Quick Indonesian Peanut Chicken

Sharwood's Indonesian Peanut Satay (4lbs)

The other night I made a large batch of a dish using chicken and the bottled Sharwood's Indonesian Satay sauce.  This product from the UK makes for a quick and tasty dish, much like the Butter Chicken dish I make.  As always, I served with Basmati rice.

The sauce has a very strong flavour so I use 33% more chicken than called for but other than that, this meal is embarrassingly simple.  I like it because as a dish it's quick to make, freezes great and the ingredient list doesn't have anything I cannot pronounce.

• 4 lbs boneless skinless chicken thigh
• 3 jars Sharwood's Indonesian Satay 

Trim the bulk of the excess fat off the chicken (save for stock) and cut the thighs into bite-sized pieces.  Heat  a dash of light tasting olive in your wok or large saucepan and add the chicken.  Heat the chicken completely through and reduce heat to a medium-low.  Add your 3 jars of sauce and continue heating.  The dish is essentially complete at this point, but remember to stir frequently to keep the sauce from burning while heating up the sauce.  I bring it just to a simmer which only takes 5 or 10 minutes. Serve with Basmati rice.

The Sharwood's sauce can go on sale, but generally this dish costs $55 in product and results in at least 10 healthy servings for the four of us.  That's $5.50 per meal per person, still far cheaper than eating out and it's fast and tasty.

!Foodie

Homemade Chicken Stock

The other night I came across a post from a local Foodie Blogger whom I've started reading.  She posted a video on making your own chicken stock (or broth) that was well made.  For the last year or so I too have been making my own chicken stock that I freeze and pull out for dishes like risotto, chicken noodle soup, etc.  I thought I would share my chicken stock process as I do things a little different than Suzie.

The biggest difference is that she used a whole chicken in her stock where my stock is waste protein only.  When I have lots of chicken stock on hand, I will collect all the bones, skin and cartilage of chicken I break down for use or roasts we make.  I toss them in a bag or wrap them in tinfoil and freeze them, I'm not worried about freezer-burn.  I also keep a couple pounds of cleaned chicken feet from Shani's Farm in the freezer that I use.  When I use onion, garlic or celery I scrub the skins before preparing and keep all the scraps and peelings in ice cream containers in the freezer as well.  Any other veg scraps may work too, I'm not sure.  The really important thing is to make sure it's clean, any grit brought in from the vegs may end up suspended in your stock.

When making stock, I try to start first thing in the morning.  I'll start by broiling all the loose bones, carcasses and chicken feet until very brown on baking sheets or in a shallow roasting pan.  Avoid burning but flavour seems to come from the roasting so I get them as dark as I can.   As the pans of bones brown I put them in a pot, including the fat and lightly scrape the crusty bits as well.  I usually have several "trays" of bones and carcass to roast before the stock making starts.  I don't worry about adding fat or whatever to the pot before hand as I'll strain and skim everything out at the end.

All the frozen produce scraps go in the pot.  Depending on how many onion skins and garlic scraps are available, I may add more (scrubbed) whole onions or garlic cloves.  I'll toss in some bay leaves (not just one, I use a large stock pot) and whole peppercorns.  That's about it.   Fill it with water to just cover everything and bring it up to a simmer.  Throughout the day I'll try to skim the "foam" off the top and give the whole mix a good stir.

A couple hours before the end of the day it's time to start wrapping it up.  I remove it from the heat and start pulling bones, soggy chicken and produce out of the pot and into my salad spinner ("waste not, want not").   A quick spin gets a little more liquid out of it and I discard the waste.  Some people may try to pull the edible chicken out here, I don't bother.  Because I only use carcass and feet, any edible chicken is almost shredded and I don't have the patience to separate it.

The liquid goes through a fine sieve to remove as much solid particles as I can and then into empty ice cream containers.  The liquid is usually steaming hot at this point so the containers get a lid and go outside on the deck to cool before being refrigerated overnight.   Do not freeze it as it is, there is a very important step left to do tomorrow.

First thing next morning we need to remove the fat.  As the liquid cooled overnight in the fridge, most of the fat in the containers floated to the top and you should see a white-ish greasy layer on top.  I skim this layer off as best I can down to the pure stock beneath.  You'll see the colour and texture change at the layer where the fat ends and the stock begins.  I discard the fat but I suppose that could be used for something too if you wanted.

From here I start dividing the stock into its permanent homes, container size depending on how much I want to freeze together.  You use anything from ice cream containers to ice cube trays.  I often have to reheat it a little at this point because the consistency can be like a thick Jello thanks to the chicken feet.

It's a big job, but that's how I make my stock.  Quality stock is expensive (not the boxed liquid, that's garbage), but mine uses literally the waste from other meals and from that I get about 6 litres of good stock.

!Foodie

Quick Indian Butter Chicken

One of our favorite meals is butter chicken, we eat it fairly regularly.  I use the store-bought Asian Home Gourmet Indian Butter Chicken from Sobey's here and it works out well.  We've tried different sauces and pastes but we like this one the best.  I hope one day to make a better version from scratch but I'm not there yet.

I made a large batch last night.  A quadruple batch in fact.  A normal meal for us would normally be a double batch (2x packets and double the ingredients) with some naan bread but this summer I started making meals in advance and freezing them so the plan was to make 2 future Butter Chicken suppers.  The plan changed to 1 future meal and 1 meal right then but that's okay.

My large batch of Butter Chicken used the following:

• 4 packets of AHG Butter Chicken
• 4 lbs boneless skinless chicken thigh
• 1 28 oz can tomatoes, pureed
• 1 litre plain yogurt
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1/4 cup butter
• No Water

My recipe is slightly different than the one listed on the packets; more chicken and no water added.

I heat the butter up in my large wok-like pan.   Saute the onions until very soft, about 5 minutes, add in the paste and bring to a strong simmer.  I like to really cook the paste, butter and onions for a good minute or two.  Then add the tomato puree and the yogurt.  Stir thoroughly and bring back to simmer.  Add your chicken which should be cut into bite-sized pieces.

Return to a simmer and cook uncovered until the chicken is cooked, about 20 minutes.  Continue cooking until it is to the consistency you prefer.  I do give it a good stir to keep it well mixed.

My choice of ingredients are part of what makes our meals what they are:

1.  I use local, free-run chicken.  This particular batch was made from chicken from a new butcher I finally found.  I am not sure what farm her chicken comes from, I need to ask.
2.  I prefer fresh, ripe tomatoes, ideally ones low in juice, like a beefsteak.  This batch used canned tomatoes as a test.  The canned (low salt) are better for budget, the fresh are better for taste and nutrients.
3. I use a Balkan-style plain yogurt, I need to try a Greek-style sometime to see if it makes for an even creamier finished product.
4. I try to dice my onions up fairly small so they're almost liquified by the time the cooking is finished.
5. I use real butter, we are phasing out margarine in an effort to reduce the unpronounceable chemicals in our diet.

The total ingredient cost for this batch was about $50 and it provides 12 healthy servings for the four of us (2 suppers and leftovers for work/school lunches the next day).  That's $4.25 per meal per person.  Not the cheapest meal I make for the family, but it is far cheaper than eating out.

!Foodie