Monday Night DinDin

Well, whaddaya know...the Weber has done it again.

A simple dinner of fresh garden salad with grilled corn on the cob and asparagus and sticky chicken wings.

Cat's Sticky Chicken Wings

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Ingredients:

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Marinade chicken wings overnight in:

- minced garlic

- Kikkoman soya sauce

- tomato sauce

- HP sauce/Worcestershire sauce

- white wine

- sugar

(I don't measure anything here. There is something about just strewing everything together till it looks good!)

Method:

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1) Grill for 15- 20 minutes in the Weber or roast in oven.

The chicken wings were so moist and juicy! I really think it is due to the Weber's ability to BBQ and roast at the same time (remember, it cooks with it's lid down) that makes it such a keeper.

Simon Hopkinson's Out-Of-This-World's Capsicum Stuffed With Tomatoes

There is a new British cook lurking on ABC 1 this month. He may not be as debonair as Jamie Oliver but his TV series The Good Cook is straightforward, good home cooking.

Most of his recipes are good ol' favourites which I've already picked up (and perfected) from Mr Oliver and Ms Lawson but here is one that Leng said we absolutely MUST try and OMG...it's as the Brits would say, gobsmackingly delicious!!

VERDICT: 11/10 You know Summer is here when the sweet roma tomatoes are in abundance and capsicums are on special at the markets. When paired together in this dish and enhanced further by the garlic and basil, their flavours literally blow your palate away! I beg of you to try this at home. This certainly has to be our favourite dish this year!

Simon Hopkinson's Roasted Red Capsicum

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Ingredients:

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Red capsicum (1/2 per person)

Tomatoes (any sort)

Garlic - sliced

Anchovies - out of a jar. I use amazing Aranoa Spanish anchovies from Essential Ingredient. They are on the pricey side but so worth it!

Fresh basil leaves, torn

Method:

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1) Half and deseed the capsicum and lay it in a roasting tray

2) Put sliced garlic ( as much as you like) in each capsicum cup and sprinkle a little salt and ground black pepper in each capsicum cup.

3) Using the tip of the knife, prick the tomatoes randomly (this will aid peeling their skins off later) and put them in a pot. Pour boiling water over them and cover. Leave for a few minutes.

4) Peel tomato skins off and stuff into capsicum cups.

5) Drizzle extra virgin olive oil over stuffed capsicum and roast in oven/Weber BBQ for 15-20 minutes

6) Before serving, criss cross anchovy fillets over the capsicum and torn basil leaves on top.

We had an impromptu dinner for 4 guests last night and whipped this up for them for which they all loved! So easy to make yet such amazing flavours.

What To Do With Leftover Roasted Chicken

So I promised a small recipe on what to do with your leftover roasted chicken.

The little picnic cum day trip to regional Victoria to eat your leftover chicken is of course, optional :)

Leftover Roasted Chicken Filling

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Ingredients:

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salad cream/mayo - japanese or otherwise, to taste

ABC sambal, to taste

juice from a lemon, to taste

freshly ground pepper, to taste

Method:

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1) Mix everything together till consistency and taste to your liking. Just remember that this will be your sandwich filling so you might want to make it a tad saltier than normal.

2) Sandwich this delicious filling between 2 pieces of bread or do what we did, go on a lovely mini road trip on a gorgeous, sunny, spring day and buy freshly baked baguettes and have a picnic outside!

After each roasted chicken meal, I get as much chicken off the bone as possible, including all the leftover watercress/salad that went with it. You can even take things a step further by freezing your leftover roasted chicken bones to use to make stock in the future!

Here, I used the Japanese Kewpie mayo but Kraft's Lite Salad Cream works a treat too.

Mix everything till is looks something like this. I know, not really appetising right not but just wait...

I basically just clingwrapped the bowl I made the filling in, wrapped that in aluminium foil and then wrapped the entire thing in a tea towel to keep it nice and cool.

We drove north to Gisbourne and found this lovely spot under a tree.

Hungarian and white loaf baguettes from Bakers Delight and takeaway coffee - yummo!

We also managed to check out some local sights. This is the Memorial Cross at Mount Macedon.

We even managed to get ourselves to Daylesford and Hepburn Springs in the evening (isn't daylight savings phenomenal??)

So I was wondering why Leng took the water bottle out of the car and realised so that it was for us to try the spring water. Urm, it was really carbonated and tasted like unrefined fizzy mineral water - I didn't like it!

Julia Child's Herb Roasted Chicken With Garlic, Lemon & Watercress

When I first got my hands on the fabulous How To Eat by Nigella Lawson, I marvelled at her ability to wax lyrical about roasted chickens.

That buxom woman literally had 6-7 recipes on how to roast a chook alone in that book.

Then I slowly discovered the gorgeousness of roasting a bird in the oven. Just a few ingredients can transform your free range (please, ONLY free range, I beg of you. Believe me, you will taste the difference!) chicken into an utter gastronomic feast.

Long before Nigella, another buxom lady was already promoting chickens of the roasting kind - Julia Child. This lady not only had the wonderful opportunity of attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris but also had her own cooking show.

So without further ado, this is Julia Child's Herb Roasted Chicken on Watercress.

You MUST give this recipe a go. The chicken is moist and juicy yet beautifully punctuated by notes of garlic, rosemary and thyme. But the lemon, oh the lemon is the star of this dish undoubtedly and just ties in all the savoury and sweet notes and makes the dish sing even more.

I have now cooked this numerous times as Leng requests for this chook more so than Jamie Oliver's Perfect Roasted Chicken.

VERDICT: 10/10 Such an easy dish for a Sunday roast. The flavours in this are amazing - sour, bitter (from the peppery watercress), savoury and sweet. Plus the leftovers make the best chicken sandwich! (recipe for that coming up real soon!)

Ingredients:

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1 free range whole chicken (I normally get a 16/17 bird for 2 people)

1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed lightly with knife

3 lemons, halved

1 brown onion, sliced

1 bunch of watercress

rosemary & thyme (preferably fresh but I've used dried and it works fine too)

freshly ground pepper & salt, to taste

Method:

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1) Wash chook, inside and out and pat dry with kitchen towel

2) In a large bowl, squeeze your lemons and throw their skins in together along with garlic, herbs, freshly ground pepper and salt.

3) Mix well

4) Transfer chicken into bowl and rub the marinade you just made all over it

5) In a roasting tray, put your sliced onion on the bottom to make a trivet

6) Stuff herbs, garlic cloves and as many lemon halves you can into your chicken and truss it

7) Transfer chicken to roasting tray and pour remaining marinade on top of the chicken

8) Drizzle olive oil over chicken and generously salt skin

9) Roast in preheated oven at 200C for about 1 hour and 20 minutes

10 Wash and chop up watercress whilst waiting and line on large serving platter

10) When done, transfer chicken to a bowl to rest and to collect resting juices

11) In the hot roasting tray, pour some chicken stock if you have some on hand, or else I use the new Campbells chicken stock concentrate that comes in the squeezy tubes with some water and scrape down the tray with salt & pepper to taste

12) Strain it with a sieve into a serving jug and pour into it whatever resting juices you may have collected from the chicken

13) Transfer chicken to serving platter and serve!