marinade the chicken at least four hours ahead of cooking it.

thyme about 12 bushy stems
garlic 2 cloves
thick honey 4 tbsp
dried chillies a couple of good pinches
lemon 1 large
chicken wings 1 kg (this mixture was enough to coat 10 full wings – it would do more of the small “chicken nibbles” size)
lemon 1, to serve

Pull the leaves and flowers from the thyme branches, measure 2 lightly heaped tablespoons, and put into the bowl of a food processor. (If you are making your marinade by hand, then put the thyme into a mortar.) Retain extra leaves and discard the stems.
Peel the garlic and drop the cloves into the thyme together with a generous grinding of black pepper, the honey and the pinches of chillies. Grate the zest of the lemon into the mixture, then squeeze in all of the juice. Blitz for a few seconds till the ingredients become a sloppy paste (by hand, pound with the pestle).
Transfer the paste to a nonstick roasting tin and add the chicken wings and reserved thyme, turning them over in the marinade so they are thoroughly coated. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or even overnight. Turn from time to time, so the wings stay in contact with the marinade.
Set the oven at 200C/gas mark 6. Season the wings with salt, then roast them for 40 minutes, or until they are deep, golden brown and the marinade has turned dark golden brown. If there is a lot of liquid in the tin then cook for a further few minutes until dark and sticky. Cut the lemon in thick segments and squeeze over the chicken wings as you eat.


Bulghur wheat and bacon
“I sometimes spoon a little seasoned yoghurt – salt, pepper, paprika – over this at the table, stirring it into the grains. But mostly, I leave the pilaf as it is, enjoying the warm, homely grains and juicy nuggets of mushroom.”

smoked streaky bacon 200g
onions 2, medium
olive oil
garlic 2 cloves
small mushrooms 250g
bulghur wheat, medium fine 250g 
(I found this was an awful lot of wheat – unless you want to pad it out for a hungry horde. For a side dish I think it would be better with half as much, 125-130g, and half the boiling water, 200ml)
boiling water from the kettle 400ml
sprigs of parsley 3 or 4
dill 6 sprigs
butter 60g (with less wheat, 30g is enough)

Cut the bacon rashers into short thick pieces. Peel the onions and slice them thinly. Warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large, shallow pan over a low heat, add the sliced bacon and stir occasionally till the fat has turned pale gold. Peel and finely chop the garlic.
Add the onions and garlic to the pan and leave till soft, golden and translucent, stirring from time to time. Quarter the mushrooms and add them to the softening onions. Leave them to cook for 5 minutes or so with the occasional stir.

 Add the bulgur with a pinch of salt (easy to forget this bit!). Pour in the boiling water, cover tightly, switch off the heat, and leave for 15 minutes. Roughly chop the parsley leaves and the dill. Lift the lid from the pan, stir in the butter, herbs and a little salt and pepper. Stir till the grains are glossy with butter, and serve.

The ginger cake recipe is from the Observer, here. If you don't already own at least one Nigel Slater food book - they do tend to be large and pricey - you can find a good selection of his Guardian columns and recipes online here.

Pollo play

Not having cooked many proper dinners since before Christmas, I was very happy to have friends coming for dinner this week. As I'm off to China on Monday, and want to leave at least a scrap of room in the freezer for my housesitter, I decided it would be a good chance to use what I had instead of going shopping. When free range chickens were on special a while ago I cut two up and froze the pieces. But I needed a recipe that involved some kind of marinade, because even when it's fresh, chicken can taste a bit boring.
       

What I came up with was a combination of two recipes from my oldest Italian cookbook, Ada Boni's venerable Talisman, organised so as not to use any flour (one of my friends doesn't eat gluten).
         The marinade was from her Pollo frito alla Fiorentina, Florentine fried chicken with lemon and parsley. But the cooking was from her Pollo alla cacciatora, Hunter's chicken, which also uses parsley, as well as onion, garlic , celery and white wine - but no tomatoes, unlike most other versions of hunter's chicken I've seen.

Pollo alla Karori (with homage to Ada Boni)

Chicken pieces, trimmed of loose fatty bits and loose bits of skin (4 drumsticks and 4 thighs, all with skin on, is a good combination for 4 people)

For the marinade:
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 Tbsp lemon juice (I used the salty juice from a jar of my preserved lemons)
salt and pepper (I didn't need any more salt)
2 tsp finely chopped Italian flat-leaved parsley
Mix well and cover the chicken pieces with this marinade. Leave for at least 2 hours before cooking.

For the sauce and cooking:
Olive oil for frying
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 tender sticks celery, or a bunch of lovage leaves and stalks (this gives the flavour without any stringy bits)
2-3 sprigs flat-leaved parsley
salt and pepper
150 ml dry white wine

- Set oven to 180C, fan forced, or 190 without fan. Take chicken pieces out of marinade, shake well and pat them a little with paper towel to dry them slightly. Then, as Ada puts it, "Place in frying pan some olive oil" - or better, use a pan that can also go in the oven.  Fry the pieces in two batches until they are thoroughly browned on all sides. Remove and keep warm.
- Add a little more oil and gently fry the onion, garlic, celery and parsley until soft. Add white wine. Cook for a few minutes to reduce a little, then add the remaining marinade. Check seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary.
- Add chicken pieces, put pan in oven uncovered, and bake until chicken is tender and cooked right through, but not dried out - about 35-45 minutes, depending on your oven and how large the pieces are. Baste chicken pieces with the sauce twice during cooking.
- Remove pieces and keep warm while you degrease the sauce - I carefully place a double-folded piece of thick paper towel on the surface to absorb the excess fat, doing it twice if necessary. If there is too much sauce or it seems too thin, reduce it a little on the hob. Check seasoning again

You can either put the chicken pieces back in the sauce, or serve the sauce separately, along with whatever kind of potatoes you prefer. I baked small red-skinned golden-hearted potatoes in a separate roasting tin on a lower shelf while the chicken was cooking - all they needed was a  little oil and salt. We had pieces of preserved lemon with this, and a green salad, with a pinot gris. The light, summery celery/parsley/lemon flavours were a great success (she said modestly). Look for the next post (China!) in late January.