The Viking Takes on the Big Boys: Peri Peri Chicken with Spicy Rice and Garlic Peas

Apparently, according to a piece I read in The Observer, there is a thing called a Tinchy Strider.  He is friends with a Chipmunk it seems, and they go to a restaurant with a whole bunch of other celebrities to eat fine food.  Such fine luminaries such as, er, JLS and N-Dubz, David Beckham and Pixie Lott.  Mary J. Bilge.  Oprah Winfrey.  A gentleman called Jay-Zed, who I’m told has one less than a hundred problems, but thankfully a female canine is not one of them.

So where to these towering giants of human endeavour go to eat?  Perhaps they flock, followed by a press of paparazzi, to Heston’s new place?  Maybe they sprint, for fear of being unable to get a table, to Raymond’s gaff (and who would blame them)?  Or do they travel in cars with blacked out windows to restaurants too unspeakably cool to name, to be cooked for by chefs whose signature dishes involve piles of swan marinated in the tears of unicorns?

No.  They all wander down their local high streets, and they go to Nando’s.

Nando’s.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I enjoy a Nando’s as much as the next person (as long as the next person really enjoys Nando’s), but now I have to run the risk of bumping in to JLS when I go to get a half chicken (hot, natch) and spicy rice, and that’s not on.  Before I know it, Justin Bieber will be eating in Byron or Miley Cyrus will get a taste for the food at the Half Moon in Shaftesbury, and then I’ll be stuffed.

"Massive Cocks"

In 2010, there were over 200 Nando’s restaurants throughout the UK, serving a whopping 800,000 customers every week.  Some of them are apparently not celebrities, and all of them seem to have a fierce brand loyalty that some chains of fast food restaurants can only dream about.   But what if you don’t want to run the risk of walking in to a Dizzee Rascal?  What you do is, you make it at home.

Gone are the bottles of mass produced hot sauce!  Celebrities will be conspicuous by their absence!  No more queuing for ages at a till while a tourist works out if they want medium or hot!  This week:

The Viking Takes on the Big Boys: Peri Peri Chicken with Spicy Rice and Garlic Peas

First thing’s first, then, you’re going to need STUFF. On the shopping list this week:

1)      Chicken legs (one per person, unless you’re ravenously hungry)

2)      Peas (about a cupful will be enough for 2 people)

3)      Rice

4)      Red Chillis (between 6 and 10, depending on how hot you want it)

5)      4 cloves of minced garlic

6)      Garlic sauce

7)      Tabasco sauce

8)      Dark Soy sauce

9)      Coriander leaves, chopped

10)   Curry powder

11)   4 tbsp olive oil

12)   Lemon juice

13)   Salt

This is alarmingly, terrifyingly easy to do.  It doesn’t look the same as it does in Nando’s  (that’s down to the fact that everthing here is chopped and mixed together rather than being made in to a paste, and even then that’s only because I don’t have a blitzer in my arsenal at the moment.  Besides, this looks, I think, rustic and a little more authentic.  But maybe I’m just making excuses) and it’s a bit sweeter while retaining all of that lovely heat.  What it is, though, is home-made, and that’s a bonus.

One final excuse – this chicken should be grilled on a charcoal grill for the best effect.  I don’t have a BBQ at the moment, so this is a roasted Peri Peri, which again brings out the sweetness in the Chilli, but doesn’t give the Nando’s type colouring on the skin of the chicken.  I’m sure you understand.

Right, let’s cook!

Method

First, make your Peri Peri sauce.  In to a bowl, place the chopped chilli (make sure to chop most of it finely, but leave some large pieces too), minced garlic, soy sauce, olive oil, coriander, lemon juice, salt, parsley and Tabasco sauce.  Mix well together, and then add the chicken legs.  Make sure they are well coated in the marinade, cover, and then leave for 24 hours in the fridge.

*24 Hours Later*

Preheat your oven to gas mark 7 (220c).  Roast the chicken legs for about 40-45 minutes, until the juices run clear when the thickest part of the meat is pierced with a fork.

And now, a big old hairy cheat of a cheat.  Get some Uncle Ben’s boil in the bag rice.  Follow the cooking instructions on the packet (usually about 10 minutes at the simmer).  In the water, add a heaped spoon of curry powder.  This will give the rice a vibrant, yellow colour and a nice, spicy flavour.  Drain, empty the cooked rice back in to the pan and fluff with a fork.  Stir through some bits of chopped chilli, parsley and some finely chopped spring onion, and you’re done!

Finally, the peas.  Again, I don’t care if you think it’s weird, but frozen peas are the absolute best.  Boil for 2-5 minutes until bright green, drain the water, and then mash the peas lightly with a potato masher.  Add a glug of garlic sauce, a dash of Tabasco, and a few bits of chopped chilli.

Serve all together on the same plate.  Great, big, hungry Viking sized portions packed full of spicy, aromatic flavours are the order of the day here.  Best eaten with a cool European lager – if you’re really after that authentic Portuguese experience then I recommend you try a bottle of Sagres, it’s very nice indeed.

If you eat this out in the sunshine, you might almost be able to fool yourself that you’re on holiday, soaking up the rays and forgetting about the rest of the world.  And if you can achieve that for about five minutes after a hard day at work, then so much the better.

I’ll be back next week with a Great British Classic.  Yes, folks, summer’s here, so what better way to celebrate than by making a Toad in the Hole with Onion Gravy?  Don’t answer that, I already know.

Til then,

Viking

Chamakh! The Viking Tagines - Lamb Kefta with Egg and a (Sort-of) Tabbouleh

“Eeeeh, Chamakh!” cried the hotel porter as I clambered from the coach.  It was 10pm, and the air in Morocco was oppressively hot.  I was feeling harassed, after already having paid a man £5 tip to carry my case the seven yards from the airport to the coach, after having my suitcase emptied out by Moroccan immigration in search of who-know-what.  After a 45 minute bus journey, driven by a man who (judging by the speed he maintained) had missed his calling in F1, narrated by an endlessly chirpy holiday representative who did nothing to improve my mood.  This was not a good start to my honeymoon.

“Eeeeh, Chamakh!” he cried again, and it was only then that I realised that an Arsenal tag was hanging from my bag.  Marouane Chamakh, Moroccan international, had recently signed for Arsenal, and this was obviously part of a limited English vocabulary. 

“Take your case, Chamakh?” he said, winking at me for reasons I have yet to understand.  Resigning myself to another tip, I handed it over.  “This way, Chamakh!” was the last I heard from him as he scuttled around the corner.  Finally, Mrs Viking and I reached our room, along with bag and minus another £5 (“English money, Chamakh, Moroccan no good!”), and we collapsed.  Here we were on the North African continent, and what a relentless taste explosion it would be.  Souks, piled high with spices and fish!  Endless bubbling tagines!  Mountains of Lamb Kefta!  Heaven!

I am sorry to report that, thanks to the rules set down by ClubHotel Riu Tikida Dumas, this did not come to pass.  The daily buffet was little more than meat, pasta and chips with the occasional Kefta thrown in.  There was a classic Moroccan restaurant, but you could only eat there once during your stay and you had to book it at least 24 hours in advance.  Sure, we could have gone to the local village – but the fact is we were on a shoestring (hence all-inclusive) and had kind of counted on a hotel in Morocco actually serving Moroccan food.

So, back to London we trudged (now colder, wetter and greyer), and I decided that if the mountain wasn’t going to come to Chamakh, then Chamakh would come to the mountain, so to speak.  And so I went to the shops, and I got myself one of these bad boys:

…I then proceeded to sit this on top of my fridge – where it has been for the last year or so, looking pretty but not actually getting used - until this weekend.  Somewhere, a wedding was taking place (I’m not sure if you heard about it, it was a much understated affair), so I took advantage of the quiet in the streets and went to Bromley (sometimes, a Viking needs to make an escape from Penge) and did some shopping.  I returned with a bag straining with various bits and pieces for a weekend in the kitchen – but my main goal, my prime concern, was to dust off my tagine for the first time and get ruddy cooking. 

I grabbed it from its perch, and thrust it on the hob with what I imagine was a go-getting, no-nonsense, I’m-about-to-do-something-different attitude.  I looked at my tagine.  It looked at me.  It was like Rocky facing Ivan Drago.  It was like KITT versus KARR.  Mr. T versus Hulk Hogan, only with less lycra and more spices.  And thus, a tagine was born:

The Viking Tagines – Lamb Kefta with Egg and a (Sort of) Tabbouleh

Thos of you who have read me before will know that you need STUFF.  So, for the shopping list this week:

For the Kefta (serves 4, or 2 really hungry, people)

- 500g Minced Lamb (about 20% fat content)

- 1 Onion, finely chopped

- 4 garlic cloves, grated

- 1 tsp ground ginger

- ½ tsp mild chilli powder (you can do it with hot if you like loads of spice, but it might overwhelm the other flavours)

- 1tsp ground cumin

- Handful of coriander leaves, chopped

- Handful of parsley, chopped

- 1 egg yolk (Free range, of course.  I like Happy Eggs or, even better, eggs from Granddad’s farm!)

- Salt and Pepper

And now, for the Tagine:

- Olive oil

- 1 sliced onion

- Tomato puree (2tbsp)

- 400g (ish) of chopped tomato (Sainsbury’s do a great one in a box, with all the lovely juice, and it’s not too watery…)

- A couple of tbsp of honey

- 4 eggs

- Chopped Parsley

- 1 tsp Ras el Hanout (this is a Moroccan spice that I should think you can get in most Supermarkets.  Waitrose definitely do it.  It’s a couple of quid and so, so worth it!)

Finally, for the Sort-of Tabbouleh:

- Bulgar wheat

- Lemon juice

- Chopped spring onions

- Chopped parsley

- Olive oil

Got all that?  Good.  I’ll do my very best John Torode impression now:

Ladies and Gentlemen… Let’s cook!

 Method (Kefta):

1)      In a mixing bowl, place the Lamb, onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, cumin, coriander and parsley.  Use your hands to mix it all together

2)      Then, add the yolk of an egg to bind it all, and form it in to a big ball

3)      Wash your hands, and leave them damp.  Use damp hands to form smaller meatballs, slightly larger than a golf ball in size

4)      Place on to a tray for use later on

Now then, let’s make the tagine, eh?  If you don’t have a tagine, a large saucepan with a lid will do.  Follow these simple steps:

1)      In a measuring jug, pour 400ml of chopped tomato and juice, the tomato puree, honey, parsley and Ral el Hanout

2)      Bring a medium to hot heat under your tagine.  Let it warm through before you start cooking

3)      Drizzle a little olive oil in to the pan, and add your onions.  Cook them down until tender

4)      Add the Kefta.  Cook for about 10 minutes until nicely browned

5)      Pour over the sauce, and gently stir so it is covering everything nicely

6)      Cover, and cook for 10 minutes

7)      After 10 minutes, uncover, and use a spoon to make four wells

8)      Crack whole eggs in to the wells, recover, and cook for a further 10 minutes

9)      Done!  Uncover, and check the eggs.  If cooked, you’re finished, if not, give it another couple of minutes until they are fully poached

Meanwhile, you’ll need to be making your sort-of Tabbouleh:

1)      Take 125g of Bulgar wheat, and add it to boiling water

2)      Cover, and simmer for 10 minutes until the wheat has soaked up all the water

3)      When that’s done, chop some spring onions and stir through the wheat along with a drizzle of olive oil, chopped parsley and a glug of lemon juice

4)      Done!

I’ve listed this as a sort-of tabbouleh as I didn’t have any fresh tomato, which I am told you need to make it an actual tabbouleh.  In this case, I don’t think it’s that much of an issue as the sauce in the tagine has a rich tomato flavour already.  Serve by spooning large helpings in to a deep bowl, making sure the kefta are evenly shared and that everyone gets an egg.  I guarantee (100% or your money back) that this riot of flavour will bring a smile to the face of the people who eat it the moment it passes their lips.  It is, I’ll be honest, a conversation killer – but as a cook, there’s nothing better than the cacophony of knife-and-fork-against-plate.  There’ll be time for talking, and for much drinking of beautiful, fruity red wine, later on.

And so I leave you, dear reader, for another week.  Next week I return with how to make home-made Nando’s (for half the cost).  I hope to see you then!

Cheers,

Viking

P.S – Have you seen that programme on the Food Network called ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’?  There’s something almost hypnotic about it.  I’m not sure if it’s the presenters shock of platinum blonde hair, or if it’s the piles of home cookin’, or if it’s just that there’s nothing on between 10 and 11pm, but I’m an addict.  Well, until Man vs Food starts again, anyway.  If ever anyone wants to make a UK version of those shows, you know where to find me! ;)

Finally - the FoodViking twitter feed was mentioned this month in the BBC's Olive Magazine...  Page 115 of the June Edition!  Tell your friends!

The Viking Roasts (Again!) - Stuffed Breast of Lamb with Minted Potatoes and Green Sauce

Another sunny spring weekend has been and gone – this time with the added benefit of two days of holiday thanks to the escapades of a man in the Middle East some 2,000 years ago – and with it came the chance to get hold of a nice piece of lamb and eat it in the sunshine.

"Seriously? What's your problem, guy?"

So, I hied my hide to the butcher and spent the princely sum (well, if the Prince in question was on a very tight budget, anyway) of £3 on a piece of lamb breast.  I walked home, the lamb weighing heavily in a plastic bag swung casually from my wrist, the sun beating down on the top of my head. 

“I’ll do a tagine,” I thought, the first few notes of a whistle escaping my lips “or a curry, something different, something that’s not a roast,” I assured myself, the spring in my step threatening at any moment to upgrade itself from ‘merry walk’ to ‘full blown skip’ – a step that isn’t lightly undertaken in South East Twenty, I can tell you.  Around five hundred feet from home, however, my plans – well laid and meticulously thought out – did gang aglay.  Someone, an inconsiderate and callous someone at that, had left their windows open, allowing the scents of their cooking to flow, unannounced and uninvited, in to the street.  Complicit in this olfactory crime was the light spring breeze that lifted the smell of roasting meat, herbs, and gravy in to my unsuspecting nostrils.  It was an assault, friends, although you will be surprised to learn, I am sure, that the Police didn’t take my complaint of “that git at number 63 put me right off making a curry” very seriously at all.  Some might say there was a degree of sarcasm in the constable’s voice as he put the ‘phone down on me.

I sat in my lounge, staring at this piece of meat, it looking back at me with a sort of embarrassed expression (which was remarkable for something that didn’t have a face), until I could resist it no longer.  Heady with the scents of rosemary and gravy and meat and mint and potatoes (from the git at number 63), I sprang to my feet and pointed accusingly at the meat in front of me. 

“I am going to stuff you!” I cried. “I am going to ruddy well stuff you full of rosemary and garlic and then I am going to roast you until you’re all meaty and tender and juicy, and how do you like that, eh?”

The lamb remained silent, although my wife did mutter something and leave the room without looking backwards.  She seems to be doing that a lot, lately.

Anyway, the lamb was suitably mollified, and I was happy that everything finally seemed to be going to well, so it was time to cook.  And, after 500 words of my rambling, I would think that you’re ready for me to get going.  So:

The Viking Roasts (Again!) – Stuffed Breast of Lamb with Minted Potatoes and Green Sauce

For this wonderful, springy offering, you’re going to need STUFF:

"Hey! HEY! Are you a leg or a BREAST man?"

- A breast of lamb (a large one should feed about four people)

- Rosemary (3-4 sprigs)

- Garlic (5-6 cloves)

- Shallots (2-3, chopped)

- New Potatoes

- Breadcrumbs (you can buy these in pots, but I used about a quarter of a loaf of day-old French bread)

- Olive Oil

- Salt

- Pepper

- Nutmeg

- Mint

- Parsley

For the Green sauce, you’ll need:

- A handful of Parsely

- A handful of Basil

- A handful of mint

- 3-4 garlic cloves, grated

- 1 tsp Capers

- Olive Oil

- Pepper

Now, I am going to experiment with something I’ve never done before.  Here is your method, numbered and everything, for your cooking ease:

1)      Pre-heat oven to gas mark 4 (180c)

2)      In a bowl, combine breadcrumbs, finely chopped (or grated) cloves of garlic, finely chopped rosemary, chopped parsley and chopped shallots.

3)      Add olive oil bit by bit (remember, it’s easier to add a little at a time than it is to take it out), until the mixture is bound.

4)      Season with a little salt and pepper.

5)      Add half a teaspoon of nutmeg and mix again.

6)      Place the lamb on to a cutting board, and spread the stuffing mix over it.

I got a little extra meat, so stuffed the meat with meat!

7)      Roll the lamb breast up, and use some butcher’s string to tie it together in three places.

8)      Place in to a roasting tin with half a cup of water in the bottom of it, cover (with a lid or with foil) and roast for an hour and a half.

9)      Uncover, and roast for another 30 minutes

10)   Place potatoes and a good handful of roughly-chopped mint in to a pan of boiling water.  Simmer for about 20 minutes, or until tender (if a fork presses easily in to the potato it’s cooked)

For the green sauce, which can be made beforehand or during the last half an hour, your method is as follows:

1)      In a blender, add mint, parsley, basil, capers, garlic, and pepper

2)      Blitz, and add olive oil a little at a time

3)      The end result should be a little thicker than mint sauce, I also quite like it when the capers haven’t been completely broken down

Now, it’s time to plate up.  Carve the breast in to nice, thick slices (you may need to use a knife with a serrated edge as this helps the meat and stuffing keep its shape).

Watch out for those tiny bones.  You need to remove them
before you start cooking...

Serve next to minted potatoes, with a drizzle of green sauce and thin gravy made from the juices in the roasting tin.  Eat, and to go with it I would recommend a slightly chilled bottle of Doombar, a most excellent ale that has particular fond memories for me as I drank about six too many of them the night before my wedding.

Potatoes can be improved by melting a little butter over the top...

The great thing about this roast is that it is fairly light, so you don’t feel like you need to have a nap for the rest of the afternoon.  And, with the weather the way it is, that means that you can fuel yourself up and get out there in to the sunshine.  Make the most of it; the summer is all too brief!

I hope that, once again, you give this a go, and let me know how it works out for you.  Last week, I got a picture of a Shooter’s Sandwich that someone made, and I am not ashamed to say that it made me quite proud.  So, get cooking, tell your friends, and I will see you again next week, hopefully with a dish that isn’t another roast. 

But I can’t promise anything!  :)

Til then,

Viking

The Viking Griddles – a Two Course Feast!

What do you do, if you’re an aspiring food blogger/writer/gastronomic whizz, and it’s your wife’s birthday, and you don’t have the necessary wodge to take her to one of London’s finest eateries?  Well, you say to her:

“Darling!  Light that is my life! As we celebrate another year of your life on this Earth, what can I cook for you for a birthday feast?”

Yes, she might question why you have to bring drama in to everything, and yes, she will probably think that you’re just looking for something to cook so you can write about it (and she’d be right, honestly).  This is probably why my wife looked at me with what we call an ‘Ancelotti Eyebrow’ and said “I’d like a steak, please.”

And lo, so it came to pass, that this week I will be writing about steak.  A good, British steaky steak from a big arsed hairy cow.  But of course, this was a birthday feast, and I’ve written about steak before – I’m sure we all remember eating Kanga and Roo from the Winnie the Pooh books, and Piglet has been done too.  I’ve only to work through Rabbit, Donkey, Owl, Heffalump, Robin and Bear and then I can cast the memory of those god-awful saccharine Disney cartoons far from my mind.  But I digress.  So this time I’ll be doing two courses for you to try out.  Yes, two!  That’s two for the price of one, and as you pay nothing to read my witterings, you’re in profit!

So.  For starters, I offer you Danish Stuffed Mushrooms.  You will need, as usual, STUFF:

- Large mushrooms, one a person

- A lump of Danish Blue.  You could use Stilton, I suppose, if you are a pervert

- Breadcrumbs (I made mine out of day old French bread, but you can buy little packets of breadcrumbs)

- 3 Shallots, chopped

- Chopped parsley

- Chopped coriander

- Salt and Pepper

- Salad

The potatoes and broccoli are for later on, I really
didn't think that photo through...

Firstly, sweat down your chopped shallots in a little olive oil...

In a food processor, whizz down your old bread to a coarse crumb.  If you've brought pre-made crumbs, skip to the next step.  Which is add the cheese, shallots, coriander, parsley, salt and pepper to the crumbs and combine together.  This should form a sort of doughy paste – not too dry, but not too wet, either.  You can combine with a food processor if you want – sadly, mine gave out after having struggled with the bread – but you can also do as I did and combine together with your hands.  You’ll have stinky cheese fingers, but that’s all part of the drama.

Now, remove the stalks from your mushrooms, rub the dome of it with a little olive oil, and then stuff the mushroom cavity with your cheese mixture.

Whack it in an oven that has been preheated to Gas Mark 3/160 C, and cook for half an hour.  Serve on a bed of rocket salad.

It might not be much to look at, but the combination of bready crunch, the herb blast from the parsely and coriander and the melty, gooey cheesiness that runs through it all is absolutely, completely and totally divine.

And now, on to the main course!  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Griddled Rib-Eye Steak with Dauphinoise Potatoes and Broccoli for a bit of Green.

You will need some STUFF, and woe betide you if you don’t have it:

- A rib-eye steak per person

- Potatoes, peeled and sliced

- 500ml of double cream

- Garlic cloves, grated

- Salt

- Pepper

Steak, as you may have gathered by now, is one of my favourite things.  But you can make it in to something quite special by substituting chips for posh-o dauphinoise potatoes.  They are creamy, garlicky and uncommonly good – and, as it turns out, stupidly easy to make.

Begin by prepping your potatoes.  You don’t need as many as you think, for two portions I peeled three medium sized potatoes.  Peel, and then use a mandoline or the big side of a cheese grater to slice them in to thin, crisp sized slices:

Yeah, it looks friendly enough, but it'll have
your fingers off in an instant...

Leave in a bowl and once you’re done slicing, rinse to remove all of the starch.  Pat dry, and then season with salt and pepper.  Now add the garlic, as many cloves as fits your taste – I used three, but reckon I could have got away with a bit more.  Top and tail each clove, but don’t bother peeling it.  Just run it straight through a grater – amazingly, the skin doesn't go through but all of the flesh of the clove does.  Add that in to your potatoes as well.

Now, pour in the cream and gently stir the whole mixture around, making sure that everything is covered in a nice blanket of garlic cream.

Then, layer your potato in to a dish.  Here, I have been quite cheffy and used small ramekins to make individual portions, but you could use a big gratin dish, something like that, for big giant portions of heaven.

Once you’re done, press down the mix with the back of a spoon and pour over any more cream as you see fit.  Then this goes in to the oven for 45 minutes to an hour at Gas Mark 3/160 C.

Now get your steaks out of the fridge and leave them for half an hour to come up to room temperature.  At this point, rub a small amount of oil in to each side of the steak – do not put oil in the pan.  Season well with pepper and, when you’re ready to cook, get the pan so hot it shimmers.  Drop the steaks in the pan and revel in the loud sizzle they make.

Cook on a high heat for one minute on either side, then turn the hob down to a medium heat and cook for a further 2 minutes on each side for a medium steak.  Rest for five minutes, and you’re good to go. (Obviously, you’ll need to time this so this matches with when your dauphinoise come out of the oven.)

In the meantime, you will have simmered some heads of broccoli for about 10 minutes – this is so they keep their greenness and their crunch (as well as all that irony goodness inside).  Arrange this on to a warm plate next to a hunk of steak.

If you’ve cooked your potatoes in ramkeins like me, you may want to turn them out and present them on the plate as a little pile of creamy potato.  Be really careful when doing this as the ramekins will be very hot.  Lay something flat (like a plastic lid) over the top of the ramekin, and turn it upside down.  Give it a gentle shake and lift it away – you’ll have a perfect little tower of dauphinoise.  To serve, gently lay another small, flat surface on top, and flip so that the browned side is facing upwards.  Slide on to a plate and voila!  Chef-like results in the home.

Eat.  Enjoy.  Celebrate.  That’s what this sort of food should inspire – if you make an effort beyond going down to a local restaurant for somebody’s birthday, if you give them the gift of food that is made with love and care, then they will really appreciate it.

Still, I’d get them a present too, just to be on the safe side.

And there we are again, at the end of another wee blogette.  Next week, I’ll be departing from Food Viking tradition, and posting a review of a restaurant I’m going to be eating in this weekend – I am going to be far from my own kitchen and I steadfastly refuse to cook while I’m on my mini holiday.  However, if this causes outcry, I’m sure I can do another mini-blog at some point in the week too.

I hope, as ever, that you enjoy this blog and if you do – tell your friends!  Everybody needs a Viking in their lives!

Take care now,

Viking

The Viking Experiments: Cream Cheese Chicken and Spring Veg

The humble chicken forms the base for many of the week’s meals chez Viking.  I bloody love chicken, in any of its forms – fajitas, roasted, curried, in a pie, casseroled, the list is virtually endless.  Heck, I have even been known to go weak at the knees when I walk past a Nandos and I am not sorry.

I do draw the line somewhere though.  The line I draw is at KFC.  Do you remember when it used to be called ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’?  I do.  I’m fairly confident that the only reason they switched to ‘KFC’ was because although their product could be reasonably be described as ‘Kentucky’ and ‘Fried’, perhaps ‘Chicken’ was a little too far a stretch of the truth.  And as for their new ‘So Good’ campaign, trying to convince the public that deep fried chicken is a healthy choice, well.  I am offended by it on so many levels I’m not sure where to start.

“I’ve been working in the restaurant industry for twenty years” an earnest man tells us while he peruses fresh vegetables in a supermarket.  He goes on to inform us that in his restaurant, they only use the finest ingredients – fresh green lettuce, juicy legs of chicken (“hand breaded right here!” as if that’s some kind of high-end fine-dining thing that we’re supposed to be impressed by).  Of course, the ad then does us up like a kipper, revealing the man to be a KFC store manager and his products are, of course, ‘So Good’.  And, to be fair, they look good, too.  Crisp, dry, fried chicken sits in a bucket next to a legion of golden brown french fries.  Coleslaw on the side appears zingy and crunchy with carrot and mayonnaise.  You’re almost fooled, until you walk past a KFC.  Firstly, your nose is assaulted by a spicy, greasy smell.  Looking through the window, you see hordes of people troughing greasy piles of putrid mess in to their faces – and this is not the crisp golden feast you saw in the advert.  You realise, in that moment, that KFC, and its products, is not only an offense to the human digestive system (not to mention the all-out warfare that it starts on the coronary system), but (more importantly) is an offense to the poor chickens that gave their all-too-short lives to end up in a greasy box.

KFC must be stopped.  Or at least their misleading advertising campaigns should be.

So you’re sitting there thinking “Okay Viking.  We get that you hate KFC, but what else is my choice?  I want a quick dinner that is tasty, filling and healthy.”

Well.  I may not be able to provide you with fried chicken, but boy – have I got a recipe for you this week.

Cream Cheese Roast Chicken with Spring Vegetables

“What!” you’re crying “I thought you said this was healthy?  What’s cream cheese doing in there?”

Relax.  It’s only a teaspoon or so per bit of chicken, it’s not going to kill you.  So, anyway, you’re going to need STUFF:

- Chicken thighs or legs (depending on preference – I find that two thighs is enough per person, or one leg.  I like the thigh of a chicken, it’s cheap, tender, and very good to eat)

- A handful of bacon lardons (or chopped bacon)

- Boursin cream cheese (I used the garlic and herb variety)

- 3 leeks

- 3 carrots

- 1 or 2 red onions, quartered

- A few cloves of garlic, whole

- A few sprigs of thyme

- Salt

- Pepper

- Tabasco Sauce (optional)

-Olive oil

OK, let’s get prepped. Preheat your oven to 220c/gas mark 7. Top and tail your leeks, peel, and then roughly chop.  Top and tail your carrots, peel, and split into quarters, lengthways.  Peel and quarter your onions.  Peel your garlic cloves and give them a light press with the back of a knife to get them releasing their oils.  Place all of your veg in to a roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper (and, if you like a bit of spice, a healthy dash of Tabasco sauce) and roast for 15 minutes.

Easy!

While that’s roasting, use for fingers to gently pull away the skin from the meat of the chicken.  Take a small amount of cream cheese and make it malleable with your fingers.  Hold the skin of the chicken back with one hand and use the other to spread the cheese over the meat.  This gets messy as the cheese sticks to your fingers, but the end result is well worth it.  Grind a bit of black pepper over the skin of the chicken, and set aside.

Then, in a little olive oil, fry off your bacon until cooked.  Place on a piece of kitchen paper to soak up the fat it releases and pat dry.

By now you should have used up the fifteen minutes of roasting for the vegetables.  Remove from the oven and arrange your chicken pieces overt the top of the vegetables.  Scatter the bacon around the dish generously, drizzle with a little more olive oil and then return to the oven for 45 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through (poke the fattest part of the meat with a skewer or long fork.  If the juices run clear, your chicken is cooked).

Spoon a big helping of vegetables in to a bowl, top with chicken, and eat.  The cream cheese helps the chicken to retain its moisture – you’ll find a crispy, golden skin wraps a deliciously tender pieces of meat that has taken on all of the garlicky flavours of the cheese, but is not greasy in any way.  The vegetables will have a vibrant colour – the greens of the leeks, the purples of the onions and the orange of the carrots will be beautifully offset by the pink of the bacon lardons.  It’s one of those meals that makes you happy, and on a lovely spring or summer evening you can take this in to the garden with a glass of crisp, dry white wine, sit in the sun, and be glad that you’re alive.

You’ll notice that, at the bottom of your roasting tin, there will be a lot of meat juices and fats from the cooking process.  You can keep these for the next day, add them to some chicken stock with some vegetables, and make a nice chicken soup (made even better if you have any meaty leftovers!)

And there we are, the end of another entry and (as far as I remember) the first one about Chicken, too.  I’ll be back next week – I’ve no plans for what to cook for you as yet, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something. 

‘Til then, folks!

Viking