Sunday roast lamb with rosemary and garlic

Actually I cooked this several months ago, but only just got around to uploading the pictures to my laptop. It's a rosemary and garlic New Zealand lamb shoulder, with gravy, roast potatoes and veggies. A traditional British-style Sunday roast. It was a large joint of meat and we had a lot of leftover meat for pasta, sandwiches, etc. 

Checking in (and a tuna Niçoise recipe)

I'm alive! *dusts off blog* Whew, it's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it?

Fried cheese curds at Bastille Days in Milwaukee

Work and a lot of travel has kept me crazy-busy. Since my last post, I went to New York for a week and a half, Vancouver for a few days (including a crazy YVR-San Francisco - Tokyo - HK return flight due to the Fly America Act and missing my flight because of delays), Bangkok again in June, and Jon and I just returned a few days ago from three weeks in the US. (It looks like there's going to be another New York trip as well as Shanghai trip in early September too -- I like NY, but I'm at the point where I just want to stay home for now and don't want to travel for work!)

We went on a pilgrimage to New Glarus Brewing Co in New Glarus, Wisconsin (which is a mock-Swiss chalet town)

But let me think about happier things - like the great vacation I just had :). We spent three weeks visiting Jon's family and friends in Madison & Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (or, to be more accurate, Jon was the one who drove), where we eat a lot of good fresh food and drank even more fantastic craft beer (we squeezed in trips to two breweries - New Glarus and Lakefront). We also went to the Packers Hall of Fame at Lambeau Field in Green Bay (it's an NFL American football thing, but it was pretty neat to see the Lombardi Trophy and Aaron Rodger's Superbowl ring).

It's funny, because I used to be such a geographical snob -- growing up, my family lived in Vancouver (Pacific Northwest) and I went to college in upstate New York, or having a transfer flight at O'hare airport, I didn't know much about the mid-West ("the fly-over" states?!) The only time I had been in the Mid-West was during a crazy 3-week road trip from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island and back (West to East Coast was through Canada; East to West was through the US on the I-90), where we ate Chinese food almost every night, thanks to my dad's need to eat rice with every meal. But that's another story for another time.

Cattle prices on the Agricultural reports on the TV news

What I want to say was I found myself really, really liking Wisconsin and the U.P. -- the commitment to sustainable local produce, the appreciation for the good things in life (cheese curds, sausages, beers, frozen custard!) and the friendliness and lack of pretentiousness that people had. It's very different from big-city Hong Kong or New York city, where I get tired about all the prattling about brand names and money and showing off. 

Jesse works for Alterra Coffee, which has awesome coffee and baked yummies. Their graphic designer is really talented - I love my Alterra T-shirts! :)

Here's one meal that Jon's sister Jesse and I made one sweaty evening in Milwaukee during that heat wave where it was in the 90s (Fahrenheit, which is about 32 C or so -- but in a place where they don't have air cons!).

Tuna Niçoise

Jesse bought the tuna steak from Trader Joe's. The fingerling potatoes and green beans we bought from the local farmer's market (not really a market, more like a cluster of stands on a street corner) in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee where she lives. The lettuce were grown by Jesse in planter pots on her deck.  It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time -- the potatoes were fresh and sweet, and the beans were crisp and tasted of sunshine and good things.

Chicken marsala dinner with rosemary potatoes and Parmesan peas

We stayed in last night for dinner. It was cold outside, and we didn't feel like moving much. I had bought a bottle of Marsala wine yesterday on an impulse, as I had seen it on a supermarket shelf, which is something I'd never seen before - Marsala seems to be quite hard to find here in Hong Kong. Anyway, I love the rich umami flavour that Marsala adds to meats, and I had some frozen boneless chicken thighs in the freezer, plus a few leftover mushrooms and shallots, so voila, chicken Marsala dinner. For the sides, we had leftover white rice, plus roasted potatoes and peas - i.e., the ingredients I had on hand in the kitchen!



Chicken Marsala recipe: I followed the Smitten Kitchen recipe but modified it. I didn't measure the ingredients exactly (just going by instinct instead) except for the Marsala as I didn't want it to end up too winey or too weak. Here's my shorthand instructions:

1. Defrost chicken in a bowl or Tupperware container, dump some salt and black pepper on and flip them until seasoning is coated. I used metal tongs (as in picture).
2. Melt butter to coat the bottom of your dish (I used the glass Pyrex dish for cooking and serving)
3. Brown chicken (don't cook all the way through, you will add the chicken back in later) and take back out. Set aside.
4. In the same pan, using the melted butter/chicken juices, fry sliced mushrooms (white or brown button is fine) and thinly sliced shallots (I used this instead of the onion called for in the SK recipe as I wanted to use up my shallots) until soft.
5. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup (or more depending on preference) of Marsala wine, stir into the onion-mushroom-butter sauce, and wait til it evaporates. Add back chicken and turn down heat slightly. Flip chicken occasionally until done, making sure it doesn't stick to bottom of the dish and burn.
6. Taste, adding more butter/salt/pepper as needed, and then serve immediately.

This is a rich and flavourful dish so best to serve it with some plain carbs to soak up the sauce. I used white rice, but crusty bread or plain pasta would go with this too.


Sides:

Potatoes
I diced one baking potato, skin-on, (we had a lot of chicken and also rice, so only one for 2 people, otherwise I would do one potato per person), and blanched the cubes in some boiling water for a couple of minutes to remove some of the starch. Then I put the cubes in the roasting pan and added extra virgin olive oil, rosemary, and teaspoon of salt. I tossed the mixture so that the potatoes were thoroughly coated, and then baked until golden crispy brown in a 220 Celcius oven.

Peas
I adapted this from a Jamie Oliver recipe. Basically I used frozen peas, heated until soft, tossed in good extra virgin olive oil, a little fresh mint, and then added shaved Parmesan and shredded Mozarella to the mixture. Before serving, sprinkle with some grated/cracked black pepper.

Honey roasted chicken with tomato, potato and onion

I am sorry that I am continuing this photo-less streak but I was so hungry I ate a huge chunk of the chicken and Tupperwared the rest already by the time I remembered! Even with no photo, I wanted to record the recipe so I can file it away for future use. :)

During high school, there was a lot of absolutely scrumptious food in the school dining hall. It's funny to think that school food could be good, but my friends and I ate like elephants during those years in England. Bread and butter pudding, chicken and mushroom pie, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, chicken fricasée with rice, ratatouille with baked potato, smoked mackerel and salad – we ate it all. The dining hall cooks loved us, because we always went up for seconds.Now, over 10 years later, we just reminisce nostalgically about all the good food we used to eat back then.

I had a sudden urge to recreate a particular dish that I hadn't had in years, ever since I left Malvern. It was served back then as chicken legs roasted in a tray with a chunky tomato sauce that was chock-ful of tomatoes and onions. The chicken was always sweet and crispy with the taste of honey and butter, so when I recreated it last weekend, I used a healthy amount of honey to rub over the chicken and also mixed in the tomato sauce mix. It turned out amazing. I also added potatoes (not in the school version) and that was great too; however it is fine without potato and served with penne or rice.

The only thing you have to watch out for is for the chicken to blacken too soon due to the honey rub - but the crispy chicken skin (even when black) is pretty amazing stuff!

The great thing about this roast chicken is that it can serve 2 people nicely, or else you can reserve the chicken breasts and sauce to go with pasta the next day, and the leftovers (bones, neck, feet, any leftover tomatoes) will make a nice tomato chicken soup as well. It's pretty economical and efficient.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (or legs, drumsticks, wings, etc.)
• 1 small can tomato paste
• A large handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half (or else a couple of diced large tomatoes would work too)
• 1 large onion
• 4-5 cloves garlic (or more!)
  
• 3-4 (or more) par-boiled new potatoes, baking potatoes or any potatoes you have left over
  
• Herbs and spices that you want (I put 2 bay leaves, a bit of oregano, rosemary, cumin, black pepper, sea salt)
• Real butter or olive oil
  
• Honey (cheap honey such as for BBQ is fine)

1. Preheat oven to about 220 Celcius (425 F).
   
2. Rinse and pat dry chicken. Rub all over with sea salt. Place a couple pats of butter inside skin underneath the chicken breast (this is optional if you have a good organic/free range chicken). Drizzle a light coating of honey over the chicken, rub in to make sure it evenly coats the chicken. Place in a roasting pan (make sure there's room to put all the other stuff) and set aside.
   
3. Chop up tomatoes, potatoes, onion, garlic (no need to peel garlic completely if you're lazy, the final silver layer of skin is fine to be kept on). In a large bowl, mix all these with the can of tomato paste (may need to add a bit of water), herbs, and at least 1/3 cup honey, if not more.
   
4. Spoon the tomato sauce mixture into the roasting pan around the chicken (or underneath the chicken if there's not enough room). Feel free to add an additional bay leaf inside the cavity of the chicken. Also, put a couple dabs of butter (or generous squirt of olive oil) on top of the tomato sauce mixture if you want.
5. Place the roasting pan into the oven, cook for about an hour, but check it every so often to see if it's done. Usually I find that the chicken is done in just over an hour depending on the size of the bird. (Use a meat thermometer or just poke it in the thigh to see if it's still red. I normally cook chicken for me and my boyfriend only, so presentation is not that important. I just cut open the chicken at the thigh joint to see if it's done there. If it is all white, then it's ready!)