Finger Licking Chicken Drumsticks

While my kids are now bigger, I still clearly remember the days when anything they ate had to be manageable by hand. Brave girls that they are, there was nearly no food that could not be turned into finger food - I can still picture the result of their finger food approach to spaghetti bolognaise, ice cream and noodles; my kitchen, my children and myself covered in drippy mess. You'll be glad to know that I slowly got smarter and started feeding them food that was designed to be eaten by hand; with chicken legs remaining a favourite 5+ years later.

This recipe was renamed "ice cream chicken" by my youngest, because she used to lick at the drumstick like an icecream because she loved the sauce so much. It is still one of her favourites. The recipe comes from a cookbook for feeding small children called "Family Meal Planner" by Annabel Karmel. Annabel Karmel publishes cookbooks of food to feed infants from first solids onwards. They are always a favourite baby shower gift, and if the recipient is anything like me, they will still be used years later. Make sure you double the recipe for lots of yummy leftovers.

Finger Licking Chicken Drumsticks

4 large drumsticks

1 1/2 tbl white wine vinegar

60ml tomato sauce (ketchup if you are in Nth America)

30ml honey

1/2 tbsp dijon mustard

1/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/2 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix all the marinade ingredients together. Add the drumsticks, making sure they are well-covered in the sauce. Cover and refrigerate for two hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 220C. Arrange the drumsticks in a shallow baking dish, and pour over all the marinade. Cook for 35-40 minutes, turning the chicken over after about 20 mins. Serve with rice to help mop up any leftover sauce.

A Really Good Red Lentil Salad

I have only come to love lentils quite recently. For a long time, I unfairly associated them with poverty-stricken student housing days, and Neil from "The Young Ones" (yes the 80s is still quite fresh in my mind). A stodgy, tasteless, boring mass that needed something /anything to give them a bit of flavour and interest. A year or so ago, I discovered how good they can be with a Bill Granger salad that matched green lentils with beetroot, goats cheese and asparagus (you have to trust me that it works), and I now find myself drawn to exploring more and more lentil recipes. Good for the health and the wallet.

This lentil salad comes from Belinda Jeffrey's "100 Favourite Recipes", and is completely more-ish. Whenever I make it, I find it hard not to keep nibbling. The currants and capers work wonderfully together, giving a hit of both sweet and salty, while the spices lend some warm background tastes. Even better, this salad will keep well in the fridge for more than a week, making it perfect for leftover lunches or encore performances.

Spicy Red Lentils With Capers and Currants

adapted from "100 Favourite Recipes" by Belinda Jeffrey

400g dried red lentils

70g currants

1/4 cup capers

1/4 red onion, slivered

DRESSING:

125ml good olive oil

2 tbl red wine vinegar

1 tbl sugar

1 tsp sea salt

ground black pepper to taste

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp mustard powder

1 tsp curry powder

1/8 tsp cinnamon

sprinkling of nutmeg to tatse

Combine dressing ingredients in a bowl, and whisk until they are combined.

Tip lentils into a sieve and check for any small stones or dark lentils. Run the lentils in the sieve under a tap until the water coming through the lentils is clear. Tip the lentils into a saucepan of boiling water. Stir them well and allow to boil for a couple of minutes, until they are just tender. (You are looking for an al dente slight firmness). As soon as they are ready, tip them back into the sieve to drain, shaking out all excess water.

Toss the cooked, warm lentils in the dressing. Add the capers and currants, and leave the salad to cool, stirring regularly. Mix in the onion just before serving. This salad can be eaten warm or cold.

Butterflied Chicken

Sometimes its the journey not the destinaton, and that was the case for me with this recipe. This week's Barefoot Challenge was Butterflied Chicken, a tasty marinated bird that was boned and butterflied. Chosen by Stefany, from Proceed With Caution, this was a great choice for the group because it pushed everyone (or a lot of us) outside our comfort zones. You can check out what everyone else did here. I cook whole chickens often, so that was no problem, and I have butterflied a few in my time as well. But boning one? Never. (If you are a little squeamish maybe skip the next paragraph...)

So I took it slowly. First I cut down either side of the chicken's backbone with my poultry shears. Then I pressed the chicken flat to butterfly it. And then the tricky bit... I slowly worked my hands between the meat and the bones to remove the central bones, leaving behind the bones in the wings, and legs. I then halved the marinade ingredients for making only one chicken, and once marinated, I rolled the chicken up as directed to absorb the flavours all day in the fridge. All going well... but then I cheated, cooking it under the grill in the oven instead of on the BBQ (too cold tonight to be outside).

Apart from being pleased with my new-found boning skill, I really enjoyed the flavour and so did my husband but eldest darling daughter found it a bit too pungent and herby. I'm looking forward to leftovers tossed in a salad tomorrow. Thanks Stefany.

Butterflied Chicken

adapted from Ina Garten

1/8 cup chopped fresh rosemary leaves, plus 2 sprigs

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

1 tablespoons lemon juice

Good olive oil

1 roasting chicken, deboned and butterflied

1/4 lemon, thinly sliced

Mix the chopped rosemary, garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, 1/2 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper together in a small bowl to make a paste.

Place the chicken on a sheet pan, skin side up, and loosen the skin from the flesh with your fingers. Place 1/2 of the paste under the skin of each chicken. Rub any remaining paste on the outside and underside of the chickens. Turn the chicken skin side down and scatter the lemon slices and sprigs of rosemary over each chicken. Season with salt and pepper. Roll each chicken up, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Heat a grill with coals. Spread the coals out in 1 dense layer and brush the grill with oil. Unroll the chickens, place them on the grill and cook for 12 minutes on each side.

The Never-Ending Quest For The World's Best Choc-Chip Cookies

A chocolate chip cookie is one of those rare recipes that almost everyone will have tried to make at some point in their lives. Even trickier, almost everyone will have an opinion on what makes them really good. The NY Times recently ran a big article on what makes for a good choc-chip recipe, but it does seem to vary person to person.

In our family, we are evenly divided on whether they should be thin and crispy (me and littlest daughter) or whether they should be soft and chewy (husband and eldest daughter). Without question, the chocolate is always semi-sweet, and I like to make them quite small (it feels less indecent when the kids want to have three or four). Choc chip cookies also freeze quite well, so if you make a big batch, you can always stash some away for later - I actually like them straight from the freezer. NY Times would definitely disagree with me on size, and not serving them warm! I would love to hear your suggestions if you have any on this???

I plan to share some more recipes for chocolate chip cookies in the future as my search for a definitive "best recipe" continues, and I will try the NY Times recipe for you as well (yes it is a sacrifice). In the meantime, this recipe from Martha Stewart has been called "quite possibly the best batch yet" by my husband. It comes from a special issue magazine called "Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies" that has a really wonderful range of biscuits in it - sadly I can't find it on Amazon, but look out for it on ebay.

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

from "Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies"

2 1/4 cups plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

250g unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

1 tsp cooking salt

2 tsps pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs

2 cups semi-sweet choc chips

Preheat oven to 180C. Whisk together flour and baking soda and put aside. Beat butter and sugars together at medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 mins. Reduce speed to low, then add salt, vanilla and eggs. Mix until well-combined, about 1 min. Stir in flour mixture by hand then stir in choc chips. Do not overwork the batter.

Line oven sheets with baking paper. Spoon out the dough depending on your preferred size of biscuit. I use a heaping teaspoon to give a nice smallish cookie size. Bake until the edges of the cookies turn golden but the centres are still soft, 10-12 minutes. Cool on trays for 2 minutes then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to as week.

Lamb With Provencal Vegetables

Mea culpa. I'm offering an apology to anyone who may subscribe to this feed, and felt they were revisiting some old posts today. I was shifting things around a bit and relabelling some items and I have discovered that any editing (even adding a label) means a re-distribution of an old post. Won't make that mistake again in a hurry.

And now to the lamb. As a good Aussie girl, I love roast lamb in any form, and I have been trying to put together some lamb recipes for this blog. Unfortunately, my incompetence with the camera left me with a couple of recipes that resulted in such horrible shots that I binned them. Time to search for a pretty lamb recipe, and where better to find a pretty recipe than a Vogue cookbook, called "Wickedly Winter". Unfortunately I can't find a link to this book - it was published in 2000 and sometimes shows up on Ebay, so maybe try that if you are interested. Anyway, this roast combination creates a lovely vision on the plate - just carve the chops 2 by 2, pink if you like it that way, and lie beside the very pretty vegetable braise, which I am still enjoying as leftovers. Easy and delicious and pretty, and after all, if it doesn't look good no one will want to eat it.

Rack of Lamb With Roasted Nicoise Vegetables
adapted from "Wickedly Winter: A Vogue Entertaining Cookbook"

1 tbl olive oil

1 brown onion, peeled and chopped roughly

500g zucchini chopped

750g potatoes, chopped to rough 3cm cubes

3 tomatoes peeled and chopped roughly

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1 tbl finely chopped fresh parsely

1 rack of lamb with 8-10 cutlets (fed 2 adults and 2 kids - get another rack if you are serving more people)

Heat olive oil in a large pot (or a very large frying pan), and saute the the onion, zucchini and potato for 5 mins over medium heat. Add the tomatoes and herbs, season and cook for a further five minutes. Tip the vegtables into a roasting tin.

Preheat oven to 220C. Place the lamb racks on top of the vegetables. If you want to keep the racks looking pretty, wrap each bone in some foil to stop them from charring. Roast the racks for 10mins, then reduce the temperature to 180C and roast for 20-30 mins or until cooked to your liking. Remove from the oven and rest the meat, loosely covered with foil for 5-10 mins. Seve with the vegetables.

Pancetta-Wrapped Blue-Eye Cod

Darling husband had a trip to the allergy specialist this week to investigate suspected seafood allergies, which meant a trip to the fish market for me to collect samples of everything we wanted him tested for. Being quite eclectic eaters, I found a very patient staff member and proceeded to circumnavigate one of the larger outlets collecting: 1 clam, 1 oyster, 1 mussel, 1 octopus (damn I forgot the squid), 1 scallop, 1 prawn, 1 crab and 1 lobster. Each went into its own ziploc bag and into a chiller bag. And the great news? He is allergic to none of these, so expect some seafood recipes in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, I picked up a lovely big fillet of blue eye cod for dinner. I like to cook fish at least once or twice a week for the family, and blue-eye cod (or as it is more correctly known, blue-eye trevalla) remains a favourite for all of us. It is a white fleshed fish that is meaty enough to withstand roasting or panfrying without being at all dry or tough. With the freezer challenge from Chris at Mele Cotte in mind, I decided to make a recipe I had spotted earlier on the Cuisine.com.au website for Pancetta-wrapped Blue Eye Cod. I knew I had a parcel of pancetta in the freezer that needed using, and the combination of fish and pancetta is lovely. It creates a pairing of crispy texture with the softness of the fish and salty taste from the pancetta with the creaminess of the fish. This recipe comes from Tobie Puttock who is making a name for himself in Australia as a cookbook author and head chef of Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant in Melbourne.

Pancetta-wrapped Blue-eye Cod

adapted from a Tobie Puttock recipe on Cuisine.com.au

1 600g blue-eye trevalla fillet, skin removed and pin-boned
grated zest of 1 lemon
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
10 thin slices flat pancetta
50ml extra virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200C. Season the fish with zest and pepper. Place fish on an oven tray, and wrap slices of pancetta around the fish, overlapping each one and tucking the edges underneath. Drizzle with good extra-virgin olive oil. Cook in the oven for 20 minutes or until fish is cooked through. (NB The original recipe calls for panfrying the pancetta wrapped fillet before baking, but I didn't, and my pancetta was still crisp and my fish was cooked, so my advice would be don't bother).

The original recipe was served with salsa verde, but I forgot to buy my verde, so I created a salsa from pickle, anchovies, olive oil and lemon juice whizzed together in a blender. Delicious!

Grilled California Pizzas

My second challenge for the Barefoot Bloggers group was a grilled pizza, chosen by Rebecca from Ezra Pound Cake. This was a really great choice for me because I had always dismissed making my own pizzas on a "why bother?" basis. And now I know the answer - because they taste great and are fun. The dough, which had always intimidated me, was really simple to make, and I think you could flavour it to lift it even further (maybe onions?). In fact, if you were having an afternoon drinks / BBQ party, I think it would be perfect to have a whole pile of dough, a range of toppings and let people make their own. Roll on summer!

This week I made the pizzas for the kids with the leftovers of our leg ham and mozarella as they are not yet into anything too tricky on a pizza. They were great, and I reckon an adult version would be even better. In the meantime, I have just one suggestion for you - don't let your grill get too hot because the bottom of your pizza can burn before the topping is bubbling and melting.

Grilled California Pizzas

Ina Garten recipe on FoodNetwork.com

For the dough:

1 1/4 cups warm water

2 packages dry yeast

1 tablespoon honey

3 tablespoons good olive oil

4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading

2 teaspoons kosher salt

For the toppings take your pick:

red onion, thinly sliced

fresh mozzarella

Italian Fontina, grated

mild goat cheese, such as Montrachet, sliced

red or yellow capsicum

prosciutto, thinly sliced and julienned

rocket, cleaned and dried

plum tomatoes, sliced

salami, sliced

basil leaves, cleaned and dried

garlic

For prep: 1/2 cup good olive oil Cornmeal

For the dough, combine the water, yeast, honey, and olive oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add 3 cups flour, then the salt, and mix. While mixing, add 1 more cup of flour, or enough to make a soft dough. Knead the dough on low to medium speed for about 10 minutes until smooth, sprinkling it with flour, if necessary, to keep it from sticking to the bowl.
When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead by hand a dozen times. It should be smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a well-oiled bowl and turn it several times to cover it lightly with oil. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Divide the dough into 6 equal parts and roll each one into a smooth ball. Place the balls on a baking sheet and cover them with a damp towel. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes. Use immediately, or refrigerate for up to 4 hours.

If you've chilled the dough, take it out of the refrigerator approximately 30 minutes ahead to let it come to room temperature. Roll and stretch each ball into a rough 22cm circle and place them all on baking sheets sprinkled with cornmeal.

Light your grill and wait until it's hot. Place the pizzas directly onto the grill and cook on 1 side for 1 minute. Turn the pizzas over and brush with olive oil or garlic oil.

Top the pizzas with any toppings you wish, piling them high. Drizzle each pizza with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Put the lid on your grill and cook for 5 minutes more, until the crust is crisp and the toppings are cooked.