Savoury oats with braised fennel and chicken

Oats aren't just for breakfast. A savoury concoction can be made by easily substituting milk or water for chicken stock and maybe simmering with a little shallot and garlic. It takes a little to get your head around the fact that the silky lush and oh so meaty tasting concoction are oats, or perhaps it’s just me the has them relegated to the humble position of if cooked in liquid it’s porridge and should be sweet. Other grains such as rice don’t seem to have the problem, rice as a carb on a plate for dinner, or congee a savoury porridge, or as rice pudding a sticky sweet mess, so why not oats?

Savoury Oats
One cup of oats with a diced shallot and two cups of chicken stock are added to a pot over a low heat, stir occasionally to begin with and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring more frequently as the oats thicken. They’re cooked when thick creamy and soft but still with a bit of bite, not sludge. Stir through fennel fronds and a splash of good olive oil. Season with salt.


Fennel Braise
Cut whole fennel into wedges, finely slice an onion, dice a spicy chorizo and toss together in an oven dish, sprinkle over salt and add a generous splash of sweet vermouth, about quarter of cup, cover tightly with foil and bake at 150°C for about two–two and one half hours. The fennel should be meltingly tender but still holding its shape, not a mushy mess.

Chicken
Season and brown chicken thighs all over and add to the braising fennel dish for the last 30–40 minutes.


Sauce
Drain the braising liquid into a saucepan and bring to a very low simmer. Make a paste of one teaspoon arrowroot and two teaspoons of water. Remove the pot from the heat and whisk in the paste. If it doesn't thicken straight away put it back on the heat and stir constantly, it will thicken quickly.

Slowly does it

Well I haven’t really stepped back into the kitchen as yet, maybe still on holiday time, or just lacking a little enthusiasm. I dipped a toe with trying my hand at pulled noodles, which was a fortunate little spark of inspiration, and started a mini affair with all things noodle. So not so much a full on epic of a post that I sometimes rant on about something but a little tiny post of a rice noodle dish that I whipped up on a whim that went down a treat. It uses my now new favourite ingredient, black bean chilli sauce, fermented black beans in a fiery hot chilli oil.

Pork belly and roasted fennel noodles.
Pork Belly
2 Large fennel bulbs
1 Large onion
Black bean chilli sauce
Cooking rice wine

Garnish
Spring onions, sliced
Green chilli, sliced
Coriander
Sprouts, loving radish sprouts at the mo.

Slice the fennel in half and then into wedges, and slice the onion in half and into slices, toss through the black bean chilli sauce and cooking rice wine. Make a bed in a roasting pan with the coated vegetables and place a seasoned scored pork belly on top.

Place into a 220ºC preheated oven and then turn down to 160ºC, cook for about 3 hours. You will need to take it out of the oven now and then to toss around the fennel mix so it doesn’t burn.

Remove from the oven and tip the fennel mixture and cooking juices into a large bowl, cover and set aside, place the pork back in the roasting dish and crank the heat up in the oven, put it back in for about 10 minutes so the rind gets a chance to puff up.


While the pork is cooking, get some noodles onto the boil. Adjust the seasoning of the fennel mix, I ended up putting in a little fish sauce and rice vinegar to balance it.

Take the pork out of the oven and let it rest. When the noodles are cooked drain them and toss them in the fennel mix.

Take a portion of noodles, dripping with all the fennel cooking liquid, and make a bed in a bowl with them, make sure to get a decent portion of the beautiful caramelised fennel in there too. Slice up the pork and lay on top of the noodles, garnish to your hearts content and devour.

Fish Cakes

3 Medium potatoes (about double the amount of fish)
200 grams Smoked Kingfish
1 red onion (half)
Handful of Parsley
1 teaspoon Hot English mustard
1 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
Salt to season

• Peel and boil the potatoes until tender.
• Finely dice the onion, and place half in a bowl, and set the other half aside for the horseradish creme below.
• Add chopped parsley, the mustard and paprika to the bowl, and flake in the fish, make sure you have some nice chunks.
• Use a mouli or ricer to purée the potatoes, do this in a separate bowl as you don’t want to add hot potato to the fish.
• When the potato is cool enough to handle, mix it into the fish and season with salt.
• Take a handful of the potato mix and push it into a floured ring mould, use the back of a spoon to pack it down.
• Carefully remove the cake from the mould and dust with flour, place on a sheet pan.
• Cool the cakes in the fridge for 10–15 minutes, so they can firm up.
• In a heavy pan pour enough oil to come up about 1 cm, I use rice bran oil as it has a decent smoke point and neutral flavour. When the oil is up to temperature, about 180ºC, carefully place the cakes in the oil and cook until golden on both sides.

Horseradish cream
Half a tub of Crème fraîche
2 Tablespoons Salted capers, rinsed
Half a red onion, finely diced
2 Tablespoons Horseradish
Juice of 1 Lemon
Salt to season

Dice up the rinsed capers and mix all ingredients together in a bowl, adjust the seasoning with salt and extra lemon juice if needed, let it sit for a 10 minutes or so, so the flavours can meld and develop.

Pickled Vegetables
Spring onion
Fennel Bulb
Cider vinegar
Olive Oil

Slice up spring onions, dice the fennel bulb, mix together in a bowl with a splash of cider vinegar and olive oil, easy huh.

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Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science public lecture series has started up for 2012, the videos of the lectures, past and present, are available on iTunes. They are informative and entertaining.

I’ve also been having good fun searching my way through google books and google scholar, it’s a treasure trove of cooking and food related information, from 60s magazine recipes to the 1825 treatise The physiology of taste: or, Transcendental gastronomy, which is an interesting read.

Duck Confit

Confit of duck with a citrus fennel salad and green beans. The acidic salad really helps to cut the richness of the duck and green beans clean the palate.

With the prep all done and 24 hours later the duck was ready to cook. I'm cooking it in the slow cooker on warm mode. I spent most of saturday checking the temperatures of a slow cooker filled with water every 30 minutes. On low the water started getting up to 80°C and it looked like it was levelling out, but no it started going up to 100°C. So I tried the keep warm setting next, this thankfully levelled out at 80°C.


I vacuum sealed in a separate compartment some spoons to weigh down the duck.


The duck leg out of the cure and rinsed, ready to dry. Once patted dry it gets placed in the bag and vacuum sealed.


Almost midnight, the duck gets put in to the slow cooker.


9am, the duck is pulled from the slow cooker and allowed to cool before refrigerating.


Out of the fridge at dinner time and ready to get cooked.


Scrape all the fat and jellied cooking liquids of the duck legs.


In a very hot dry pan place the legs skin side down to crisp up it. When the skin is golden and crisp place it in to a hot oven.


Cook until the leg is warmed through.


The skin is crisp but at the same time melts on the tongue. The meat is moist, and falling off the bone tender.

Fennel Salad

The main players: Orange, Lemon, Fennel and Sorrel. I wanted to make something sharp and acidic to cut through the rich fat of the duck.


I toasted some fennel seeds to add another layer of the fennel flavour.


Thin slices of fennel with orange supreme, dusted with the ground toasted fennel seed.


Dressed with some Dijon mustard, orange and lemon juice, herb oil and sliced sorrel. Let this sit for a few minutes so the acid starts to wilt the fennel.

Steak!

Pretty simple meal tonight, rump steak and brandy mustard cream sauce, with fennel salad and sautéed potatoes.


Rump steak just out of the vacuum bag, it got sealed with olive oil fennel tops, sliced garlic, and thyme. Room-temperature and ready for the pan.


Two items this time saw the vacuum machine. Thinly sliced fennel and onion got vacuumed with grapefruit juice and supremes. It was left for about 20 minutes, by then the fennel and onion had softened.


All gone, very tasty, and glad I have some fennel salad left over.

photos

Recipe found in a 1970s preserving cookbook, I cant read it tho!


Bed of veg for some pork shoulder


Pork Shoulder, scored and ready for the oven (it got the tinfoil treatment, see here)



Layers of potato, fennel, and shallots repeated and then topped with stock and baked.

Photo post part 2

Roasted Chicken drumsticks with fennel/potato salad and glazed carrots

Sliced fennel

There are heaps of photos in this post so you'll have to click continue to see them all...