Lemon and Garlic Chicken- Slow Roasted Goodness

This turned out to be the perfect dish for us during this weekend. The time spent preparing the ingredients is minimum, but the result is perfect. While the chicken is cooking, you have time to watch some bad TV to do other things around the house, but because is slow roasted, the chicken is very tender and juicy, so nobody will complain.

You use few ingredients, but with great impact and flavor:
1 free range chicken, cut into pieces
2 lemons, cut into chunks (we peeled most of the skin because it was very waxed)
7-8 garlic cloves
some thyme
1 glass of white wine
3 tbsp oil

Place the chicken in an oven tin, add the garlic, thyme and lemon, then the oil and rub the chicken on all sides to soak in the flavors, then pour the white wine. 

Cover the tin with foil and put in a preheated oven for 2 hours at low heat, as Nigella suggests :).

After 2 hours, remove the foil and let the chicken cook for another 45 minutes, at medium-high heat this time.
As you can see, we used free range chicken, it was pretty wild, a fatty compared to the ones we usually find in stores. The skin is thicker and it won't win first place in looks, but the taste is so much better. Cooking it this way just brings out the best in it.

The lemon, alongside the wine and the slow roasting, makes the chicken sooo tender, but also caramelises the skin in the end, when the foil has been removed. Delish!!! Try to think of a reason not to try it....see? No reason not to try it.

Enjoy,

Potato, Broccoli and Spring Onion Mash

We don't post very often recipes for side dishes exclusively, but we had the opportunity recently to cook a very nice and so brilliantly simple mashed potatoes dish that we had to give it the spotlight. We started this with the classical recipe for champ in mind, wich is basically mashed potatoes with butter, milk and spring onions.

With that in mind, we mixed things up a little by using cream instead of butter and we added another ingredient to the recipe, some crisp broccoli.

For 1 kilo of spuds, we used
250 grams of cream (24% fat-feel that cholesterol),
about 4 spring onions and
250 grams of broccoli. 

Regarding the last ingredient,  we only cut the flowers and used only those, finely chopped. The ideea is that the  broccoli doesn't need cooking as it will be mixed with the hot potatoes, and get done by the residual heat. In all honesty, we have to admit that we just ate the rest, all that crunchy goodness.

Boil your spuds, mix them with the cream, salt and pepper,  then mix in the broccoli and the finely chopped onions, only the green part. The result is surprisingly interesting for such a simple recipe, with a nice smoothness from the cream and some subtle  crunch from the greens.

We served it on the weekend with  some slow-roasted lemon and garlic chicken, so stay tuned for that recipe also.

Enjoy,

Meatball Madness (II) Italian Style Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

Meatball madness! What? Again? You can't escape the madness! Especially when you have a lot of them hanging in your fridge, in wich case you can make them shine again with an easy and super delicious sauce. 

Now, the results of the original madness were some meatballs with a definite sweet touch, so I wanted to make a more sour sauce. 

Ingredients: 

the juice of 4 big, ripe, red tomatoes(just use a grater), 
1 medium onion, 
2 garlic cloves, 
200 ml of red wine, 
250 grams of tiny cherry and plum tomatoes, both red and yellow, 
half a handfull of basil leaves, 
salt and pepper

Saute the diced onion and garlic in some olive oil, add the wine and let the liquid reduce by half. Next put in the tomato juice and the tomatoes, chopped basil, salt, pepper and bring to a simmer on low heat, pop in the meatballs and cook with a lid on for about half an hour. a very simple but great tasting sauce that brings a wonderfull zing to the meatballs, so get your madness on and start cooking those meatballs.

Enjoy,

Meatballs Madness (I) Meatballs with Ricotta and Sun-dried Tomatoes

Did you ever think about who was the first person who thought of saying meatball madness? Who ever saw an indefinite amount of meatballs and screamed: This is madness! I keep imagining some 17th century dude, in his tight pants, being absolutely bedazzled by the sight of meatballs. So, with that image in mind, I decided I need to have  reason to say meatball madness, thereforeI had to cook some tasty  beef meatballs. 

I used: 

• 500 grams of minced beef, 
• 1 medium onion, finely diced, 
• 3 cloves of garlic, 
• 150 grams of ricotta cheese,  
• 100 grams of sun dried tomatoes and about 3 tbs of the oil they were kept in, 
• parsley,  
• thyme, 
• 2 eggs, 
• flour, 
• salt, 
• pepper, 
• some oil for cooking. 

Just mix all the ingredients together really well, except the flour. 

Make sure the onion, tomatoes, garlic and herbs are all finely chopped,  so you can mix then evenly.  Add the flour to thicken the composition, I used around 150 grams, both for putting it in the meat and for lightly flouring the meatballs. Heat up some olive oil on medium high heat, and fry you golf ball size meatballs until golden brown on all sides,  shouldn't take long. 

As a side dish, I just boiled some delicious,  fresh green beans and seasoned them as mentioned here. 

This meatball recipe, with  definite Italian influences is light, fresh and a delicious way to bring some ordinary and common meatballs to the next level. The ricotta make them moist and very light. There is definitely gonna be a next time cooking these.

Enjoy,