Coq au vin

Coq au vin - a 'French braise of chicken cooked in red wine'.

deliciousmagazine

 My food adventure has brought me to French cuisine this time! A very classic and simple dish but very delicious and full of flavour!

*Another recipe extracted from deliciousmagazine by Hermione Norris.

Ingredients

 Even though this dish involved a lot of ingredients, herbs and seasonings, it is rather easy to make.

Red wine

I selected this Australian red wine for its sweet and fruity taste.

Pot of chicken and various items

Each ingredients were carefully handled. First the chicken was jointed then coated with seasoned flour before frying in olive oil and butter. Then strips of bacon were fried in the same frying pan until crisp, after which a clove of crushed garlic was added. Peeled whole shallots were fried until brown before adding the mushrooms to fry until soft. All these ingredients were added succesively into a big pot.

Herbs

Once the ingredients were added into the big pot, red wine, homemade chicken stock, tomato paste, sprigs of thyme and bay leaves were added.

Shimmering

 The casserole was brought to boil then allowed to shimmer for about an hour until the chicken was cooked through and tender.

Coq au vin

HHHmmmmmm.........
The wonderful and sweet aroma of the wine, herbs and chicken filled the kitchen.

Coq au vin (2)

A nice and thick sauce from the reduced red wine and chicken stock. The chicken was tender and juicy and had absorbed all the flavours of the sauce. All the wonderful flavours from the fried bacon, sweetness of shallots, garlic, sourness and sweetness of tomato paste, herby bay leaves and thyme, and also the fruity punch from the red wine. All these flavour leaves a lingering taste in your mouth with each mouthful!

Served with rice

Lots of sauce served with rice, so delicious that it leaves us wanting more rice to go with it!

A Lazy Weekend Menu

Here comes the end of the week. After a week-long of hard work, nothing is better than a heart-warming, mouth-watering, home-cooked meal!

Does a nice home-cooked meal always mean lots of toiling in the kitchen? The answer is...........most certainly NOT!

After shifting through my new issue of 'deliciousmagazine' and tagging a few recipes that I like, I decided to cook this simple dish on the weekend.

Nigella's lazy weekend menu - Roast Duck Legs with Potatoes.

deliciousmagazine

Ingredients

Searing Duck skin side down

Ready for the oven

Roast duck leg with potatoes

Searing the duck skin-side down not only leaves a very crispy skin and lock the juices inside the duck meat, but also brings out the natural fat/oil from the duck which leaves a very lovely aroma and flavour to the dish.

Potatoes diced into even 2cm cubes were arranged around the seared duck legs in a hot roasting pan. A few sprigs of thyme were spread over the duck and potatoes which were then seasoned with sea salt and pepper before putting into a pre-heated oven.

As the dish was cooking in the oven, the aroma from the thyme, the fat from the duck and the roasting potatoes filled the entire house!

Two hours later, we get a very tender duck with extremely crackling skin and absolutely crispy potatoes! Of course, some boiled mix-vegetable to provide our daily 5-portion of fruit & veg.

5 minutes to prepare and 2 hours in the oven - easy to cook with very little hassle producing a yummylicious weekend meal!


Honey Dew Melon with Sago

Recipe from a blog that I follow.

Ingredients

Honey Dew Melon

Honey Dew Melon with Sago

After a nice warm meal, it is always very refreshing to have a nice cool dessert.

A delicious dessert made from fresh fruit and coconut milk then cooled in the fridge is just heavenly. The sweetness of the melon juice and sugar syrup is so soothing and the milkiness of fragrant coconut milk is just amazing. The boiled sago adds another dimension of texture to this lovely dessert, making it thicker.

Served cold, this dessert --> yummylicious!

辣子雞丁 Chilli Spicy Chicken

Chilli Spicy Chicken by AT

辣子雞丁 by AT

 Ingredients:
- 3 Chicken legs - Debone, beat to tenderise then cut to small pieces.
- 1 Red, 1 Green and 1 Yellow pepper - Cut to pieces
- 1 Chilli - Chopped
- 1 Ginger- Shredded

Ingredients

 Marinate:
- 1 tsp cornfour
- 1 tsp light soya sauce
- 1 tbsp beaten egg

Mix well and leave for 2-3 minutes.

Marinate

 Cooking method:
- Fry the chicken pieces for about 1 minute to coat them then remove from wok and leave to rest.
- Heat the 豆瓣酱 (bean paste)

- Add chilli and ginger to fry until fragrant.
- Add water and 1 tsp sugar.
- Then add spring onions and the peppers
- Finally add the chicken pieces and shimmer until cooked.

The final product -辣子雞丁

 A beautiful dish full of flavours. Spicy from the bean paste, chillies and ginger, different flavours and sweetness of the peppers, with sugar added to reduce the spiciness of the dish. Delicious!