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Tag Archives: One pan dish

John’s Moroccan Chicken

Posted on February 3, 2023 by The quirk and the cool

Well, he’s at it again! My friend John has been busy devising some new recipes.

A few weeks ago, I was treated to a lovely lunch at Palm Beach. It’s certainly a beautiful spot on the northern beaches of Sydney, perfect for a lazy summer lunch.

John’s new creation was Moroccan Chicken, a simple dish full of flavour that’s easy to put together.

You can make the dish super simple by using a good quality store bought Moroccan paste.

Here’s the recipe. It feeds 4 people. You could easily up the quantities if you’re feeding a crowd.

Ingredients

1.2 kilos chicken thighs (about 300g each)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon Moroccan Paste (Charmaine Solomon’s Moroccan Spice Blend is available in Australia)

400g Roma tomatoes cut in half (any smallish tomatoes will do)

4 large sprigs rosemary

4 slices prosciutto

4 lemon slices

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Put the chicken thighs in a large bowl and add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and the Moroccan paste. Mix everything together, making sure the chicken is well coated with the paste.

Cover and leave to marinate in the fridge for several hours or overnight.

Remove from the fridge and transfer to a baking dish and scatter the tomato halves on top of the chicken.

Pour the remaining tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil over the dish. Lay the prosciutto slices on top, with the slices of lemon and the rosemary sprigs. Sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper.

Cover the dish with aluminium foil bake at 200 degrees C, 180 degrees C fan for 30 minutes. Uncover the dish and bake for further 10-15 minutes or until the prosciutto is crisp and the chicken thighs are cooked.

Serve with couscous, crusty bread, a big green salad and a nice glass of something cold!

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Mary Berry’s Caponata

Posted on April 19, 2022 by The quirk and the cool

I recently acquired Mary Berry’s Love to Cook – a beautiful book, with delicious and no nonsense recipes written with Mary’s trademark common sense.

I also recommend from this book Mary’s Victoria Sponge Sandwich – it is gorgeous and a doddle to make!

But this post is all about Caponata, a Sicilian vegetable dish based on eggplant – well that’s what we call them in Australia – Mary of course refers to them as aubergines.

A simple dish that takes about half an hour to make on the stove top.

I wouldn’t presume to alter Mary’s recipe, so here it is. However I did make a half size version in the photos, as I was cooking for one – me! But this size would do two easily.

I also used green olives rather than black, as I prefer them.

Quantities below are for the full size recipe.

Ingredients

8 tablespoons olive oil

2 aubergines (eggplants) cut into 2cm cubes,

2 onions, finely chopped

2 celery sticks, finely chopped

1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into 1 cm cubes

3 large garlic cloves, crushed

500g passata

100g pitted black (or green) olives

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

3 tablespoons capers

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

1½ tablespoons caster sugar

Method

Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large frying pan over a high heat. Add half of the aubergine cubes and fry until browned. Remove the aubergine from the pan and set aside. Heat another 3 tablespoons of the oil and fry the remaining aubergine. Set aside with the rest.

Heat the remaining oil in the pan. Add the onions, celery and pepper and fry over a high heat for 3–4 minutes. Add the garlic and fry for a few seconds. Return the aubergine to the pan, add the passata, olives, vinegar, capers and sugar. Season with salt and black pepper, cover with a lid and bring up to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer gently for 20–25 minutes. Remove the lid and simmer for another 5 minutes, until the sauce has reduced and the vegetables are soft but not mushy.

Sprinkle with parsley and serve with crusty bread, couscous or as a vegetable side dish.

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Lockdown Frittata

Posted on July 25, 2021 by The quirk and the cool

We’re in lockdown in Sydney, and everyone is turning to cooking to brighten up these wintry days – and nights!

My friend and always inventive cook, John, has been putting out some pretty good dishes from his lockdown hideaway in the northern beaches.

This one is a beauty – a frittata using left over roast veggies as well as fresh veggies, goat’s cheese and eggs of course!

Here’s the recipe. The quantities can be varied – use a little more or less as the mood takes you!

Oh and it’s a one pan dish too! Saves on washing up!

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter

2 rashers of bacon

3 Roma tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon of harissa

2 to 3 cups any left over roast veggies, such as potato, sweet potato, kumera, onions, carrots

A handful of broccoli florets (or broccolini)

8 eggs

1/3 cup milk

Salt and pepper

3 – 4 small pieces goat’s cheese, broken up (about a handful)

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

In an oven proof cast iron pan, fry bacon and tomato in the butter on a low heat, until cooked through.

Add harissa and the left over veggies and mix through.

Steam broccoli until just cooked through, then drain.

Whisk the eggs with the milk and salt and pepper, and add this mixture to the pan, keeping on moderate heat, until it just sets.

Place the broccoli and goat’s cheese on top of the frittata.

Transfer the pan to oven. Bake for 10 minutes until the top is set and the cheese is melted.

Serve with a green salad and enjoy!

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Chilli Beef

Posted on February 20, 2021 by The quirk and the cool





This beef dish has to be one of the easiest things you can make and full of flavour! I made it last week for Pancake Tuesday celebrations, as a savoury filling for pancakes. Pancakes stuffed with this beef mix were filling and very tasty. Of course it goes well with rice, pasta, polenta or just on its own! Kidney beans add both bulk and flavour to the dish too. Serve it with extra fresh chilli on the side, sour cream or some grated cheese if you’re going Mexican.

You can throw this dish together provided you have some minced beef, as pretty much everything else would be pantry staples.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion

500g good quality beef mince

1 teaspoon chilli paste or chilli powder 

1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato purée 

1 x 400g tin of kidney beans

Freshly ground salt and black pepper

Fresh chillies, sour cream, cherry tomatoes, grated cheese, parsley or coriander to serve

Method

Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Chop the onion finely, and fry over a medium heat until slightly softened, about 1-2 minutes. Add the beef mince in small spoonfuls, breaking it up so that it cooks evenly. Fry until all the mince is brown, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chilli paste or powder. 

Add the chopped tomatoes, half a tin of water using the chopped tomato tin as a measure and the tomato purée. Drain the kidney beans and add to the frying pan. Season with salt and black pepper. Bring the mixture back to the boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer for about 30 minutes until the sauce has reduced and has thickened. If the mixture looks too dry, add a splash or two of water. 

Once cooked, serve straight away with some of the above accompaniments, or keep in the fridge for a day or so to serve later. It also freezes well.

You could easily double or triple the quantities to serve a crowd or batch freeze for later consumption.

 

 

 

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Spiced Red Lentil Dhal

Posted on November 8, 2020 by The quirk and the cool

I was reminded of this red lentil dhal dish I made a et while back, when my food photo exchange friend, a pretty decent cook himself, was talking about Indian dishes and his latest cooking exploits.

It’s a tasty veggie recipe that’s perfect for making sure you get your 5-a-day! And the spices make it delicious and flavourful.

This is a Vegan Sparkles recipes with my tweaks – the link to the original recipe is here.

It’s super easy to make, looks colourful and enticing, and is both vegetarian and vegan. And for us Antipodeans coming into summer, it’s a great dish to serve for an alfresco lunch. And if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, it would make a hearty first course in an Indian style banquet.

Ingredients

1 tbsp vegetable oil

½  onion, finely chopped

1 cup sweet potato, chopped into cubes

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

2 tsp mustard seeds (black or yellow)

¾ tsp ground cayenne pepper

1½ tsp ground cumin

1½ tsp ground turmeric

1½ tsp garam masala

½ tsp ground coriander

1 clove garlic, chopped

1½ cups dried red lentils

4 cups vegetable stock

2 cups water

1 tsp honey

1 cup grated and pulped carrot

1 cup broccoli florets

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1 cup baby spinach leaves

½ tsp nigella seeds

Method

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or frying pan over a medium heat. Add onion and sweet potato and fry gently until onion is soft. Add ginger, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper, cumin, turmeric, garam masala  coriander and garlic to the pan, and cook, while stirring, until mustard seeds begin to pop.

Add the lentils, stock and water and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the honey. Put the carrot pulp, broccoli  and cherry tomatoes into the dahl and simmer for another 15 minutes.

The dahl will be cooked and somewhat reduced. If it’s looks a little too dry, add more water, or if it’s too liquidey, reduce down a bit more.

Remove from the heat and carefully stir in the spinach leaves until they are just wilted. Scatter the nigella seeds just before serving over the dish. They will give an interesting black fleck to the dish!

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Ottolenghi’s Roasted Chicken and Clementines

Posted on July 10, 2020 by The quirk and the cool



I’m revisiting an Ottolenghi recipe I cooked a while back in 2017. Firstly, because it’s a great recipe for cooking up a one pan chicken dish, but mostly because clementines are now available in Australia!

Back then, I substituted mandarins for clementines, and that worked well. But now we can can buy them locally. And I also have my very own miniature clementine tree growing in my courtyard garden!

The original Ottolenghi recipe “Roasted Chicken with Clementines and Arak” is from his beautiful book Jerusalem.

I made some variations to the dish, which I mention here. I’m not a big fan of anything aniseed, so I used cumquat brandy instead of an aniseed liqueur. An orange liqueur, or ordinary brandy, would be fine too. For the same reason, I substituted shallots for the fennel bulbs.  I also cut down on the sugar in the recipe.

Ingredients

100ml orange liqueur or any good brandy (or Arak in the original recipe)
4 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp grain mustard
1.5 tbsp light brown sugar
6 shallots (or 2 medium fennel bulbs as in original)
8 chicken thighs with the skin and on the bone
4 clementines unpeeled, sliced horizontally into slices  (or mandarins if you can’t get clementines)
1 tbsp thyme leaves
2 tsp fennel seeds, slightly crushed
Salt and black pepper

Method

Put the liqueur/brandy, olive oil, orange and lemon juices, musard and brown sugar in a large bowl with 2 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper. Whisk well and set aside.

Peel the shallots and add to the bowl, with the chicken pieces, clementine slices, thyme and fennel seeds. Stir well to make sure the marinade covers the chicken pices.

Leave to marinate in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Transfer the chicken and its marinade to a baking dish that’s large enough to fit everything  in a one layer.  The chicken should be skin-side  up.

Put the baking dish in the oven and roast for 35 to 45 minutes, until the chicken is brown and cooked through. Remove the dish from the oven.

Ottenenghi suggests removing the chicken, clementine slices and shallots to a serving plate, while you reduce the cooking liquid in a small saucepan. The sauce is then poured over the chicken.

I served the chicken straight from the baking dish at the table as I like the idea of serving chicken and juices all in one.

A great dish – super easy and utterly delicious!

Clementine tree ready for planting.

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Ottolenghi’s Chicken Marbella with Dates, Prunes and Olives

Posted on March 23, 2019 by The quirk and the cool

This recipe is from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple. I have cooked a few things from the book and I am impressed. I came rather reluctantly to this book, because, as the owner of a few Ottolenghi cook books, I couldn’t quite see why this one could add any more to my Ottolenghi repertoire. Of course, once I perused the book, I saw that he had pared down recipes to a “simple” version that were eminently do-able and easy/quick to prepare.

So apologies to the Architect, Doctor R and the Roadrunner if I was dubious about your recommendations!

What I love about this recipe is the way Ottolenghi has taken a classic dish from The Silver Palate, by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, written in the eighties, and given it an update. I am a devotee of The Silver Palate recipes, and I have included here a photo of the original Chicken Marbella recipe from my much thumbed copy of the famous cookbook!

My recipe is to all intents and purposes that of Ottolenghi. However, the original Silver Palate recipe uses prunes instead of dates. I love prunes – so I used both. You can use either or both – they each give a jammy sweetness to the finished dish. I used thyme rather than oregano, and stuffed olives rather than plain green olives. This latter harks back to childhood memories of grown up parties at home where pimento stuffed olives were always served!

Ingredients
8 chicken legs, drumstick and thigh attached, skin on and scored 3 or 4 times to the bone – about 2kg
5 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
15g fresh oregano or thyme, picked, plus extra to serve
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil
100g pitted green olives or stuffed green olives
60g capers, plus 2 tbsp of their juices
60g dates, pitted and quartered lengthways
60g prunes, halved
2 bay leaves
120ml dry white wine
1 tbsp date molasses
salt and black pepper

Method
Place the chicken in a large, non-reactive bowl and add all of the ingredients, apart from the wine and date molasses, along with ¾ teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Gently mix everything together, cover the bowl and leave in the fridge to marinate for 1 to 2 days, stirring the ingredients a few times during the process.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Spread out the chicken legs on a large baking tray, along with all the marinade ingredients. Whisk together the wine and molasses and pour over the meat. Place in the oven and cook for 50 minutes, basting 2 or 3 times, until the meat is golden brown on top and cooked through.
Remove from the oven, transfer everything to a large platter, sprinkle over some freshly picked oregano or thyme leaves.

Serve with couscous, polenta or rice, and a green salad.

 

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Goat’s Cheese, Leek and Tomato Lasagne

Posted on September 23, 2018 by The quirk and the cool


Lasagne is one of those really easy dishes that you can prepare ahead of time, stick in the fridge or freezer for later, and heat up whenever you want.

I recently had a lovely goat’s cheese lasagne at my local pub – a bubbling individual ramekin full of cheesy layers and really quite delicious!

So I decided to make a lasagne this weekend – this time a larger sharing version. It was pretty simple, and really, you can put anything you like in the filling, although I do recommend goat’s cheese for its creamy and slightly pungent flavour.

Ingredients

2 tbls extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves
1 400g tin whole tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
1 big leek or 2 smaller ones
250g goat’s cheese
1 tbls milk
150g Greek yoghurt
Fresh lasagne sheets – enough to make 3 layers
Parmesan to grate over the lasagne
Cherry tomatoes, sage leaves
Fresh basil leaves

Method

For the tomato sauce, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a medium frying pan. Peel and finely slice the garlic and fry gently until softened. Add the tinned tomatoes and using the tin as a measure, add a tinful of water. Add a good grind of rock salt and black pepper and the teaspoon of sugar. Cook on a medium heat until the sauce is thick and reduced, about 20 minutes, breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon occasionally as you stir the sauce.

Wash the leek/s carefully to remove any dirt or grit. Finely chop the leeks. Put another frying pan on medium heat – or you can save washing up like me and use the tomato pan after they have finished cooking! Add the other tablespoon of oil, and when the oil is hot, add the chopped leeks. Stir for a minute or two, moving the leeks around to make sure they are all starting to cook down. Turn the heat to low, cover the pan and cook for about 10 minutes until the leeks are softened.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Break the goat’s cheese up, you still wants sine chunks so no need to blend or process. Add the milk to loosen the mix, and then add the Greek yoghurt. You are looking for a thick bit spreadable consistency. Season with a grind or two of rock salt and black pepper.

Now for the layering. Spoon 1/3 of the tomato sauce on the bottom of your baking dish. Add 1/3 of the leeks.Now put a layer of lasagne sheets on top. The size of your baking dish will determine how many sheets or partial sheets you need. I used one and a half per layer. Spoon ¼ of the goat’s cheese mixture over the lasagne sheets. Now start again and layer 1/3 tomato, 1/3 leeks, lasagne sheets and ¼ goat’s cheese. Finish with the rest of the tomato, the leeks and a lasagne layer.
Spread the remaining ½ goat’s cheese mixture thickly over the top of the lasagne. Grate as much Parmesan as you fancy over the top, and scatter some cherry tomorrow halves and sage leaves.

Place in the bottom of the preheated oven and cook for about 25 minutes until the top is golden and bubbling. Remove from the oven and scatter over a few fresh basil leaves before serving.

NB You could freeze the lasagne before baking, or after cooking, freeze whole or divided into meal size portions.

 

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