Recipe XC - Spicy Turkey Fillet Hotpot

It's still really cold here, which means more winter recipes. However this was a tremendously rewarding one, because the smell in the house is utterly divine. It is a little bit of an effort in the beginning but the main part is in a casserole dish, and for that you need absolutely nothing except a hot oven.



Equipment:
1 large sealable casserole

Ingredients:
750g-1200g turkey breast/fillet (chicken does just as well, but the pieces will remain whole or simply be halved.

Vegetables, your choice:
3 carrots, chopped
6 small or medium potatoes, cut into slices
1 red pepper, cut into strips
4-6 small onions, roughly chopped
5 cloves of garlic, sliced in two
Savoy cabbage, finely chopped into strips
1 courgette, sliced
Anything else that takes your fancy.

Spices, your choice:
1 small bowl, mix up some of the following to your own specifications:
cardamom, coriander, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, plus some garam massala, or mild Madras.

Maximum 1.5 litres of hot, salted water

Optional:
Some coconut milk, almonds, sultanas, apples and grapes

Instructions:
Turn the oven on to 170°C. Take your turkey breast and slice it into differently-sized pieces and rub a little salt into them. Take your bowl of mixed spices and spread liberally over the pieces, saving about a third for later.



Fry them in butter or oil for five to ten minutes until sealed and place them in the casserole.
Take your onions, garlic, peppers and carrots, and give them a short period in the pan to sweat. Pour over half of the remainder of the spices and add more oil to stop the ingredients scorching. Then put this into the casserole. Add the cabbage and do the same. Mix up the vegetables making sure your meat remains at the bottom and the top is flat enough for the potato level. At this point you can place any fruit (dried or fresh) and nuts.



Finally, place your potatoes on the top to cover it all. Pour over the remainder of your spices, or add a little more to the top, to give it a brownish hue. Fill the casserole with the salted water up to the level of the potatoes but no higher, and cover it. You can add the coconut milk at this point, but it really isn't necessary as the whole thing will remain quite moist with the lid on.



Place it in the oven for between 90 minutes and 2 hours. This will give everything enough time for the flavours to run. When you remove it from the oven, leave it for a few minutes before serving.



It would go well with a nice sweet white wine.

Recipe LIV - Breaded Chicken Breasts on a Bed of Green Beans with Polenta and Coriander Scrambled Egg

Bit of a mixed bag this week. As you may have noticed by now, I hate throwing raw ingredients away after they've been used for their primary function. That accounts for the scrambled egg. It actually made a very nice accompaniment. I'm not going to go into detail about polenta today, as the main purpose of this recipe is the breading. As you see in the first photo, I've put everything in order from top to bottom (left to right in my kitchen).



Ingredients:
1cm-thick sliced chicken (or turkey) breasts
3 bowls:
Bowl 1 with some flour in
Bowl 2 with three whisked eggs in
Bowl 3 with some finely ground breadcrumbs in
I add some Herbes de Provence to the breadcrumbs

Instructions:
Salt your chicken breast on both sides, pick it up with your fingers or a fork, and place it in the flour, covering it on both sides.



Take it from there into the eggs and cover it completely.



Move it from the egg into the breadcrumbs and cover it fully. Then put it in the pan and repeat with the other pieces you have.



Serve with green beans, polenta and the egg (see after the photo for details).



Coriander Scrambled Egg
I took a small amount of fresh green coriander and put it in the pan after the chicken had been there. I put some salt and fresh black pepper in the egg and poured it into the pan on top of the coriander, which had been gently frying for only one minute.

Green Beans
I steamed the beans until they were al dente. Then, in a pan with butter and olive oil, I fried one chopped onion and three roughly chopped cloves of garlic. I sweated the onion for three minutes, put in the garlic and then the beans, stirring constantly for three minutes or so.

Polenta
There are the conventional starch side-dishes: potatoes, pasta and rice are the most obvious. Polenta should really be the fourth, but because it is quite time-consuming, it is only really a bit-part player. I love polenta very much and will include it in a recipe in the coming weeks. Promise!

Recipe L - Bread Sauce (on Turkey Steak, Potatoes and Steamed Broccoli)

Charles De Gaulle was a man obsessed with food. He famously said about France, "How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?" and then went on to say, "In England there are sixty different religions, and only one sauce," which shows you where his priorities lay. As long as the food is to his satisfaction, who cares about democracy and religious tolerance? However, in Britain, there are literally thousands of sauces. He obviously couldn't get a decent chef. This one is so easy to make, and yet people choose to get it from a packet. Things taste so much better when made at home.

Ingredients for the sauce:
About 80g sifted breadcrumbs
About 60g butter
Between 30cl and 50cl milk
1 whole onion
1 clove
Half a carton of fresh cream
Some ground black pepper
A pinch of salt



Instructions:
Take the peel off the onion and with a cocktail stick make a hole in the top. Using that stick, force the clove into the onion. Don't worry, all will soon become clear...



On a hot flame, heat up about 30cl of your milk. Turn down the heat and add the butter and two thirds to three quarters of your breadcrumbs. Put the onion into the mixture and allow to simmer for 15 to 25 minutes, making sure you stir regularly to stop it burning the bottom of the pan. You can, during this time, add more milk and breadcrumbs, depending on how much sauce you want. Once you are satisfied your sauce is runny enough (it's like a kind of lumpy custard), take out the onion and serve quite soon after, as a layer of skin will form on the top!



The rest of the meal:
I took 500g of turkey steaks, salted them and put them in very little butter for about 30 minutes on a low heat. Half way through, I added some freshly ground black pepper.
To go with it, I boiled some potatoes and on top, steamed some broccoli.

Bread Sauce: the onion in it truly adds to the flavour, giving it a tang that will really compliment your meal. This sauce is perfect for poultry or fish.

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.