Food and Recipes: July 2015 Archives

So that's my official recipe, which I now have printed out.  I adapted this to fit nicely into my square baking tray which is 20cm x 20cm. 

And here's the pictorial story .. :)

Everything laid out

Mostly measured out

The dry ingredients and the butter for the biscuit base.  I use a food processor to blitz the rolled oats and coconut until fine.  You could achieve a similar effect with a packet of biscuits, but I think this has less salt so would rather do it this way.

The caramel filling is simple - just sweetened condensed milk, golden syrup and butter

The base pressed into my baking tray.  Cook that up for ten minutes

Mix in all the filling ingredients

Simmer for a few minutes til it thickens a bit

Pour over the cooked biscuit base, then bake this for fifteen minutes

After baking, allow to cool.

This is with the chocolate topping.  The oil helps keep the chocolate soft and not super brittle.  I think I overdid the red/green colour correction here.

And underdid the red/green colour correction here.  It takes probably at least an hour for the chocolate to set, depending on how much you let the filling cool before topping it.

I really should make more effort at my food photography.  Like made this nicely squared off... 

Oh well.  It still tastes pretty awesome :)

The other week I had a hankering to cook Chicken Kiev - from scratch.  I'd never done it before.  So I researched lots of recipes, and averaged them together into something I thought would work.  I did this for four chicken breasts - I could easily halve that for two. 

So starting with the garlic butter.  I've got here half a pack (125g) butter, a quarter of a bunch of Coles parsely, and four cloves of garlic.

Chop up the parsely, mince the garlic, and soften the butter.

Mix it all up

Garlicky, buttery goodness!

Lay it out on some baking paper

And roll into a sausage

I stuck this in the freezer for a couple of hours - and it had pretty much frozen.  Didn't stop it all leaking everywhere during the cooking process though!

So now onto the chicken.

We have four chicken breasts, some flour, eggs and breadcrumbs.

Here's the chicken after stuffing with the garlic butter.  This was just a matter of cutting a small hole with a knife and expanding it a bit with my fingers.  Next time I'd sew the hole shut with a toothpick, as they leaked.

Pictured here is 50g flour (seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper), three beaten eggs and 50g breadcrumbs - but I used at least double the flour and breadcrumbs, and you'd probably want even more for a nice thick coating, and probably another egg or two too.  Next time I'd also do the flour and breadcrumbs on a plate, as the chinese containers were a little small.

So the coated chicken.  My fingers got very sticky and I kept pulling bits of crumb off.  Next time I'll definitely do a full two coats of crumbs.

So then fry them for a few minutes each side on a reasonably hot frying pan and a goodly amount of oil to get them golden.

And bake for about twenty minutes.

Served here with asparagus caesar and herbed potatoes.

Definitely a winner of a dish, and I'd like to get a bit more practise at it!

Recipes referred to:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/666649/chicken-kievs
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4748/modernday-chicken-kiev
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/wild-garlic-chicken-kiev
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/jun/07/how-cook-perfect-chicken-kiev
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/chicken-kiev/#xDvrhzbwy01Xu8ez.97
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/29207/classic+chicken+kiev