Moroccan Lamb with Giant Couscous

Quick moroccan dinner. The only not quick thing about it is if you decide to marinate lamb chops for a day or overnight which is not crucial to this recipe.

 

lamb chops, for 4 pieces use:

1 teaspoon paprika, half teaspoon cinnamon, half teaspoon cumin, 1 tablespoon olive oil

1 red onion, roughly chopped

handful dried apricots, roughly chopped

handful fresh mint leaves, chopped

1 tablespoon ras-el-hanout

giant couscous, half a cup per person

1) Pour giant couscous into a saucepan, cover with plenty of boiling water (about 1:1) and set to boil over medium heat for 10 minutes or until done.

2) Rub mixture of cumin, paprika and cinnamon with little olive oil all over lamb chops. You can leave it for few hours, or use straight away. Slap onto hot grill pan and fry over midium-to-high heat about 3-4 minutes each side. Put inside preheated to 150C oven while couscous is cooking.

3) Using fat from the chops, fry onion until soft, add mint and apricots, and ras-el-hanout. Toss around for a couple of minutes. Drain couscous well, add to the pan with onions and mix well. Add salt to taste.

Serve!

Beef Potato Salad

Really quick dish, adapted from Morrisons magazine.

  

500g baby new potatoes, halves or quartered

oil for frying

400g beef frying steak (thinnest, cut into strips)

3 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce, tobasco, chilli flakes

200g cherry tomatoes, halved

mixed salad leaves, handful per plate (recipe makes about three-four servings)

1) Cover potatoes with boiling water, salt it lightly, and cook for about 10 minutes. Drain.

2) Fry beef strips, stirring almost frequently, until water starts to reduce, 5 minutes or so. Add chilli sauce, tobasco, chilli flakes, to the hot degree of your liking. Toss around, then add tomatoes and potatoes and cook some more stirring, until all the water evaporates, and the ingredients are sizzling in your pan.

3) Divide salad leaves between plates. Pile beef and potato salad on top, and serve hot.

Salad leaves soak in chilli beef dressing nicely!

Duck In Orange Sauce and Potato Sformato

 

for the duck:

2 duck legs

4 oranges

half cup sugar

salt

cup chicken stock

for potato sformato:

250ml milk

1 bay leaf

pinch nutmeg

25g butter plus for greasing the ramekins

tablespoon flour

400g potatoes, boiled and mashed

20g parmesan

2 eggs whites, beaten

salt and pepper

1) Rub the duck legs with salt, then bake at 180C until golden and crispy on the outside and cooked inside. Once it's cooked, allow it to cool slightly. Reserve and refrigerate the fat for later use, for example to roast potatoes some other time. Shred duck, discarding the bones.

2) While duck is roasting, make the sauce. Peel the zest off 1 orange, discarding any white pith) and shred it into fine strips. Split this peeled orange into segments and remove any membranes to free the flesh. It doesn't matter if the slices break. Set aside. Squezze juice out of remaining oranges. Now you have some zest, some flesh and plenty of juice.

3) Put the sugar into the pan and heat it up without any water until sugar just about starts to go brown. Add orange zest and cook for couple more minutes. Then add the orange flesh and cook for further couple of minutes. Stir in orange juice and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add the stock and simmer for another 15-20 minutes.

4) Put the shredded duck into the sauce and simmer together for 10 more minutes to get the duck meat infused with this zesty sauce.

Serve it with sformato below, or mashed or roasted potatoes - also great!

To make sformato,

1) Heat milk in a saucepan with bay leaf, nutmeg, salt and pepper. In another pan, melt the butter and add flour to it. Stirring constantly, cook for couple of minutes. When milk is just about to boil, take out the bay leaf, then pour flour mixture into milk, whisking constantly. Keep over heat until sauce (and this is a classic bechamel less the onion) has thickened. 

2) Combine the sauce, the potatoes and parmesan. Then fold in egg whites and mix well. Divide mixture between ramekins, greased and bottoms lined with baking paper. Alternatively you can bake the sformato in one bigger tin.

3) Bake at 180C for 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the moulds.

To free the sformato, run a thin knife around the edges and then invert on to a plate.

Can also serve as a vegetarian starter or main, served with a cheese sauce.

 

Lemon Beans & Mint Pesto with Chicken

In this recipe, I've tossed in couple of chopped new potatoes, this is not necessary, it just adds somewhat to the body of the dish. However, the dish itself is very fresh and zesty, with aromas of dill and mint and lemon teasing your tastebuds.

4 chicken thighs

1 tin of flageolet beans

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 white onion, chopped

olive oil, salt and pepper

1 lemon, skin peeled in wide strips, with potato peeler and reserved

good handful of chopped dill

for the pesto:

handful of mint leaves

handful of blanched almonds

2 garlic cloves

1/3 cu olive oil

salt and pepper

1) Season the chicken pieces all over with salt and pepper. Heat some olive oil in a pan and fry chicken thighs quickly on both sides, until just beginning to colour. Set aside.

2) In the same pan, saute garlic and onions until golden, then add beans together with juices from the tin. Add lemon peel and squeeze lemon juices into the pan. Stir together. Season if necessary.

3) Pour beans into oven dish. Put chicken pieces on top of it. Bake at 190C for about 40 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through. 

4) While it is cooking, make the pesto. Blend well all the ingredients in the food processor until fairly smooth. Season to you liking. More olive oil can be added if you think the pesto looks dry.

5) When your are ready to serve, take the dish out of the oven, dish out the chicken, then mix the dill into the beans, stir quickly and spoon onto the plates with chicken. Add pesto to the side, or on top. 

Enjoy!

Aubergines with saffron rice

This layered dish reminds me of moussaka or lasagna, but the taste is different due to saffron rice, so it makes a nice alternative.

olive oil

1 white onion, finely chopped

200g Arborio rice

generous pinch of saffron

150ml white wine

3-4 cups vegetable or chicken stock

salt and pepper

2 large aubergines, cut into 5mm thick slices

1 cup passata

200g mozarella, torn

100g parmesan, grated

1) For the rice: fry the onions until soft, then stir in the rice, coating all over. Move around the pan for about 3 minutes, then add the saffron and wine. Let it bubble stirring once and again, until wine slightly reduces. Then add 3 cups of stock, season and bring to the boil. Allow to cook for about 20 inutes, checking on stock levels, and if necessary (if it looks dry) adding extra cup. Take off the heat, cover and let sit allowing stock to soak into the rice. Rice can be let to cool significantly, or be used warm, so do not hurry around it.

2) For the aubergines: coat slices with olive oil and bake in one layer at 200C until golden brown.

3) Coat an ovenproof dish with some of passata. Lay half of the aubergines, following with half mozarella and half parmesan. Next layer is all of the rice. Top it with remaining aubergines. Then passata. Then remaining mozarella and parmesan.

4) Bake at 180C for 30 mins, or until golden brown and bubbling on top.

Summer Sunday Chicken

 

2 chicken breasts

2 eggs

100g breadcrumbs

30g parmesan

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

salt and pepper

3 tablespoons flour

sunflower oil for frying

1) Cut thick chicken breasts side on through the middle to make each slice not more than 1-1.5cm thick, then cut into smaller, medallion-size portion pieces if desired. Season chicken pieces all over.

2) In a shallow bowl, mix breadcrumbs, parsley and parmesan. Put flour into another bowl. And in a third bowl, beat the eggs.

3) Heat about 1cm of oil in a pan. Dip each chicken piece into flour, then egg, then breadcrums. Fry on each side until golden brown.

This is perfect picnic food, and can be served best with summer salad and fresh bread.