Mushroom Chicken Cacciatore a la Thermomix

I enjoyed the Mushroom and Chicken Cacciatore meal so much that I have just made a modified version in the Thermomix. The original recipe appeared in Courier Mail's Q-Weekend magazine. 

The condiments below don’t include salt as the Thermomix stock concentrate already has salt in it. I’ve worked out that I can store my stock concentrate in a pyrex container in the freezer as I can easily scoop some out on a spoon. I have previously found that frozen jam can be scooped out in the same way if it is made with equal quantities of fruit and sugar. It looks like stock concentrate made with a significant amount of salt has the same properties.  

It tasted lovely even though the tomatoes lost their form and became part of the stock. Next time I’ll reduce the number of tomatoes and increase the amount of zucchini or capsicum. The rest of the stew ended up in the freezer with the meals being much more stock than chicken and mushroom. But that’s fine. I’ll enjoy eating it and won’t mind using a spoon to lap up the last few mouthfuls.  

I have just read the Thermomix forum and found a recipe for Chicken Cacciatore along with some great suggestions on how to reduce the resulting liquid.  Next time I'll try cooking the meal on Varoma temperature and steaming vegetables in the Varoma basket.I'll choose the vegetables carefully as 15 minutes cooking time seemed perfect with this meal and some vegetables require a longer steaming time. Probably vegetables that can be eaten raw like pumpkin, carrots, broccoli or cauliflower would be best.   

Recipe ingredients:

1 clove garlic

1 onion peeled and quartered

Olive oil 30g

300g chicken thighs diced

120g mushrooms diced

3 roma tomatoes chopped

1 zucchini diced

200ml water with 1 tsp Thermomix stock concentrate

Condiments to suit :  pepper, herbs eg oregano, rosemary or dried Italian herbs
Optional: Diced vegetables for steaming eg  pumpkin, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower

Preparation:

Chop garlic and onion in Thermomix bowl for 5 seconds on speed 7

Add oil and sauté for 3 minutes at 100 deg C on speed 1

Add remaining ingredients and position the Varoma basket on top if vegetables are being steamed. Cook for 15 minutes at 100 deg C or Varoma temperature (if veggies are being steamed) on Reverse speed soft.

Mushroom Chicken Cacciatore

I live opposite a park and have been envious when barbeque smells waft in my direction. Tonight I reckon my neighbours might have been thinking exactly the same thing about me. 
 

My brother has sometimes mentioned the meals that he makes for his family and they always sound great. After he had taken step by step photos of a Mushroom & Chicken Cacciatore meal, I couldn’t help asking if I could post his photos here. 

The recipe appeared in Courier Mail's Q-Weekend magazine and has since become unavailable. However, I have created a Thermomix version of this recipe which can be found here.

So here are my brother’s step-by-step photos…

Naturally I tried it out for myself and bought all of the major ingredients while substituting for some of the others. Dried Italian herbs catered for the dried oregano and fresh rosemary while the reduced quantity that I made with 360g chicken breast meant that 200ml dry white wine along with a teaspoon of stock concentrate was plenty for the dish. I had no tomato paste or capers in my fridge but plenty of tomatoes to fill the gap.

I was sold on this recipe just after I cooked the diced chicken as all the smaller bits had disappeared long before it was time to add them back into the pan.

So here is my version of this recipe… As I’ve said once or twice in the past, this one is a keeper!

Sweet and Sour Chicken

I’ve enjoyed making coconut chicken from Thermomix’s Budget Busters cookbook, and the fast chicken curry recipe from the Everyday Cooking recipe book always works out well. But I wanted to make a chicken meal without coconut milk.

I remembered a sweet and sour pork recipe from the Woman’s Day “Cooking for Slimmers” cookbook and adapted the coconut chicken recipe to work with these new ingredients. The key difference I noted about the sweet and sour recipe was that no corn flour was used to thicken the sauce which suited me as I’ve always enjoyed the consistency of the meal.

There are a few differences between the pork recipe and my chicken version. While I would have preferred to use a freshly cut pineapple, I took the easy option of a small can of pineapple pieces. A roma tomato supplemented the quarter piece of capsicum that I had.

The resulting meal with some brown rice was yummy and will certainly be on the menu again.

Recipe ingredients:

3cm piece ginger

3 cloves garlic

1 onion halved

30g oil

1 tsp sugar

3 chicken thighs (330g) cubed bite-size

1 tbsp soy sauce

225g tin pineapple pieces and juice

1/4 red capsicum chopped

1 roma tomato chopped

Instructions:

Chop ginger, garlic and onion in the Thermomix for 2 secs on speed 6.

Add oil and sauté for 3 mins at Varoma temperature on speed 1.

Add sugar and chicken thighs. Cook for 4 mins at Varoma temperature  on Reverse speed 1.

Add soy sauce, pineapple pieces and juice, capsicum and tomato. Cook for 9 mins at 100deg C on Reverse speed 1.

Serve with rice or steamed vegetables.

Stir Fry Part II and Buckwheat Kasha

After my last post, I realised I had more to say even though stir fries are standard fare and my only claim for originality was that I had one ingredient that was unfamiliar. However I really enjoyed the combination of tastes that my stir fry produced.

But then I started to wonder… Where was the need to add honey or sugar, or some sauce that would complete the meal, which so often comes to mind with most stir fries that I make? For some reason after taste testing my meal, whatever part of my mind that controls the tastes that I must have to enjoy a meal was remarkably quiet!

I just happened to be reading a macrobiotics book over the last couple of days. And it repeated what I have also read in other books in the past. We need to include 5 tastes in a meal for it to be really satisfying. This book “Aveline Kushi’s Introducing Macrobiotic Cooking” by Wendy Esko listed the five ingredients: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent or spicy. Now I would have been quite happy to accept these – and in a sense I wish I had - but being a little pedantic, I googled “tastes of meal” and found a site more than happy to list the tastes that a person might notice – and they were sweet, sour, salty and bitter – but where was the fifth one? I found lots of historical references on the site explaining the fifth taste including the Japanese introduction of “umami” being the Japanese equivalent of delicious or yummy. And then the site mentioned that a fifth taste was revealed recently for when something is really, really yummy in a non-sweet, sour, bitter or salty way. And in honour of a chemist named Kikunae Ikeda who first called this ingredient “umami”, this is exactly what they’ve named it.

I’m so pleased they cleared this up for me as this could have sent me on a wild goose chase trying to find the fifth taste. I’ve decided that I won’t make things too complicated and so have accepted “umami” as the fifth taste and am hoping that “umami” is similar to the fifth taste mentioned above of pungent or spicy.

I had already thought the previous night that perhaps the various tastes of each of the vegetables and the one fruit along with the homemade baked beans in my meal all complemented each other enough to satisfy the five tastes needed. Perhaps I’m ready to acknowledge daikon’s true participation in the meal.

So last night I combined onion, silverbeet, daikon, eggplant, green apple, cabbage and slivers of a half sheet of nori in a Thermomix stir fry. This time I decided to include some tamari sauce and I certainly enjoyed the final result, even though I did wonder later how I could forget to include some protein such as fish or else some beans or chick peas.

As I kept reading Wendy Esko’s book, I found a recipe that I could try – Buckwheat Kasha. From what I’ve read, toasted buckwheat is known as “Kasha”, although there are other varieties of kasha that use other grains. Anyway I decided to make this kasha, and needless to say, I did it in a completely different way to how Wendy Esko suggested as I really wanted to use the Thermomix.

Buckwheat Kasha Recipe Instructions:

I roasted some buckwheat in the Thermomix for 10 minutes at 100 degrees Celsius on speed 1. The buckwheat was then placed into the basket with some cabbage and carrot matchsticks sitting on top, and then steamed for 20 minutes at Varoma temperature on speed 2.

I then added some salt as suggested in the recipe, a smattering of parsley and later sprinkled some tamari sauce, and I enjoyed it, although next time I’d aim for less buckwheat and more vegetables.

Cooking this kasha reminds me of a time when I used to add sultanas to the rice that I was cooking. I wonder whether I was making kasha without knowing it…

This was an interesting experience and I plan on trying some more kasha recipes to see which ones work for me.

Stir Fry

I know, I know. This looks unusual. I have just made this stir fry using some ingredients that I didn’t get to in the past week and adding in some that I have just received in today’s Food Connect box. I’m thinking that a stir fry on a Tuesday night might become a regular feature for exactly this purpose.

There are some fairly diverse ingredients in this stir fry (spot the one that is new to me)… onion, silverbeet, daikon, eggplant, green apple, avocado and homemade baked beans. This all worked out really nicely for my dinner.

Okay, I haven’t seen or heard of daikon before but fortunately I found a site that let me know that it is a substitute for radish. Now that might be a good thing for some people but I have never been enthusiastic about radish. But I did the brave thing and chomped on a sliver as I chopped it up for my meal. Fortunately, it doesn’t have a very strong taste and so I ate the sliver fairly easily although it still isn’t my favourite taste. However, it contributed to the meal along with the other ingredients.

The web site tells me that daikon can be used in just about any type of dish that, well, I can think of… Saute daikon along with carrot as a side dish, add to soups or stews, or else add to salads, coleslaw or smoothies. Ah! It has raw potential! I must remember that.

I’m starting to notice that Food Connect is going to continue introducing me to new foods in the same way that Rawlicious did, which I don’t see as a bad thing. Who knows – perhaps I might get to like daikon raw, and then it might be time to try radish again…

Coconut Chicken

Uh-oh. I’m doing it again. The word “yum” just keeps coming to mind.

Some friends are coming around for lunch in a month’s time. I’ve mentioned the Thermomix occasionally and now they want to see it in action. But I was at a loss to know what to make as the main meal until I remembered this Coconut Chicken recipe from the Budget Busters booklet.

This time, there are no surprises. I’ve seen this recipe demonstrated at a Thermomix night and have sampled some with rice. But while being in the audience watching things up front certainly helped, it is different actually making it myself. For a start, just inhaling the combination of garlic, ginger and lemon grass as I proceeded through the recipe was enough to raise a “yum” without actually tasting anything.

Probably the only thing I did wrong was to use too much of the lemon grass stalk as some parts of it didn’t grind up very well at the beginning. But that’s the only complaint I have about my rendition of it particularly after enjoying the first serving, so it has made its way onto the menu for my friends. Now I just have to work out what comes before and after, which should be easy as I believe I already have loads of experience in making bread, dips and desserts.