Recipe CXV - Gentse Waterzooi

I'm back. Sorry I was away for such a long time - I have been incredibly stressed, and cooking had become a necessity rather than a pleasure. But I'm returning with this incredibly easy and remarkably tasty Belgian dish from the city of Ghent. French, as well as Belgian food, relies heavily on the use of butter in preparation. This is no different and adds most deliciously to the overall flavour. It takes relatively little effort and will make you smile when you put it in your mouth.

Ingredients:

One leek

Two tablespoons butter

Two carrots, peeled and diced

Four medium-sized potatoes, peeled and quartered

Salt and freshly ground pepper (usually white, but I used black)

1 litre of chicken stock or hot, salted water if none available

Two fresh bay leaves

Three sprigs of fresh parsley,

Three sprigs of chopped parsley to garnish later

Three sprigs of fresh thyme

Two large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into large chunks

Half a litre of pouring cream

1 large egg yolk

Some crusty bread (e.g. baguette) for dipping

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a high-sided frying pan on a medium heat. Sauté the vegetables until they are soft, putting in some salt and pepper.

Put in the sprig of parsley, thyme and the bay leaves, and then add the potatoes and most essentially the stock or the hot water. You normally need chicken stock, but because you are about to add pieces of raw chicken to poach in the liquid, hot water straight from the kettle with some more salt should do the trick in an emergency.

So when you have added the liquid, put in the pieces of chicken and cover and poach for 10 to 20 minutes. It may look like a mess right now, but soon it is going to transform itself into something unbelievable...

Take a pouring jug, siphon off an egg yolk and add the cream. Stir them well. Take a little of the hot liquid from the pan so as not to shock it when it goes into the pan itself. Pour it in, add the chopped parsley and watch it become so incredibly tempting. Don't wait for too long before serving!

Although the photo doesn't do it justice, I have to admit...

Serve it in large bowls with some fresh bread.

Recipe XCVIII - Hungarian Paprika Chicken

A part of the world brimming with culture and tradition, from the cowboy-like farmers of the Puszta plains past the talented Gipsy musicians enchanting Budapest to the noble rot winemakers of Tokaj, Hungary is a country that makes central Europe that little bit more like an ancestral homeland. What the locals speak of course, is incomprehensible: surrounded by Slavic and Germanic language speakers, Hungarian is from the incomprehensible Finno-Ugric strain and subtitlers give the Chinese a run for their money in one of the TV and film world's most thankless professions. Which may explain why they dub everything. And why, quite bafflingly, only 35% of Hungarians speak a foreign language. Nevertheless, when I was there, I found the food to be sensational, even if I needed to point at other diners' plates to get what I wanted.
This dish is one of the easiest and most delicious things you will ever cook, and you should immediately go out and buy the ingredients.

Ingredients:2 dessertspoonfuls of paprika*
1 dessertspoonful of plain flour*
1 large pinch of Cayenne pepper*
10 crushed peppercorns*
600g chicken breast
5-7 ripe tomatoes, quartered
2 onions, chopped
1 red or green pepper, cut into strips
1 pot of sour cream

300ml chicken stock
Some odourless oil

*Put these ingredients in a pot and mix thoroughly together

Instructions:
Put the chicken in a high-sided frying pan and fry until sealed. Add the onions, and stir up until they release their aroma. Sprinkle liberally all the spices over the meat and onions and mix well.

Add the tomatoes and crush them to release their juices. 

Pour over the chicken stock before the ingredients stick to the bottom, add the peppers and simmer with the lid on for up to 2 hours.

Just before you serve, pour sour cream into it and stir to form a marbled effect.



Serve with rice or boiled potatoes.

Recipe XCVI - Celeriac Purée

Last week I had what I can only believe must have been the world's greatest chicken, a superhero amongst all the other farmyard fowl, a titan of the coop, a caped crusader of a bird which provided us not only with an unbelievable amount of the best chicken meat I have ever tasted, but gave me the best stock in living memory, and I wanted to do something with that stock to give it the perfect send-off. Anything less would have been an insult to this magnificent specimen of a bird, so I decided to make one of those dull dishes with one of those vegetables which is almost laughed at due to its likeness to the Ood from Doctor Who, the type of vegetable that makes people pleasantly surprised when they realise it's actually pretty damn tasty when served properly...




Ingredients:1 celeriac, peeled and chopped into 2cm cubes
2 onions
1 litre of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of cumin
Half a tablespoon of turmeric
Ground white pepper
40g butter
A carton of cream (optional; preferably thick)



Instructions:
Put some butter into a high-sided frying pan, put on a low-to-medium heat and when hot add the spices. Throw the onion and celeriac into it and stir until all the ingredients are nicely covered. 





Continue stirring for 2 to 3 minutes, then pour the stock on top. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat to simmering temperature for about 20 minutes.





Keep the liquid, but put all the solid ingredients into a blender and allow the mixture to turn into a saucy consistency. Put the cream in at this point, but adding some of the liquid from the stock is a good idea too.



Keep it warm until all your other food is prepared; when serving, you can put a large spoonful on the plate and with the underside of the spoon run it through the purée to create a decorative look.





It is best served with something like boiled potatoes so that it can act as a kind of dip. With the rest of the leftover stock, I let it boil down in a pot of Savoy cabbage until the fat from the stock fried it gently.

Recipe XLVIII - Roast Cauliflower, Potatoes and Turkey Breast

The cauliflower, one of Nature's worst-treated vegetables. People boil the blessed thing until it becomes pulp. Wrong. Steam it with some fresh mint, at least, please... I love cauliflower cheese, and can still taste the skin from the cheese that formed on the top of (my old school cook) Diane's oven bakes. She could seriously cook. There were only about 75 to 80 pupils in my school, and Diane never failed to nourish us with the finest food. In this recipe, however, I have left the cheese off, partly because I'm trying to lose weight, and due to this, I haven't got the strength to make a seriously big effort this week...


Ingredients:
400g-500g turkey breasts
2 onions
1 whole cauliflower, chopped into stalks
250g new potatoes
300ml chicken stock
5 cloves of garlic (2 cut into slices, the others just into 3 pieces)
Herbes de Provence (a decent tablespoon's worth)
2 glasses of white wine
Olive oil and butter
A handful of chopped chives (if in season)





Instructions:
Heat the oven to 160°C. Take a high-sided pan and fry the turkey, 2 cut cloves of garlic and onion until the meat is sealed and the vegetables are soft. Put in the chicken stock, herbes de Provence and wine, and let it heat up on a low flame. Take the turkey out of the liquid and cut it into bitesize pieces. Cut the new potatoes in half and parboil them for 7 minutes or so. In a baking tray, spread the cauliflower (still raw), potatoes and turkey around, and put in the other cloves of garlic at intermittent places. Pour olive oil over the combination, and put some slices of butter on the top.
Cook for 30 to 45 minutes in the oven, or longer, depending when you want to eat. When nearly ready, reheat the chicken stock from earlier and pour it over your creation, either on the plate or while it is still in the oven dish. Put the chives on top and serve immediately. It would accompany some peas and (baby) carrots really well.



If you have worked really hard (like me), indulge yourself with some mayonnaise or mustard.