Showing posts with label Nigella Lawson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigella Lawson. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Pecan Golden Syrup Bundt Cake




My house has been full these last few weeks, filled with family and good times.  Of course, it has kept me busy but it is a joy to have more folks to feed.  Since I am always looking for new ideas, I am delighted to take part for the first time in Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipe Challenge.  

Here’s how the Random Recipe Challenge works:   Number your cookbooks and choose one randomly.  Or make a big pile of them and pick one out with your eyes closed.  Then make the first recipe on the first random page you open.   Since I belong to EatYourBooks,  this was very easy.  Right now I have 89 cookbooks registered (Don’t ask me how many aren’t yet!) so I asked my daughter to pick a number and she said 11.  I counted down and the 11th book on my list is Nigella’s Kitchen.  One of my very favorite cookbooks!  The random page I opened to was her Pecan Maple Bundt Cake, which I had yet to make, so it was perfect.  I don’t have maple syrup in Cairo but thankfully the Random Recipe rules allow for substitutions for availability or dietary restriction.  So here goes.

Ingredients
For the pecan filling:
1 rounded 1/2 cup or 75g plain flour
2 rounded tablespoons or 30g soft unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 150g pecans (or walnuts) (I used pecans, of course.) 
125ml maple or golden syrup (I used Lyle’s Golden Syrup.)

For the cake:
2 1/2 cups or 310g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda or bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 rounded 1/2 cup or 125g soft unsalted butter
Scant 3/4 cup or 160g sugar
2 eggs
1 cup or 250ml sour cream or crème fraîche
1–2 teaspoons confectioners' or icing sugar, for decoration

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease your Bundt pan. 


First, make the filling.  Toast your pecans in a baking pan for about 10-15 minutes in the preheating oven.  Watch them carefully so they don’t scorched.  Chop the pecans roughly.


Mix the flour with the butter using a fork.  You want it to look like small crumbs.  


Stir in the cinnamon, chopped pecans and golden syrup.  This will be very thick, almost solid.   Set aside.





To make the cake batter, measure your dry cake ingredients into a small bowl: the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Mix well. 


Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl with beaters or in your standing mixer.   


Then beat in one tablespoon of the flour mixture, then one egg.  


Then add another tablespoonful of flour mixture followed by the second egg.


Add the rest of the flour mixture and beat while adding the sour cream.  The batter will be very thick.



Spoon just more than half of the cake batter around the Bundt pan.  Spread the batter up the sides so that you make a channel of sorts in the middle of the batter.  This is to avoid having the filling leak out while baking.


Use a tablespoon to fill the channel in the batter with your pecan filling. 



Cover with the remaining batter and smooth the top. 



Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.   Check with a cake tester after 30 minutes.  Make sure to get the tester into the cake part because the filling will probably not come out clean, even when the cake is baked through.


Let the cake cool for 10-15 minutes and then loosen the sides with a small spatula or knife.  Turn the cake out.  


Cool completely and then decorate by sprinkling with icing or confectioners’ sugar.  This cake was gone in a heartbeat!  I think they even licked the plate. 




Enjoy!

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Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Butterflied Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon


As I mentioned back when I wrote the post about Rosemary Lemon Chicken Stroganoff, this is one of my favorite meals to make for guests.  This is also one of my favorite meals to make when it’s just us.  My original post didn’t include photos of the first recipe since the focus was what to do with the leftovers, so I thought I would document making the rosemary lemon chicken itself as I made it the other night.  Two chickens so we would have leftovers again!  You should do the same.

Ingredients  
2 whole chickens, cleaned and trimmed of extra fat
6 long sprigs fresh rosemary or more to taste. 
2 lemons
2 purple onions
Olive oil
Maldon or other flakey sea salt
Black pepper

Method
Using a sharp knife or kitchen scissors, cut along the backbone of each chicken.



Turn the chicken over and press down on the breast to spread it flat.


Put the chickens into a large freezer bag.

The 2 1/2 gallon Hefty bags work great. (The link says 2.5 Qt. mistakenly.
The jumbo bags are really 2.5 Gallon.  Get your act together, Hefty!) 


Pull the needles off of the sprigs of rosemary and throw them in the bag with the chicken.



Cut your lemons in quarters and pop them into the bag.  Squeeze them from outside so the rinds and juice stay in the bag. 




Cut your purple onions in quarters and add them to the bag.


Sprinkle in the sea salt and black pepper.  Pour in olive oil and then close up the Ziploc and give the whole bag a good mix around.



Try to distribute the lemons and onions farily around and then open the zipper just a little and squeeze out as much air as possible, before closing the zipper again.


Marinate chicken for a couple of hours in the refrigerator, or overnight—even a couple of days.  (Or freeze it.  Just make sure to thaw and bring the chicken to room temperature before roasting.)

Preheat oven to 425°F or 220°C.  Once the chicken is at room temperature, dump the whole bag out into a baking pan which has been drizzled with a little olive oil.


Redistribute the lemon and onions pieces around the chicken and put some of the rosemary on top.  Drizzle the chicken liberally with more olive oil.


Roast for 45 minutes.  Serve with bits of onion and even lemon, if your fellow eaters are willing.  My mother-in-law is the only person I know who will eat the roasted lemons but there are surely more people in the world who would and I just haven’t met them.  Anyhow, they look pretty on the plate. 



I serve this with couscous and use all the lovely lemony drippings off the chicken to further moisten the couscous on the plate. 




Enjoy!

N.B. This recipe was created by Nigella Lawson. The original can be found in this book and you should buy one because it is full of wonderful recipes, written by one of my food heroes. 

Friday, June 24, 2011

Rosemary Lemon Chicken Stroganoff

Rosemary Lemon Chicken Stroganoff is made with the delicious leftovers of Nigella's Rosemary Lemon Chicken. You'll make extra just to be able to make this, I promise!

A few years ago, my cousin Connie sent me an email asking for family recipes to include in a cookbook she was compiling.  They didn’t have to be originals but they did have to be family favorites. Among those I sent her was Nigella Lawson’s Butterflied (Spatchcocked) Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary  because it is one of my go-to dishes both for company (because it can be prepared ahead and can just be stuffed in the oven when the guests are arriving) and even for weekday dinners (for the same make ahead reason.)

When it is just us, there are hardly any leftovers because I do one whole chicken with a couple of breasts (preferably on the bone for flavor) tucked in the pan extra. When we have guests, my congenital Cajun defect will not allow me to only cook how much I think people can reasonably eat; I have to cook more than enough. So, then, sometimes there are leftovers.  In the past, the leftovers have languished in the fridge, possibly being nibbled on as cold chicken, re-warmed chicken or even made into chicken salad. Inevitably, I end up throwing some away.

The last time we had leftovers, I did something different. I took all the chicken off the bones, discarded the lemon rinds, deglazed the pan and tipped the whole rest of the dish, including the pan juices, into a freezer bag and then popped it into the freezer. My plan: Rosemary Lemon Chicken Stroganoff (although I hadn’t actually named it yet) to serve over pasta. First, of course, you'll have to make the original recipe! And then use the leftovers for this lovely dish. 


Rosemary Lemon Chicken Stroganoff

Ingredients
Leftover chicken with lemon and rosemary – deboned, lemon discarded, plus juices from the deglazed pan. I had about a pound of stuff altogether.
2 heaping tablespoons of Greek yogurt
1/4 cup full cream
1 tablespoon corn flour or starch (and a little more cream to dissolve it in)

Method
Remove the bag from the freezer and thaw. I cut the bag apart and popped the whole frozen lump into a pan with a lid and covered, over a low heat. Once it is thawed enough, remove the lump from the pan and chopped the meat on a cutting board.

In retrospect, I surely should have chopped my chicken up before I froze it. Live and learn. Return the chicken to the pot and add the yogurt and cream.   


Turn the heat way down because you don’t want it boil.  Dissolve the corn starch in a little more cream and add it to the pot.

Cook slowly for just a couple of minutes until it thickens. Grind in a little more fresh black pepper. That is it!

The yogurt adds a little more tartness to the already present lemon flavor and it is delicious.

Serve over the pasta of your choice (my choice is almost invariably linguine) with a side dish of, perhaps, steamed broccoli. 

Enjoy!


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