Waldorf Slaw with fried spicy chicken

I do believe I have thoroughly covered fried chicken on here previously, so excuse the gloss over, this isn’t too different from previous versions, apart from the fact that white meat is used.


Waldorf Slaw
Savoy Cabbage
1 Apple, granny smith or lemonade are good
Walnuts, toasted and chopped roughly
Red onion, thinly sliced
Mayonnaise
Lemon juice

• Remove the tough outer leaves from the cabbage, peel off enough leaves for the salad and blanch in boiling salted water for a minute, transfer cooked leaves to an ice bath until cool, thoroughly drain and pat dry, slice thinly.
• Slice the apple thinly into matchsticks and toss in a bowl with lemon juice. Add a dollop of mayonnaise. Toss through the cabbage, onions and walnuts, taste and season with salt and lemon juice.

Fried Chicken Strips

• Place buttermilk, 1% salt, cayenne pepper, hot sauce into a zip-lock bag.
• Cut chicken breast lengthways into 1cm slices, place in the bag and massage, put in the fridge and let it rest at least 4 hours.
• Add to a bowl, by weight, 1 part wheat starch, 1 part tapioca starch, 1% salt, 2% garlic powder, 1% cayenne pepper, 1% baking soda. Mix well.
• Tip the chicken out into a colander. Set up a rack over a sheet pan. Take strips of chicken, knocking off excess buttermilk and toss in the starch. Arrange the coated chicken on the rack. When done refrigerate for 30 minutes, remove before heating the oil.
• Heat a few inches of oil in a heavy based pot, I usually use rice bran or canola, but any frying oil, or fat, is fine.
• Set up a rack to transfer the fried chicken to, near the pot is good. I usually have a rack with raw chicken on the right, pot in the middle and rack for cooked chicken on the left.
• When the oil is at 190ºC start carefully laying strips of chicken in the oil, don’t overcrowd the pot, you’ll need to do it in batches.
• Cook for 2–3 minutes, remove to rack and drain.
• Toss the cooked chicken in your favourite hot sauce and serve in a soft bun with Waldorf slaw and most importantly crinkle cut pickles.

Salad days

The new year is a great time to catch up on the healthy eating after the ever over indulgent Christmas period. Salads heavy with grains and sprouts seem to be my main go to when I feel I have delved too much into gluttony, filling, satisfying and healthy! My basic salad is pretty much the same and things get swapped in and out to customise as I feel like, poached chicken or paneer, rice; quinoa or wheat, you get the picture. At the base it’s usually vinaigrette, red onion, sprouts (home done puy and mung if I’ve thought ahead a couple of days), celery (always, I love it) leaves and all, parsley. And then it’s usually an addition of whatever I have handy in the fridge or garden, thyme flowers, shaved broccoli florets, radish, leftover roast chook.


There are things I tend to avoid in my grain salads mainly because they don’t last in the fridge and when I make a salad there’s always leftovers for lunch the next day. Green leaves, they don’t last in a dressing at all and quite frankly I usually have a metric ton of celery greens and parsley in there any way. Tomatoes, they turn to mush in the fridge and I’m not really a fan of them in any salad unless it’s a tomato based one. Eggs, unless it’s a perfectly soft boiled one sliced in half and placed on each serving.


Sprouts are a great way to get a bunch of flavour into a salad, and even better if you can prep them yourself. Get a jar and place in a third of a cup of seeds (mung, lentils, mustard), rinse with water and let soak for 4–8 hours. Drain and cover with a cloth or tea towel, keep out of direct sunlight. Rinse and drain daily. Sprouts should be good to eat in 2–3 days, once the sprout is the length of the seed.


Nuts and seeds are also add good texture and flavour, I’m a bit guilty of going crazy with pumpkin seeds, I can’t help myself. Try toasting some nuts and seeds in a dry pan with a bit of salt and chilli then giving it a bash in a mortar and pestle, or roughly blitz in blender. Adds a bit of crunch and spice scattered over the top.

Grains, the staple are so easy to cook once you have the hang of them, they all pretty much get cooked the same way just the timing is different. Bring 1 cup of grains and 3 cups of salted water up to the boil, cover and reduce heat to low. Rye and Wheat take about 30 minutes, Red and Black Rice about 18 minutes.


Dressings are pretty simple, a quick vinaigrette is my usually go to, 1 part acid, 2 parts oil, Dijon mustard and salt, pour all in a jar and shake. Cider vinegar is always on hand for this, but lemon juice, white wine vinegar are all good too. Tahini makes quite a nice eggless mayo, use the above quantity for the base dressing, perhaps a little less oil and add a little crushed garlic, add a good tablespoon of tahini and blitz with an immersion blender, goes well with some grilled paneer.

Smoked mackerel potato salad

Not much beats a nice new potato gently cooked until tender dressed in a little vinaigrette, well that was until I decided to put a Christmas dinner idea to the test, well half an idea anyway. I plan on spit-roasting a rolled pork belly on the day, I’ve ordered a nice 4-5 kg piece, and I figured that there would be a decent amount of fat rendering out so I should just shove a tray of potatoes under it to catch the fall off and roast away at the same time, which got me thinking about cooking in fat and how chips cooked in dripping are far superior to any of those canola/soy/peanut fried things.


I set about with a bunch of new potatoes, a few tubs of dripping and a good stalk of rosemary. In a cast iron dish dripping got melted down with the fragrant rosemary and when finally liquid, the potatoes submerged. Then the dish was covered and placed in a low oven for a couple of hours until the potatoes were tender, the house was filled with beautiful roast beef aromas. I let the lot cool before transferring to the fridge to set up, well not before testing one of course.


The next day I spied probably one of my favourite ingredients at the local shops, smoked mackerel, and with the potatoes sitting in the fridge and it being a balmy 30ºC I figured a nice light salad was the best option. Potatoes gently encouraged out of their fatty tomb and split lengthwise, placed cut side down in a hot cast iron pan to become crisp and golden, flipped over and sprinkled with salt then set aside on some paper towels. Medium eggs placed in cold water, brought to the boil, then 3 minutes of bubbling before being dunked into ice water. Mackerel flaked. Celery sliced on a heavy bias. Tomatoes quartered and seeded. Capers rinsed. Parsley picked over. Red onion diced. A fifty-fifty vinaigrette made, 1 part olive oil, 1 part cider vinegar, dijon mustard and a dash of salt. The potatoes now just a little warm, arranged on a plate with generous amounts of the flaked fish scattered about, the vegetables evenly deposited, topped with an egg cut in twain, garnished with a generous scattering of parsley and capers, finally healthily dressed with the vinaigrette.

Red rice salad

I must admit I don’t get to the Sunday markets as often as I’d like, maybe it’s living all the way in the back end of Karori, or just pure and simple laziness, but quite often best laid plans end up being a coffee and eggs on the couch, or if it’s a sunny day, the couch, who am I kidding! When I do manage to drag myself and better half out of the house at a halfway decent hour to hit the markets I always vow I must come every week and proclaim about how much we’re missing out on, which is completely and utterly true. Well we managed it last Sunday, and I managed to latch on to possibly one of my favourite greens, beet tops, unfortunately almost never seen on a supermarket vegetable shelf, well not in good nick anyway. Sautéed and mixed with ricotta and hazelnuts, they make a great ravioli filling, or as below a great addition to a salad.


Red Rice Salad
1 cup red rice
½ cup hazelnuts
capers (in salt)
1 fennel bulb
1 red onion
1 large purple carrot
1 celery stalk
1 large bunch of beet greens
1 clove of garlic
Handful of parsley and celery greens

Place the rice in a pot and pour in 3 cups of water, bring to a boil, put on a lid, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes. Strain and toss in some good oil (olive or hazelnut), season with a salt, mustard and cider vinegar. I like to dress the rice now so I know the base is well seasoned and will only need tweaking at the end.


Get a pan on a medium high heat, slice up the beet greens, crush the garlic. Heat a dash of oil in the pan, sauté the garlic but don’t brown, toss in the beet greens and cover. Cook until tender. Toss the greens through the rice.

The rest is pretty straight forward. Roughly chop the hazelnuts and toast in a dry pan. Slice and dice the fennel, onion and celery. Soak the capers. Either grate or use a mandolin on the carrot. Finely chop the parsley and celery greens.

Toss all the ingredients together, taste and season with salt (smoked salt is really good with these earthy flavours), adjust the acid with some cider vinegar, and a little heat doesn’t go amiss add a dash of hot sauce if you like.

Sprouts, mayonnaise & chicken

Get sprouting! Well I have been anyway, I’ve been getting into salads, especially heavy on the celery, greens and all, using ingredients I haven’t really thought of using before, like whero peas, wheatberries and quinoa, but most of all I’ve really been digging the humble sprout. The thing about the sprout is you have to have a little forethought or a production line set up as quite frankly they are ridiculously overpriced to buy pre-sprouted. On a positive note, sprouting is easy as pie.

Place quarter of a cup of mung, puy lentils or whero peas in a clean glass jar, rinse and drain a couple of times and then fill up with water, cover with a tea towel and leave overnight. The next morning, drain off the liquid, give the jar a jostle so the seeds aren’t languishing in a pool of water. Repeat the rinse and drain for 3-5 days until the sprouts have got enough sprout for you, 2 days is usually enough for a nice short sprout, but I wouldn’t leave it longer than 5. They’ll keep covered in the vegetable crisper for a couple of days.

I was going to assume that you know how to make mayonnaise before I got into the coleslaw, but I figure I should give it a quick once over. This method is for a stick blender. Use a jar that is just big enough to fit your blender, it’s preferable that the opening is smaller in width than the body of the jar. Add one egg yolk to the jar along with a dash of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Start running the blender and slowly drip in some neutral oil, I use a mix of olive and canola(rapeseed), when the emulsion has formed you can start pouring in the oil more liberally, for a lighter mayonnaise you can alternate between oil and water, you should be able to get about 50% water content. Taste and season with salt and vinegar. If the mayonnaise doesn’t thicken try adding more oil or another yolk, if the emulsion breaks or doesn't form, pour the mix into a jug and in the jar add an extra egg yolk and slowly blitz in the broken mayonnaise. It should keep in the fridge for a couple of months.


Anyway back on track to the slaw, take a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise and mix in a crushed clove of garlic, let it sit in the fridge a while so the garlic can mellow a bit. Thinly slice a fennel bulb and red onion, on a heavy bias slice some celery and its leaves, slice the larger green leaves thinly and just roughly tear the smaller yellow ones. Toss it all together in a bowl with some sprouts, crushed pumpkin seeds, smoked salt and the garlic laced mayonnaise.


An ideal match to the crisp cool slaw is a hot and spicy chicken wing, or in this case drumstick, I've covered hot wings so many times on here it's not funny but this time it's my oven "fried" chicken drumsticks. You end up with a crusty crisp coating and fall apart moist flesh below. In a large bowl add a good few tablespoons of tapioca starch, you can get this from a good Asian supermarket or here in New Zealand pick up arrowroot from the baking section of the supermarket, it's not arrowroot but just tapioca starch, mix in a sprinkling of salt, smoked paprika, hot chilli powder/flakes, spice it up as hot or mild as you like, and coriander powder. Toss the drumsticks in the mix to coat and place on a plate, cover and refrigerate overnight. When you're ready to cook, preheat the oven to 220°C, prepare another mix of tapioca starch and spices, toss the drumsticks in the powder to coat, arrange on a baking tray and cook for 30–45 minutes turning twice. If you really want to go for extra lush drumsticks melt some butter with hot sauce and crushed garlic and when the chicken is fresh out of the oven toss in the butter sauce, you won't regret it but your hips might.

Wheatberry salad

I feel I may be taking inspiration yet again from the same source, but it has been a good few months of eating rather too healthy and no drinking so I'm enjoying heading out now and then, and I am a creature of habit, when I find somewhere/thing I like I tend to stick to it. If you're unsure where I'm talking about I suggest heading over to my Twitter or Instagram feed.

Toast one cup of wheatberries in an oven set to 170°c for 10 minutes, transfer to a pot and cover with 3 cups of water and a good dash of salt. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce the heat to a minimum. Cook for 30–35 minutes, or until the wheatberries still have a bit of a chew but are generally tender. Drain the wheatberries and transfer to a bowl, toss through some good olive oil, I also like to adjust the salt levels now too, a few flakes of a good smoked salt does wonders.

Gently poach a chicken breast in stock with a couple of bay leaves, fennel fronds, parsley and chilli, oh and salt. Leave the cooked breasts to cool in the liquid until it can be safely handled, shred the meat, don't go overboard we still want decent prices of meat, keep the shredded meat in the cooking liquid until ready to serve so it remains moist.

The rest is all just mise en place, finely dice a red onion and fennel bulb, get some sprouts out, sango is a nice spicy choice, a decent portion of micro herbs, very finely chop some parsley and fennel fronds, thin slices of radish make a nice addition, make a dressing, high acid content is the goer for this, good dash of a quality cider vinegar and a nice peppery olive oil seasoned with a bit of smoked salt.

Now it's just a matter of assembly, as with most salads containing leafy greens leave it to the last minute, set aside some of the sprouts and micro herbs to garnish, toss the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl, add the dressing and moisten with a little of the poaching liquid, taste and either season or dress as required. Transfer a portion to a dinner bowl and garnish with some of the herbs and sprouts set aside.

Caesar Salad

Whenever I make up a batch of 13 minute eggs I usually make a couple extra so they can sit in the fridge and be used over the next few days, it seems like a waste of effort to only make one or two when I need them, plus they make a great Caesar Salad dressing. Well my version of a Caesar dressing on my version of the Salad, an easy toss together lunch or light dinner and a great way to use up a glut of cos lettuce.

Dressing
1 very soft egg (13 minute egg)
1 tsp hot mustard
Juice of one lemon
rice bran oil, to start the emulsion
olive oil, to bulk out
salt
pepper
cayenne

Use a whisk to break up the egg, stir in the mustard, whilst whisking slowly, drip-by-drip, pour in the rice bran oil, once a stable emulsion has been formed switch to olive oil, I usually end up using about a fifty-fifty mix of oils, add the lemon juice, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper to taste.

Salad
1 baby cos
Streaky bacon
croutons
red onion

Well it’s all prep and assembly really, firstly I like to cook the bacon, starting in a cold oven to help the fat render, cook it until it’s nice and crisp or as Agent Dale Cooper would say “Bacon, super-crispy. Almost burned. Cremated.”^[1] Remove the bacon from the oven and drain on paper towels.

Using the same tray, toss cubed bread in the hot bacon fat and put in the oven until the bread is golden and crunchy.

Thinly slice the red onion, much like anchovies you’re either a fan of raw onion or not, I love it.

Separate the lettuce leaves and thoroughly wash set aside to drain.

Building the Salad
Garlic confit (or slow roasted garlic)
Anchovies

If you’re making the salad for more than one, and perhaps not everyone appreciates anchovies for  just how awesome they are, this is a simple way to customise the dressing for each serving. So in a clean bowl put in some minced anchovies, to taste, along with a clove or two of some garlic confit, mashed, a large spoon or so of the dressing and mix through.

Build up the salad putting in enough leaves, bacon, croutons and onion to satisfy and gently toss through the dressing.

Warm bean and citrus salad

This recipe was originally created for Urban Harvest, do go check out their website for some great produce and other recipe ideas.

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This is a great way to kill two birds with one stone, take advantage of the abundance of beans available at this time of year and utilise the citrus on offer. It’s not too complicated and definitely not time consuming to make, I used a variety of beans to profit from the various sizes and textures, but if you prefer green beans will do. The salad makes a satisfying light lunch or a ideal salad to accompany a BBQ, the weather giving us all an excuse to dine al fresco.

400 g Beans
2-3 Oranges
2-3 Lemons
Ewes milk feta
Olive oil
Dijon mustard
Mint (optional)

Put a pot of decently salted water on to boil. Pinch (or cut) the stem end of the beans off and discard. When the water is up to the boil, blanch the beans for about 4 minutes, you want them to be almost cooked, still have a good bite, as we’re not shocking them in ice water the beans will continue to cook once strained.

Peel the oranges with a knife and cut the segments by running the knife down each side membrane, or in other words supreme the oranges.

In a bowl combine 1 part lemon juice, 3 parts olive oil, a spoonful of dijon mustard and whisk together, the mustard helps emulsify the oil and juice together to create a homogeneous sauce. Season well with salt and pepper.

When the beans are cooked, drain off the liquid and tip into the bowl with the vinaigrette along with the orange segments, toss the beans and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Arrange the beans on a serving plate, scatter some finely sliced mint over top, crumble over the feta and finish off with any remaining vinaigrette.

Bread salad with haloumi

Bread salad (Panzanella) is a great way to use a chunk of leftover stale of sourdough bread, it can be as light or a heavy as you want and in this case the simple addition of a couple of slices of fried haloumi elevated the salad to a very tasty meal.

The Salad Components:
Stale Sourdough Bread, large dice
Radish, sliced
Cherry Tomatoes, halved
Cucumber, cored and sliced
Mint, chiffonade
Parsley, finely chopped
Red Chilli, sliced
Black Olives, stoned
Capers (in salt, soaked)

Vinaigrette:
Cider vinegar (1 part)
Dijon mustard
Olive Oil (2–3 parts, depends on how acidic your vinegar is)
Salt (not too much as capers and olives are salty)

Mix all the salad ingredients in a bowl (keeping aside a little mint and chilli to dress), add enough vinaigrette to hydrate the stale bread, and allow it to sit for at least half an hour, you don’t want dry bread.

I like to fry the block of haloumi whole with a little oil over a medium heat on both sides until golden brown and warm all the way through and then slice, but if you prefer slice it first and then fry.

Smoked Mackerel

I've been a bit slack on getting my blog posts done, there's a folder on my computer full of images and ideas ready to be written up and sent into the ether, in fact twenty four sub folders. Just this weekend, well Friday night, I've managed to add another three. I need to put on my blogger cap a little more often. Last night I started an endeavour of duck prosciutto spiced with prickly Szechuan pepper, a cure of pork cheek to be smoked and turned into bacon (a few weeks off, due to curing and hanging), and what my dinner will be tonight, confit of pork cheek cooked for 12 hours at 90°C. But I'm not writing about the porky goodness that always seems to grab my attention on this blog, no for that you'll have to wait. Today it's all about fish, Mackerel to be precise.

These are two easy, sub thirty minute meals, well sub 30 minutes if you own a pressure cooker, and if you don't, go buy one. Firstly congee, I've posted about it before, it's a simple and versatile base for any flavour you wish to add, and it's filling. You could do it traditionally if you wish, but that takes a lot of time, what you need is a pressure cooker, one cup of rice and six cups of water, cook on high pressure for 22 minutes and let the pressure drop naturally, then stir like crazy to get a nice porridge texture.


While the rice is doing it's thing and you're not standing at a stove having to stir and make sure it's not sticking etc, get your accompaniments ready. Smoked mackerel; carrot, garlic, and fennel, all sliced paper thin and pickled in mirin and cider vinegar; toasted sesame seeds; sliced chilli, scallions and herbs; sambal oelek; and to gild the lily, an egg yolk, it's going to be raw so go organic or at least free range.

Spoon out your beaten cooked rice into a bowl and make a small well in the centre for the yolk, garnish with the accompaniments, drizzle a few drops of sesame oil over and finish with a splash of soy sauce.


If like me, you made the congee for one, chances are there is a bit of left over smoked mackerel in the fridge, but fear not, it wont go to waste, just whip up a quick niçoise inspired salad. It's a bit of a one pot wonder. Get a pot of salted water on to boil, drop in a few new potatoes, cook for about 8 minutes, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and set aside. In the same water drop in a handful of green beans and cook for about 3 minutes, then pluck out and drop into ice water. Again in the recycled water drop in an egg and cook for 5 minutes, then transfer to the ice water. That's the cooking done.

To assemble this quick and tasty lunch, dinner, or large snack, grab a bunch of your favourite herbs, tear, chop or shred. Pit some olives, please don't use jarred pitted olives, they taste awful. Whip up a vinaigrette, I like 2 parts cider vinegar, 3 parts oil, spoon of dijon mustard, salt and a mashed anchovy. Slice the potatoes in half or thirds and then toss all of the ingredients together, sans the egg. Serve, topping each salad with the boiled egg, shelled and cut in half.

Red wine marinated roast beef salad

This is so simple to prepare, all it takes is a bit of patience or forethought, and a mandoline (or a sharp knife and steady hand). The earthy taste of the carrots pair nicely with the thin slices of medium rare beef, then little explosions of saltiness from the capers, finishing with fresh anise from fennel cleansing the palette ready for the next bite.


Marinate the beef in red wine and garlic for about 8 hours, or overnight, heck longer the better, but you probably wouldn't want to leave it much longer than 24 hours.


Preheat the oven to 200°C, and get a heavy based pan on the heat, preferably one which is oven proof. Pat the beef dry and season well with salt and pepper. Brown the beef on all sides in the pan with a little butter and oil, you want a good brown crust as it adds bundles of flavor to the beef. Once browned place it in the hot oven and cook until medium rare (internal temperature of 55°C).


Let the meat rest for as long as you can, preferably until it's room temperature.


While the beef is resting, slice some carrot on the thinnest setting of a mandoline, put aside some of the carrot slices to use raw, and in a bowl mix the remaining slices with a bit of vinegar, salt and sugar to make a quick pickle. Chop some parsley, and slice some fennel on the mandoline, again thinner the better. When the beef has finished resting, slice it thinly and lay it out on a plate. Garnish with the carrots, pickled carrots, fennel, capers, parsley, and drizzle over a simple vinaigrette (oil, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard, salt and pepper), finally sprinkle over some flaky or kosher salt.

Bread Salad (Panzanella)

Thank goodness there are tasty ways to use up stale bread, we often have some in our pantry, left over dough from pizzas made in to a loaf, baguettes not fully consumed, etc. In the cooler months bread pudding is a good go to for the stale loaf, but when the weather is warm Panzanella is on the menu.


Dice the bread.


Soak the bread chunks in a 1% brine. It should soak for about 20 minutes.


While the bread is soaking prepare the rest of the salad. Start off with the vinaigrette. In a bowl combine together some anchovies, mustard, confit garlic, finely chopped parsley, olive oil and vinegar (I prefer cider vinegar and a ratio of 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar).


Give it a good whisk, making sure the anchovies break down and emulsify into the vinaigrette.


The salad vegetables are all very optional, and you could stick purely with tomato and basil, but I also added some cucumber, red onion, olives and capers. Mix through the vinaigrette.


Drain the bread and squeeze as much liquid out as you can, it doesn't matter if it crumbles, in fact I think it should.


Fold the bread through the rest of the salad, let it sit for at least 10 minutes so the bread has time to soak up the dressing.

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.