Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Continental Dinner

I am back to writing after a long hiatus. Hope I can stay attached for sometime atleast.

Last night, Debasri, my wife wished that she wanted to have a continental dinner and both of us being self professed gourmands, I could not refuse. As such preparations are my area of responsibility (apart from donning my Chef's cap - the invisible one, on weekends), I embarked on it with gusto. And I use my cooking sessions as an effective therapy from whatever little stress I have in life. The problem was my wife's wish came at 1830 hrs and we don't run a restaurant where the basic ingredients are all ready for the customer's wish. So I started Googling and searching for recipes on the net & in the cook book collection we have, to discover a fast track roasting recipe and found that the fast track recipes were too bland. The apparently good ones required few hours of marination. So finally after reading through quite a few of them, decided to do a modified creation of mine. And it surprisingly turned out well and got a well sounding "yumm" from wifey dear.

The recipe goes like this:


Ingredients:

Roast Chicken


  1. 2 Chicken breasts
  2. A large tomato
  3. A medium sized onion
  4. 5-6 large cloves of garlic
  5. 1 or 2 green chillies (Depends on how spicy you like it)
  6. Oregano
  7. Chili flakes (If you have. Giving it a go is also fine)
  8. 1.5 tbsp of Soya Sauce
  9. Juice of 1 lime
  10. 2 tbsp thick curd (avoid the water absolutely)
  11. 1 egg (Whisked nice and fluffy) [I liked it, but one may avoid it too]
  12. Salt to taste
  13. Port / Any red Wine
Grilled Vegetables:
  1. Carrots
  2. Capsicum
  3. Cauliflower
  4. Green peas
  5. French Beans
  6. Onions
  7. Tomatoes
Garlic Bread
  1. Brown Bread (as it was readily available at home) (A lady suggested me to use French loaf as they taste mightily good)
Process:
Chicken: Blend Sl 2 to 5 in a mixer and take it in the mixing bowl. Mix the remaining ingredients and beat it nice till well blended. Add the chicken breasts (do not forget to pierce the chicken pieces well by using the fork like a shovel:) ) and leave it to marinate in the refrigerator. About 2 hours does good justice to the marination.

Vegetables: Cut the vegetables in medium sized pieces except the onions and tomatoes and put into boiling water with salt. Par boil the vegetables and drain and leave it in a sieve. Cut the onions & tomatoes into thick rings and keep it aside.

Take the drained vegetables in a baking dish, add salt, pepper and oregano. Add a dash of butter (health conscious denizens can use olive oil / veg oil) and mix it nice. Put the bowl in the microwave and use the combination mode (grill + micro) for about 7-8 mins. Check the vegetables for the right softness (if still uncooked, run it for some more time) and keep it aside.

Onions and tomatoes: In a flat pyrex plate, grease the base with a tsp of oil. Arrange the onions on the plate and add small drops of oil / butter on each ring. Put the plate in the grill (high rack) and run it for about 4 mins. Turn the rings and again run the grill for about 3-4 mins. The onion rings are ready. I did an experimentation to put a few drops of wine on the onions when it was left with about 2 mins of grilling. It gave an interestingly sweet taste to it.

On the same plate, arrange the tomatoes in the same process and grill it for about 3 mins on one side only. I would suggest the onions and tomatoes being grilled separately as tomatoes get done very fast and a little more heat render them pulpy.

Bread: Take the required amount of cheese in small bowl. Mix it with oregano / pepper and garlic paste / well crushed garlic. Apply the mix on the bread (ofcourse on one side) and keep the bread aside. I would prefer to do the bread at the end as else it turns soggy and cold. After the chicken is done, arrange the breads on a high rack and grill it for about 4-5 mins.

Roasting the chicken: Pre heat the convection mode of the oven to 22o deg C. Arrange the breast pieces on the high rack with the bony side up. Brush with oil and put it in the oven. Cook it for about 15 mins. After it is done, take the rack out and turn it upside down and put it back in the oven for about 12 mins. Once done, take it the rack out and pour a few tablespoons of wine on the chicken (generously) and grill the chicken for about 5 mins (this gives a burnt heady smell to the roast).

Arrange everything on the plate and serve! This is how it looked when I did it:


3 comments:

Manali said...

Awesome!
Thanks for the recipe ... will try it very shortly.

Anonymous said...

Dear Amitabha, We arevindeed impressed. It looks awesome and sure must have tasted good too. Will try it sometime. A good stress buster. Good wishes to you three.
Capt Tripathy

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.