Rice-filled Pumpkin | You've Got Meal!

It took for us to make our own blog in order to start cooking pumpkin, but the wait was worth. Growing up the only way we actually ate pumpkin was in (a very nice) pie, that, I have to admit, is one of the best smelling dishes I’ve ever seen. But bringing this seasonal ingredient to a salty dish was something I wanted to do for a very long time and I started with the stew posted last time. This time, the dish is a little flashier and it can certainly make you feel badass in front of your guests. Honestly, bringing a neat looking pumpkin filled with a spicy, creamy rice to the table has to score some points with the company you keep. 

Let’s start of with the ingredients that I used for filling a pumpkin about 1,3-1,5 kilo pumpkin: 
about half a cup of risotto rice, 
1 medium onion, 
3-4 cloves of garlic, 
1 medium beet, 
4 tbsp capers 
1 chilli, 
cinnamon, ground cumin and cardamom, 
salt, pepper, 
75 grams of butter, 
olive oil and 
100 grams of grated Parmesan. 

And of course the above said pumpkin and its insides. A couple of things about the ingredients: I decided to fill the pumpkin with a risotto style rice and, also, add cheese to this combination, but you can easily turn this recipe in a vegetarian star by using soy or coconut milk/cream, in which case a slightly more oriental touch of aromas could be in case. For the pumpkin, pick a healthy, sturdy one, with no visible marks or soft areas – those can give you trouble in the oven. You need to remove the insides of the “beast” before beginning, but don’t throw it away, you’ll integrate it in the rice. Also, make sure you don’t throw the top of the pumpkin, you’ll use it later.

• To start things of, cook your beet in the oven. First wash the root vegetable, pat it dry, place it on a piece of tin foil, splash a small amount of olive oil on the beet, some salt then close the foil on the vegetable, creating a wrapper that still holds enough room for the steam to build in there. The cooking time depends on the size of the beet, in this case it took 45 minutes. The vegetable is done when you can easily stick your knife through it. When the beet is done, remove the foil, let it cool down then finely cut it -  set aside. 
• Next, start making your risotto by cooking the finely diced onion and garlic for a bout 4 minutes on high heat, in some olive oil. Next add the beet,  the capers and the pumpkin insides (you won’t be able to use all of it, so keep around 1 cup of the finely diced pumpkin “entrails”). Cook the vegetables for another 3 -5 minutes. Add in the rice and all the spices and cook them for a minute before adding the liquid – use only stock or add wine, if you feel like it (1 part wine to 3 parts stock, make sure you simmer the wine down before adding the rest of the liquid).You need to cook the rice to about 90% done, so make sure you taste your rice -  it should take around 20 minutes on a medium high heat. 
• Remove the rice from the stove, add in the butter and mix things. 
• Next, start filling the pumpkin with the creamy rice – add a couple of tbs. of rice and top those with a heavy layer of cheese. Keep going until you’re almost at the top -  don’t completely fill the pumpkin up t the top, it will need some space to bubble up when the insides  start cooking. 
• Place top on the pumpkin and put in an oven tray, with some oven proof paper, on medium heat and cook for about 30 minutes. 
• You can choose to serve the pumpkin whole and cut it at the table or slice it yourself before plating, either way make sure to add some green to the dish with some chopped  parsley or oregano or basil or thyme or mint. Pick one already. And then eat, you’ll like it. 

Oh, and I can’t end this recipe without making this point: you can always use bacon in cooking the rice, just saying, no pressure……

Roasted Chicken with Spicy Brussels Sprouts | You've Got Meal!

This dish is another one that here, in the YOUVEGOTMEAL! kitchen, sooths us when the cold starts banging at our door. For me, any roasted meat does that trick and the spicy, lemony  (also adorable) cabbage goes really well with it.

For the meat use a couple of chicken pieces, upper and lower leg, a breast with bone (you can choose to cut it in half), the drums of the wings, you get the idea – the meaty parts. 

Mix some white flour with some ground pepper, smoked paprika and turmeric (about 1 tsp of each). Wash and pat dry the meat, then  coat the chicken in the flour until has a light layer all over. Heat up some olive oil and cook the floured meat on all sides until golden, shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes. 

Next, arrange the meat in an oven tray, cut around 300 grams of potatoes into cubes and place them aside the meat. Sprinkle some more olive oil, salt, pepper and put the tray in the oven on medium high heat for about 30-40 minutes.

For the sprouts: 

500 grams of cabbage, 

a thumb size of ginger, grated, 

1 handful of chopped green onions, 

2-3 garlic cloves chopped, 

the juice of 1 lemon, 

salt pepper, olive oil. 

Put everything into an oven tray that can be covered with a lid, making sure to coat the sprouts with all the flavors. The cabbage will only take around 15 minutes  to cook, so wait before putting them in the oven, next to the meat. I like the sprouts to cook whole, you can choose to cut them in half or quarters, but be warned that the cooking time will drop.

Plate the meat, spuds and sprouts and sprinkle some more green onions (or chives) on top.

Enjoy,

Chicken with Porcini Mushroom

For me, when someone says porcini, I get a tingling in my fingers. These are, in my humble opinion, the best mushrooms you can get or forage (let’s leave the wonderful truffles out of this, shall we? They might be mushrooms as a species, but you can’t make a stew out of them). And, for me, porcini have a different background, as they were introduced to me by the one of the most incredible people in the world, meaning my grandmother. She used to pick them herself in the forest or buy them from other foragers and I loved every tiny bit of that mushroom, any way she would cook it for me: in a stew, with different meats, grilled, boiled, didn’t matter. She was also very picky with her mushrooms: she only used young, fresh porcini, that had no sign of disease or bruising and she didn’t hesitate to throw any mushroom that wasn’t up to some very high standard. Oh, and another thing, she only eats 2 kind of mushrooms: porcini and honey fungus. Anything else, she threw away…  Honestly, nothing else. Bit weird, but she still is amazing and a great inspiration for me. 

So, when I went to visit her a couple of weeks ago, she gave me half a kilo of porcini that she pre-boiled and froze for me. What can I say, I AM her favorite grandson. So, with the mushrooms and my grandmother in mind, I decided to make a dish using the beautiful porcini. Now, chicken wasn’t a choice because I just love it, this recipe works great with some game poultry, quail or pheasant, but chicken breast is plain enough to absorb any spices you throw at it and it doesn’t outshine the porcini, so it’s a viable solution for this dish.

So, 500 grams of boiled porcini means that you can use about 300 grams of fresh ones or about 75-100 grams of dried mushrooms. When using the pre-boiled ones the advantage is that you don’t  have to cook it very long, but with the fresh ones, you get a bit more flavor. 

The meat: 1 free-range (special thanks have to go to my mother for this one) chicken breast, deboned. 

Also: 

2 tbs. of chopped fresh sage, 

a red onion, diced, 

3-4 crushed garlic cloves, 

a spicy chili, 

ground fennel seeds and cloves, 

2 bay leaves, 

Greek yoghurt, 

olive oil, 

salt and pepper, 

some rose wine (go Provence here, the Bordeaux style ones can prove to be a bit too strong for this kind of meat. If using game poultry, replace with red) 

(optional) some turmeric. 

Start of by heating up 3 tbs of olive oil in a heavy base pan, add the sage and cook it for 30 seconds, enough to create a nice and crispy outcome. Add in the chicken, cut however you want, and cook it for 5 minutes, coating it constantly with the sage. Next add the onion, garlic and chili and cook for another 3-4 minutes, after which add the boiled mushrooms, also diced. Add in the spices. Mix everything together and cook for 2 minutes, the add about 1 glass of wine. Bring to a boil on high heat, then reduce to a medium low and let it simmer until the liquid is reduce to half. In the end, add a couple of tbs. of Greek yoghurt and, optional, you can chop some parsley on the dish. Plate it, pour yourself some more of the wine and raise the glass for grandmothers everywhere, be they picky about their mushrooms or not.

Enjoy,

PS:  if using game poultry, make sure to lightly coat the meat in some flour before cooking it. This will create a nice caramelized exterior, as well help the sauce thicken.

Lebanese- Inspired Salad

You’ll love this dish it has intense taste, a good level of sourness and some nice crunch, and it all mixes incredibly with the hummus. If you think about the crunch in the bread and the tangy dressing you can realise that it was inspired but the very famous Levant salad- fattoush.

So, grab yourself a romaine lettuce head coarsely cut, some tomatoes - diced, a skinless cucumber -diced, a couple of radishes – thinly sliced (I didn’t have those to use, but they work great). Mix the veggies together. 

Now for the crunch part: take some pita breads and carefully insert a knife in the middle in order to separate the two sides so you can cut the pita in half (basically, this bread is a like a giant, very thin, empty on the inside doughnut, that you want cut in half in order to obtain 2 slick sheets of bread). Use a brush or your fingers (whichever tastes better J) to very lightly coat the bread with some olive oil, then pop it in the pre-heated oven, high heat, for a minute, or until it reaches a dark brown color, similar to caramelized sugar. Remove the bread from the  oven and cut/brake it in to pieces for the salad. 

For the sour part, I mixed in some olive oil, about 2 tbs, the juice of half a lemon, 1 tbs of honey, a crushed garlic clove, some salt and pepper together (use a mortar and pestle to crush the garlic and mix the sauce in there), the result will be a tangy sauce that will counterbalance perfectly the rich hummus. For the traditional taste of fattoush, replace the lemon, or part of it with pomegranate molasses or juice. A different take would also be to add in even a couple of pomegranate seeds to the salad, that, besides giving great flavor to the sauce, also brings in for you some very nice, vibrant color.

And one last thing, the pita bread chips and some light aioli sauce= match made in heaven. 

Enjoy, 

Caramelized Chicken with Coconut Rice

The way I imagined this dish to look was a red/yellow color combination, but I didn’t have enough time to follow through on my initial plan to cook the chicken into red, so  I opted for a caramelized version of the meat, still in contrast with the coconut rice, that had a powerful yellow color from using turmeric. All of this combined with a fragrant green from using chives makes a lovely dish, with a gorgeous visual appeal, that also packs some great taste.

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