Archive for the 'Chicken and poultry' Category

* Go to the recipe for Kung Pao Chicken

One of the dishes we returned to time and again when we were visiting our friend Cristy in Beijing a few years ago was the popular Gong Bao Ji Ding or Kung Pao Chicken (also called Kung Po or Gung Po chicken). Traditional Gong Bao Ji Ding is a spicy Sichuan dish, the westernised version of which is often very different from the authentic Sichuanese version. I’m sure there are many variations of the dish within China, as well. But it’s not usual to add other vegetables like onions, peppers (capsicum) or cashews (or even pineapple?!).

I like to call it Gong Bao Ji Ding, because it has such a lovely ring to it, and apologies to Mandarin speakers the world over for my terrible pronunciation. Perhaps, as I’m erring towards attempting to cook an authentic version of the dish, I should also be trying to pronounce it correctly. But the truth is, I simply don’t know how.

There are very few main ingredients in Gong Bao Ji Ding – just chicken, peanuts and spring onions (green onions), really. But, as with many east Asian dishes, the complexity is in the many flavourings. Continue reading ‘How to make Kung Pao Chicken’

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How to cook with truffles

Published on November 26, 2010 in Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, English traditional, Favourites, Indian, Pasta, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes. 6 Comments

Go to the recipe for Pasta with white truffle
Go to the recipe for Eggs in cocotte with white truffle

On “schoolnights”, when everything happens at helter-skelter pace, it’s always a rush to get home from work, throw a meal together and do the day’s housekeeping before crashing into bed. If I’m lucky Waz has been on an early shift and we can share the evening duties.

So on the weekends we really like to give a lot more time and attention to creating lovely meals that we can enjoy eating at a slower pace.

I thoroughly respect the ideology of the Slow Food Movement – begun in 1986 to celebrate and enjoy local and regional cuisines. So when time permits I love to create meals that embody the Slow Food philosophy of creating the simplest of dishes, with the highest quality ingredients.

Chef Michelle and I recently treated ourselves with a whirlwind weekend trip to the centre of the white truffle universe – the Alba truffle festival in Piemonte near Turin, Italy. We ate a fantastic truffle meal at a Slow Food restaurant with some luscious local Barolo wine. We couldn’t believe our luck the following day when, while roaming the Alba hills, we ran into a local truffle hunter who sold us some white truffles that his little dog had just dug out of the ground. Continue reading ‘How to cook with truffles’

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How to roast a duck, the slow and tender way

Published on December 7, 2009 in Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Favourites, Potatoes, Quick and easy, Sauces and Video recipes. 5 Comments

Go to the recipe for Christmas duck

Let’s talk turkey. Actually let’s talk about something else this Christmas. Let’s talk turkey alternatives.

This is a first for Crash Test Kitchen. We’ve never done a Christmas episode before. So we thought we’d focus on two of the basic elements you want on your table: crispy roast potatoes and a lovely bird.

But instead of turkey, we’ve chosen duck. Continue reading ‘How to roast a duck, the slow and tender way’

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Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast

Published on July 17, 2009 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Favourites, Potatoes, Quick and easy and Video recipes. 21 Comments Tags: brandy, butter, roast chicken recipe, roast potatoes.

Go to the recipe for hot and fast roast chicken

People do fuss over a roast chicken, don’t they? Doing all sorts of things like draping bacon over the fleshiest bits to keep them moist, mucking around poking seasonings under the skin, stuffing all sorts of things inside them to add flavour, even insisting that you have to roast a chicken breast-down in the pan and then flip it over part way through cooking.

In our opinion, if you keep the cooking simple, getting a good result can be reduced to one decision: buying a decent chicken in the first place. There’s been a lot of publicity about chicken welfare lately, with the focus being on battery laying hens and intensively reared, fast-growing meat birds that can hardly stand up by themselves.

In our house we haven’t gone down the full free-range route, but have settled on buying slow-growing birds that are fed better food in more spacious barns endorsed by animal welfare authorities. In the UK the scheme is called RSPCA Freedom Foods and no doubt there are equivalents elsewhere in the world. Continue reading ‘Our roast chicken recipe: hot and fast’

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Duck a l’orange

Published on March 6, 2009 in Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, French traditional, Potatoes, Sauces and Video recipes. 32 Comments

Go to the recipe (duck breasts)
Go to the recipe (whole duck)

When I found whole duck on sale at our local supermarket, I got very excited. And I remembered that we had an episode up our sleeve not yet launched on the wider Crash Test Kitchen viewing public.

Friends and family were coming over for dinner this week and I had planned to do a simple roast chicken – but I had never cooked a whole duck before, and I want to have one next Christmas. So this would be the trial run.

It might be a tad retro, but duck a l’orange remains synonymous with birds that swim. A while back we did a show for the Word of Mouth blog that involved duck breasts and a recipe by Stefan Reynaud. Recipe-wise, what I’ll detail here is how we did the breasts-only version shown in the video, and how I handled the whole bird – a Gressingham duck in our case. Continue reading ‘Duck a l’orange’

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Partridges with bread sauce

Published on October 9, 2008 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, English traditional, Sauces and Video recipes. 13 Comments

Continue reading ‘Partridges with bread sauce’

Autumn is game season, and in years past I’ve indulged in wild meaty delights such as pheasant and woodcock (I think it was). I’ve fantasised about getting out in the woods with my wellies and peacoat, dogs yapping along the muddy tracks while I take a few shots at the woodland foul as the beaters scare them out of the brush. But I never really thought it would happen.

And it didn’t, exactly. But this did: our friend Richard was lucky enough to be taken on a game shoot recently and, lucky for us, his kitchen was being refurbished at the time, so we ended up with two lovely, bright-eyed fresh partridges trussed up in a plastic bag to do with what we would.

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Stock while-u-don’t-wait

Published on April 21, 2008 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Sauces, Soup and Video recipes. 9 Comments Tags: chicken stock, cooking, crash test kitchen, crock pot, fish stock, food, lenny, recipe, slow cooker, waz.

Making stock is easy enough – bones, vegetables, herbs, seasoning, then simmer simmer simmer. For a long, long time. And therein lies the problem – can you afford to be housebound for eight hours or so while you wait for all that boney, marrowy, veggie goodness to leach out?

We’ve heard some people talk about making stock in a pressure cooker. You can cut the cooking time down to an hour and a half, maybe less, which should fit in nicely with your TV watching. But do you have a pressure cooker? No, neither do we. But we do have a slow cooker, or crock pot, as featured in our last episode. In this latest instalment of our Adventures in Slow Cooking we find another way to put it to good use. Continue reading ‘Stock while-u-don’t-wait’

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Going, going, tarragon chicken

Published on January 17, 2008 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Potatoes and Video recipes. 6 Comments

Go to the recipe for tarragon chicken

Here’s an episode we prepared earlier. We’ve been doing a few shows for Word of Mouth (WOM), the blog of Observer Food Monthly magazine here in the UK. A lot of you probably didn’t know about these CTK specials, as they were posted only at WOM and didn’t go out in our feed.

It seemed a shame that some of you might miss out, especially the great number who subscribe to CTK via iTunes, so we’ve decided to repost them here for your enjoyment. Even if you’ve seen the episode before, you can now download it to your iPods, Apple TVs and what-not. Continue reading ‘Going, going, tarragon chicken’

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Rice to the occasion

Published on January 9, 2008 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking videos, Pork, Quick and easy and Video recipes. 5 Comments

Lenny is a whiz with fried rice. Last time she made it I was well impressed, to the point that I would eat it over stuff from a Chinese restaurant any day.

And that’s saying something. I reckon it’s really hard to replicate the flavours of your better-than-average Chinese takeaway. Maybe it’s down to MSG, which in some Asian cultures is literally known as “taste” (oh, if only you could buy good taste in powdered form). We’ve got nothing against MSG, really – it’s either in the food we buy or it isn’t – but we don’t have it in our kitchen, and don’t have any idea how, or how much of it, to use. Continue reading ‘Rice to the occasion’

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We larb turkey

Published on January 3, 2008 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking videos, Pork and Video recipes. 10 Comments

Windows video
QuickTime video

The leftover Christmas turkey was on its last legs, and sandwiches had long since lost their appeal … time for what Lenny calls a “flavour changer”.

Larb is a simple Laotian dish of spicy mince (usually pork or chicken) that is eaten with sticky rice, also known as glutinous rice. In Laos the rice comes in a little hopper-style basket made of bamboo and woven grass. The lime and chili flavours are heaven together, and ground rice powder adds a bit of crunch. Continue reading ‘We larb turkey’

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Whole lotta rosemary chicken

Published on August 30, 2007 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Potatoes and Video recipes. 15 Comments

Here’s how it works. Lenny does the shopping, I do the cooking. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work – it depends on our work schedules, and I have to admit that Lenny probably does more than her fair share.

A couple of weeks ago she left me vague instructions for some sort of chicken dish. Well, she probably gave me quite good instructions, but I’m in the habit of fobbing her off with a “Yeah yeah yeah I’ll take care of it” and then instantly purging my memory.

So there I was with some chicken pieces and a vague recollection of rosemary, garlic and olive oil being mentioned. Continue reading ‘Whole lotta rosemary chicken’

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One chicken, three ways

Published on April 25, 2007 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Favourites, Soup and Video recipes. 23 Comments

Windows video
QuickTime video

What a month it’s been. Moving to a new address on the other side of London, getting to grips with a new kitchen (while mourning the loss of the behemoth stove at our previous address), and on top of that, work work work!

THEN, just as we got this episode – where we make Hainanese chicken rice – shot and edited, Apple decided to bring out their new set-top box, Apple TV. It lets you watch podcasts like ours on your telly. Cool gadget, but it posed some issues, because to make the most of it we’ve had to step up the resolution of our videos.

But more on that later. We decided on something simple for the first show at our new place – Hainan chicken, or as some call it, Hainanese chicken rice. Like many Asian recipes it’s big on fresh ingredients prepared in a straightforward manner. Continue reading ‘One chicken, three ways’

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How to make cracking creme brulee

Published on March 8, 2006 in Cakes, breads and baking, Chicken and poultry, Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, English traditional, Favourites, French traditional, Quick and easy, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes. 23 Comments

We all want one of those chef’s blowtorches, don’t we? You know, the ones that you can use to blacken a capsicum (sorry, a pepper), blister a tomato … or make creme brulee!

I’ve had a serious addiction to this oh-so-unhealthy French dessert for years now – probably since I saw the movie Amelie, with that pixie-faced leading lady who rates “cracking creme brulee with a spoon” as one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Most restaurants have it on the menu, and I’ve eaten all sorts of variations – fruit flavoured and the like – in different parts of the world. Continue reading ‘How to make cracking creme brulee’

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Tandoori chicken on a barbecue

Published on February 21, 2006 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Failures and redemptions, Indian and Video recipes. 10 Comments

All right you purists. I know what you’re going to say. “You can’t cook tandoori without a tandoor!”

Yes, well, who has a huge earthenware oven in their kitchen, I ask you? The closest most of can get to tandoori at home is applying the curry paste or powder to meat of some description and cooking the results over a grill.

This is another of our “lost” episodes. I had genuinely forgotten about it, and found the raw video while rabbiting through our archive for holiday footage. Continue reading ‘Tandoori chicken on a barbecue’

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A chicken crashes and burns

Published on October 3, 2005 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Failures and redemptions and Video recipes. 13 Comments

We saw a moose! Two or three, in fact, right here in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia. One with a great set of antlers that any hunter would have been delighted to bag. Luckily they’re protected in this park.

A few weeks into our road trip we developed a superb roast chicken recipe using a pistachio and plum stuffing of our own invention. When Lenny’s brother Cam flew in from London (UK) to join us for a few days, it seemed the perfect welcoming dinner.

Well, as you know, things don’t always turn out as planned on Crash Test Kitchen. Our portable barbecue ran out of gas, and that should have served as a warning. Continue reading ‘A chicken crashes and burns’

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A crow-eater gives us curry

Published on July 10, 2005 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos and Video recipes. 6 Comments

There is a fair-sized community of expatriate Australians here in Edmonton. We Aussies seem to find our way to every corner of the world, no matter how cold and forbidding the place can be.

We met Shaun through the local Down Under Club and quickly became good mates. He’s a South Australian and we’re Queenslanders, so it’s been interesting to spend time together, picking up on the little differences in language and culture. Things you probably wouldn’t notice if you’d met back in Australia.

When our other SA mates Adam and Katrina get talking with Shaun, I sometimes get lost trying to follow the conversation. No problems for them following me and my slow Sunshine State drawl. Continue reading ‘A crow-eater gives us curry’

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We Did It All For The Gnocchi – Again

Published on July 5, 2005 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Pasta, Potatoes, Sauces, Vegetarian and Video recipes. 6 Comments

We’ve decided to reprise a couple of our classic episodes – mostly for our iTunes audience, and others who find it easier to view our new MPEG4/QuickTime formats.

Here’s the first episode we posted, known amongst our small but dedicated fan base as “the one with the orange”.

Go to the recipe for chicken soup

What we put together here is home-made gnocchi with a very simple, classic pesto. Hope it gets your juices flowin’! Continue reading ‘We Did It All For The Gnocchi – Again’

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Chicken soup from scratch

Published on June 11, 2005 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Favourites, Soup and Video recipes. 16 Comments

mp4 video (small)

When Lenny’s feeling a little bit under the weather she gets a craving for soup. Actually, pretty much ANY excuse to make this simple, hearty chicken soup will do. You just start with a whole chicken, remove the skin and simmer it with tasty vegetables until the flesh is tender and comes away easily from the bone (Lenny calls this the “fall-apartability” test.

Removing the skin as Lenny does in this video might a familiar process to people who’ve basted a “chook” by getting their hands under the skin to rub a mixture of butter, garlic, herbs and what-not on the flesh. Continue reading ‘Chicken soup from scratch’

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Beating the breast

Published on May 12, 2005 in Chicken and poultry, Cooking videos, Quick and easy, Sauces and Video recipes. 7 Comments

Our fondest memory of this dish is when we made it for our good friend Georgie’s “birthday week” party a couple of years ago. Much wine was drunk and much delicious, tender chicken saltimbocca was eaten.