HAWAIIAN CHICKEN & COCONUT CILANTRO RICE...

I am one of the people who have down the dark, black hole called Pintrest and do not wish to be saved! Lol. I pin everyday (well almost everyday) and find all sorts of recipes, from the weirdest to the simplest to the I've Just Gotta Try That!

I found this recipe on Pintrest and didn't think it would work but boy was i wrong! I loved it, it was simple. I maybe did 5 minutes of work while the oven and cooktop did the rest.

2 Cups of Regular Parboiled Rice 

*If you choose to use Basmati or Jasmine rice for this recipe, just reduce your cooking liquid so as not to end up with mush.

6 Chicken Thighs 

3/4 Cup Soy Sauce

250ml Coconut Milk

3 Tablespoons Brown Sugar

1 Spring/Green Onion (Chopped)

1/2 White Onion (Chopped)

3 Cloves of Garlic (Minced)

1 Teaspoon Sesame Oil

1/2 Cup Chopped Fresh Cilantro

Salt & Pepper

Pour half your coconut milk, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, garlic, onions, green (spring) onion, slat and pepper in a resealable bag and mix properly. Add chicken and swish around until it is completely coated. Refrigerate for 4 - 6 hours.

Pre-heat your oven to 400F or gas mark high and place your chicken on a middle rack  and allow to cook for 8 - 10 minutes on each side depending on the size of your chicken thighs. To check for doneness, gently poke the thickest part of the drumstick with the tip of a sharp knife, the juice should run clear with no sign of blood. I you see any blood, allow it cook for another 5 minutes.

While your chicken is in the oven, wash and drain your rice. Stir fry it gently with 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil until it is completely coated then pour in your remaining coconut milk. You may add some water to it to get the rice to your desired softness.

 Season with salt and fluff up gently with a fork. Stir in chopped cilantro and take off the heat immediately.

Introduce rice to chicken, relax and enjoy.

BEEF & MUSHROOM ALFREDO SAUCE WITH WHEAT BOW TIE PASTA...

250Grms Chopped Beef

100Grms Button Mushrooms

1 Shallot

1 Cup of Chardonnay

250ml Alfredo Sauce

Wheat Bow Tie Pasta (or any other pasta of your choice)

1 Tablespoon Chopped Parsley

1 Spring (Green) Onion

Olive Oil

1 Teaspoon Dried Oregano

1 Teaspoon Dried Basil

Garlic

Seasoning Cubes

Salt & Pepper

Slice shallot and soften in a pan over medium heat.

When onions are soft and translucent, add meat and mushrooms. Please do not wash your mushrooms, just dust them off with a clean soft sponge or dish towel. Washing mushrooms affects the taste and you'll lose some of the earthiness. Season with seasoning cube, salt, pepper, garlic, dried oregano and basil. Do not over-season because your Alfredo Sauce has its own seasoning already added plus the flavour in sauces keep developing even after you're done cooking.

 When meat is properly browned, pour in your white wine and allow to simmer.

Pour in Alfredo Sauce and turn down the heat, allowing your sauce to reduce to about 2/3rd of its volume, it should take about 7 - 10 minutes.

When your sauce is cooked and has reached the right consistency, stir in spring onion and parsley and turn off the heat.

You can spoon your sauce over your pasta or toss in your cooked pasta and stir and allow to cook for another minute.

Top with parmesan cheese and little more chopped parsley.

Chase it down with your remaining white wine.

:)

STEAK & PARMESAN ROAST POTATOES...

This is maybe my 10th Steak & Potatoes recipe, there's no prize for guessing that i love meat and potatoes! Well, no need for any fancy intro, lets just get into it...

5 Large Potatoes (Cut Into Halves or Quarters)

1/2 Cup of Olive Oil

1/2 Onion (Sliced)

1/2 Cup Button Mushrooms (Sliced)

250ml Alfredo Sauce

2 Lean Cut Flank Steaks

1/2 Cup Grated Parmesan Cheese

Chopped Green Onions and Parsley

Garlic Powder 

Salt & Black Pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Season steak simply with salt and pepper and set aside.

Wash and cut potatoes and drain. In a bowl add half your portion of oil, salt, pepper and garlic and toss potatoes into it.

Arrange on the wire rack of your oven, cut side up, placed in the center. Placing it directly on the rack instead of on a pan allows for even distribution of heat to give you crisp potatoes all the way round. Allow to cook for 35 minutes.

Keep a pan under your potatoes to catch any oil drippings and don't forget that food shrinks as it cooks so don't cut your potatoes too small or they will fall right through the rack after a few minutes of cook time.

Carefully remove potatoes and transfer back into the bowl with whatever remaining oil may be in it. If you have no oil left, add maybe an additional teaspoon. Taste a little bit of your potatoes for seasoning. Pour in cheese and toss around.

Transfer back to the oven and allow to cook for an additional 10-15 minutes, the parmesan cheese flavour will permeate the potatoes and form a light brown crust over it.

While your potatoes finish up in the oven, pour your remaining oil in the pan and add your steak. Now i must state that for thin cut steaks like this, during the cooking process, it tends to balloon up. To avoid this, snip into the steak with a pair of kitchen scissors or a sharp knife maybe about 1/2 an inch deep around the circumference. Lol, obviously i was a bit overzealous and quite hungry and ended up butchering my meat... womp womp...

Cook on each side for 1 - 2 minutes on medium to high heat and transfer steak to plate.

Turn the heat down and add your onions and allow to cook down, add mushrooms and stir fry for 2 - 3 minutes.

Add Alfredo Sauce and taste for seasoning. If your sauce is too thick, you can add a little water or chicken broth to loosen it up a bit.

Serve with a light salad and garnish with chopped green (spring) onions and chopped parsley.

I had to tap out after this one, in a great way!
:)

SIMPLE CHICKEN CURRY...

Curry has received a bad flack from a lot of people. We eat food from all over the world and not everything will agree with our palate, i believe in making food work for me. Don't be scared to cook any recipe, just taste as you go along and tweak it to suit you.

You can make curry from scratch if you please but some might find this a bit too technical because it has to do with developing a lot of flavours and searching out a lot of traditional spices so just feel free to buy curry paste with a heat level that works for you and lets get to cooking. For this recipe i used Sharwood's Red Curry Paste.

250 Grms Boneless Chicken Breasts

Sharwood's Red Curry Paste

2 Cups Coconut Milk

1 Spring (Green) Onion, Chopped

1/2 Medium Onion, Chopped

1/2 Teaspoon Cumin

Garlic Powder

1 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil

1 Teaspoon Grated Ginger

Juice from 1/2 a Lemon (or 1 lime if you want a bolder flavour)

1 Tablespoon Chopped Cilantro

Red Pepper Flakes

2 Seasoning Cubes

Salt

Cut chicken breasts up and season with salt, chili, ginger, garlic, 1 seasoning cube and lemon juice. Mix and refrigerate.

Pour oil to the pan on high heat, add cumin and onions, fry until soft. Add the chicken and stir fry until brown on the outside but not all the way cooked.

Pour in curry paste and coconut milk and bring to a simmer. As soon as it starts to bubble, add chopped spring (green) onions and turn down the heat.

Season to taste and add chili flakes.

Allow to continue to simmer till you get your desired consistency, add chopped cilantro and leave for another 30 seconds to 1 minute for the flavour to infuse and serve on a bed of basmati rice.

FRIED RICE...

Since my last post was a Party Jollof Rice post, i figured i'd follow it with a party fried rice post, you can never go to a proper Nigerian party and find one without the other...

3 Cups of "Regular" Rice

6 Chicken Drumsticks

1 Large Chopped Onion

Chopped Carrots, Green & Red Bell Peppers.

Green Peas and Sweet Corn

1 Teaspoon Oriental/Chinese 5 Spice

Curry, Thyme, Garlic & Ginger Powder, Chili Flakes

1 Cup of Shrimps (Peeled & De-veined)

Chopped Cooked Liver (Optional)

2 Cups of Vegetable Oil

3 Seasoning Cubes

Salt and Pepper

Season chicken at least 1 hour prior to cooking time with salt, pepper, curry, thyme, ginger and half your portion of onions. Refrigerate covered.

Cook you chicken with enough water to just about cover it for 15 to 20 minutes.

Remove your chicken from the stock and set aside.

Pour oil into a pan and fry your chicken for about 2 minutes on each side, not manipulating it too much so that it doesn't start to break apart. This will seal up the moisture in the chicken without deep frying it as well as infuse flavour into the oil.

Allow the oil to cool then strain it.

Wash your rice and drain properly.

In a dry pot/pan, add a quarter cup of vegetable oil and as soon as it gets hot add your rice to it and stir for about 30 - 45 seconds, till your rice is properly coated but not turning brown.

Add Chicken stock and allow to cook on medium heat uncovered. As soon as you start cooking the rice please do not stir or move it about, just leave it be. You can use a fork to taste for flavour and see if its properly cooked and if need be add a little water or chicken stock at a time. When the rice is al dente (3/4 cooked) and the stock was been fully absored, take it off the heat.

This next step is going to be pretty fast as everything left needs just 2 - 3 minutes to cook so have all your chopped vegetables or additional meats ready.

Add whatever oil you have left to another pot/pan and fry your shrimps (and chopped liver) for a minute, add remaining chopped onion first and stir then follow with all other vegetables. Season with as needed with seasoning cube, all other spices and it is here that you add your Chinese 5 Spice. There's a reason why i specified the quantity to use for this spice, it isn't one that we find in our everyday recipes so a lot of people may not be familiar with it. You want to use it sparingly because if you add to much it will overpower the food and it will be difficult to rectify. Using this spice, however, is well worth it and brings a nice earthy and even almost sweet flavour to the food.

Almost immediately after, turn your heat down low and gently add your rice to the shrimps and vegetables a little at a time, mixing as you go along until you have transferred all of your rice. If your rice is still a little hard, leave the heat low and just cover the pot for 5 to 10 minutes.

Serve with a light vegetable salad and enjoy!

FIREWOOD JOLLOF A.K.A PARTY JOLLOF...

Who doesn't love party jollof rice??? If we are really honest to ourselves we would admit that the only thing we look forward to at events especially in Lagos, is that plate of hot smoky firewood scented and flavoured rice! Well, that and small chops... I replicated it at home and trust me if i could build a firewood fire, so can you. Firewood is cheap and really accessible and wherever you find firewood you will find someone selling little bottles of kerosene. No, you don't want to use petrol because its more dangerous plus it burns off quicker so your wood doesn't have time to really burn.

So we'll start with a fire building tutorial.
Find a nice dry spot a bit away from your door/window.
Get a base that will not burn, like a random sheet of aluminum or plantain leaves or just build it on the ground if you don't mind the stain or washing off the ashes when you're done.
Next, find something stable you can use as your stand for your pot, i used and old metal flower pot stand.
Lay little bits of flammable stuff on your base, nothing plastic please! As plastic melts it breaks down and releases chemicals have have been found to be cancer causing plus the smell will affect your food, we certainly don't want that! You can use bits of scrap paper and pieces of wood that splinter off your firewood. Wanna know something else that holds fire really well? Coconut shell! Lol. My mum told me this, i tried it and it really does, smolders and burns slow too.
Now poke your firewood in from different angles all meting in the middle, but do not overcrowd them, your fire needs air to burn.
Pour a cup of kerosene over the wood and carefully light it up and step back. The fire will burn for a minute or two then start to die down. This is where you have to put your back into it.
Get a fan, magazine, newspaper, clean dustpan, whatever you can fan the flame with and get to work. Count as you do, fan too much and you will put the fire out completely. Fan maybe 15 times and rest for 3 seconds and watch for a small flame, if you don't see one yet but you see some smouldering embers, go at it again. In 2 minutes or less you should have a nice steady fire. And emmm, you might wanna tie your hair up first...
When you have your fire going its time to go find a pot that you haven't used in maybe a year and even forgot you had and prep it for the cooking.
Another tip, rub palm oil all over the outside of that pot. This way all the soot coming off the firewood gets trapped in the oil and doesn't stain your pot. Washing off palm oil is messy, no doubt, but it'll have you from scrubbing charcoal stains off your pot!

Now i had seasoned my goat meat with salt, pepper, garlic and onions, cooked it and fried it in vegetable oil and saved the oil... Lets get to cooking.

2 Cups vegetable oil
1 Cup palm oil
1/4 Cup ground crayfish (optional)
Medium sized bowl of rough ground red tomatoes and tatshe (bell pepper)
2 Cloves of garlic (grated)
1 Red onion (chopped)
Meat/chicken stock
3 Seasoning cubes
Salt and pepper
Long grain rice

Put your vegetable oil on the fire, pour in a little palm oil (optional, i like the extra flavour) and add onions, crayfish and ground tomatoes and tatashe and allow to fry for 5 minutes or until "dry". Firewood flame burns hot than you might expect so you have to keep your eyes on the pot. This is also why i choose not to soften the onions by itself first as i normally would.

Wash your rice a couple of time with hot water and salt a couple of times and then rinse with cold water. I don't recommend pre-cooking the rice first and washing because most times you might end up over cooking before washing, breakup the rice while washing, releasing the starch and then still end up with sticky rice. If you don't go turning your rice, it wont get sticky.

Strain rice and add to the pot and stir till its well coated and allow to cook for a minute. Add your stock and stir, season and taste. Then, LEAVE THE RICE ALONE! Cook uncovered or with the lid of the pot slightly off, we do want some of that smoke to get into the rice.

Keep rechecking your firewood and fire, add more wood if you need to but no more kerosene.

If you notice the rice is still a bit hard and needs a little more stock or water add some, if you notice its cooking unevenly turn the pot around a bit. Instead of stirring, insert a wooden spoon between the rice and the edge of the pot and gently push and lift so the liquid recirculates.

When the rice is cooked, don't be in a hurry to take it off just yet, allow it to burn for a minute or 2. Trust me on this.

Now go wash your smelly self off, pat yourself on the back and enjoy!

FISHERMAN'S STEW...

I never used to like okra soup, the thought of the slime would make me gag. Then a friend cooked this stew and at first i laughed at her eating rice and okra, made fun and asked if she also dunks her bread in water before eating since she's into yucky combinations. She asked me to taste it and i went from "God forbid" to "I'll only have some fish" to settling down with another spoon and then getting a recipe.

This stew is easy, it cooks a lot faster than Nigerian conventional stews. You can edit it to suit you as long as the okra and seafood remains constant.

1 Large Tilapia (scaled, gutted and cut)

1 White Onion (chopped)

3 Large Tomatoes (chopped)

2 Cups of Roughly Chopped Okra

1 Chopped Spring Onion

Seafood Mix (Prawns, Crab, Mussels, Baby Octopus, Calamari)

1 Cup Beef/Chicken Stock

Salt & Pepper

2 Seasoning Cubes

1 Teaspoon Curry

1/2 Cup Palm Oil

Pour your oil into a dry pot and allow to heat up but not get smoky. Add your okra and fry it for about 2 minutes, this cuts down the slime by more than half as fisherman stew isn't meant to "draw" as much as okra soup.

Add tomatoes and onions next and allow to cook together for about 5 minutes. Add beef/chicken stock as well as your tilapia and allow to cook for another 5 - 7 minutes depending on the size of your cuts of fish.

Sidebar: If you have no packaged stock or any saved, don't let your fishmonger throw away your fish head and fins after cutting them off and cleaning your fish. take them home, wash them, season and cook for 10 -15 minutes. Use a spoon to carefully remove any film that would've formed on the surface of the stock or any bits of bone, that should give you a nice stock.

Taste for seasoning and add to your taste. Always season AFTER you've added stock to food so as not to over salt or over season in general. A tablespoon of crayfish also works well with this ingredient, be careful not to add too much so it doesn't over power the stew.

Add palm oil and the seafood mix and cook for another 5 minutes and your stew is ready.

I still enjoy mine the way i had it the very first time, with white rice or i'd just dish up a hearty bowl of the stew alone and go at it with a spoon.

PS. I'm now an okra soup "semi-fan", its not on my top 5 of favorite soups but i eat and cook it pretty well. I even have a post on okra soup...

THE LAZIEST FRIED BROWN RICE AND SEARED SALMON DINNER...

This recipe is exactly what it says it is, a quick and tasty meal even the laziest one of us can make. 

Everyone gives brown rice a bad rap, but i kind of like it. Yes it tastes different but everything will taste different until you get used to it and manipulate it to your taste. This was dinner for 2 and did i mention super healthy?

For this i used some left over plain cooked brown rice...

2 Cups Cooked Brown Rice

2 Beef Franks (Chopped)

1/2 Onion, Medium Carrot, Green Beans, Medium Tomato, Yellow Pepper (Chopped)

Sliced Green Pepper & Spring Onion

1/2 cup Chicken Stock

Olive Oil (Zero Calorie) Cooking Spray

1/4 Cup Balsamic Vinegar

Salmon Steaks

Salt & Pepper

1 Teaspoon Oriental 5 Spice

Chopped Dried Garlic

1 Seasoning Cube

Mix balsamic vinegar with a pinch of salt, pepper and garlic and allow to sit for 30 minutes.

Spray some olive oil into your pan/pot and soften your onions until translucent, about 2 - 3 minutes.

Add chopped sausages and cook down for an extra minute.

Add vegetables and season with spices.

We don't wan't to cook the vegetables for more than 30 - 45 seconds so it doesn't "die" completely before the cooking process is done.

Add the rice and mix gently with a fork so as not to mush it all up, pour in chicken stock and turn down the heat. Allow the rice to cook through with the pot uncovered, it shouldn't need more than 5 minutes.

While that is going, spray some more olive oil into a non-stick pan and sear your salmon for 2 minutes on each side. If your steak is pretty thick, turn down the heat, add a few drops of water into the pan and cover it. The steam build up will fish cooking it through.

Garnish with chopped parsley and a slice of lemon if you please. Count the minutes, you have dinner on your plate in less than 20 minutes.

:)

PS. I got my mojo back, no more long absences...

;)