recipe: harissa rubbed chicken with mejadra, lentils & spiced rice, crisp fried onions

Thinking of a meal as a collection of separate dishes, brought together that each might bring something out in the others through contrast, a platform of equal opportunity in which the individual virtues of each component stand in line, a satisfying cross-section of textures/smells/colours/flavours in juxtaposition. So it is with this fridaynightdinnerbox meal.

In terms of planning, there are two main parts to the dish: the chicken & the mejadra. The prep list consists of a few smaller jobs: toasting spices & making harissa, marinating the chicken, making a dressing, frying onions & so on. Lastly, there's a salad to throw together, something to compliment & refresh.

Mejadra is an ancient dish, eaten across the Middle East & appearing in various forms in the cuisines of the Middle East. Common ingredients shared by such a kaleidoscope of peoples, taking shape in the various forms of mejadra, managing somehow to define cultures while still crossing boundaries…food for thought.

Ingredients: Mejadra:

3 medium sized onions, sliced in about 1/2cm wide rings

a cup of chickpea flour, salt flakes, olive oil for frying

2 or 3 good pinches each of all spice, red & white peppercorns, cinnamon, turmeric, cumin & coriander seed, all toasted together then into the mortar & pestle & ground down a bit

2 cups green lentils (I used Du Put lentils but only cos I love them)

2 cups rice (I used a white Basmati, but will use brown rice next time)
350ml (1 1/2 cups or so) boiling water - you may need a little more, so boil the kettle just in case

Method:

*In a saucepan, cover lentils with plenty of water & boil until 2/3 cooked, the lentils should have softened but still have a bit of a bite to them, roughly 20mins-ish 
*drain in a colander & set lentils aside

*toss the onion rings in the seasoned chickpea flour, add a little soda water if need be

*in a pan (same one as lentils is fine) heat some olive oil & begin to fry onions (in batches if necessary) 

*it takes a while, but eventually the onions go nice & brown & crispy 

*set aside on a paper towel to drain excess oiliness, then loosely wipe the pan clean for the next step.
-note: the pan doesn't have to be spotless, a little residue is ok & acts as a flavoursome transfer. 

*toast the spices in your pan, then grind them up in a mortar & pestle

*return spices to the pan again, add the oil & get a good sizzle going

*next, add the rice to pan with the oil & spices, stirring it in the whole time until the rice is coated & has changed colour to a nice consistent yellowishness 

*add the 2/3 cooked lentils & combine

*next, turn the heat up, add boiling water & when the water is bubbling turn the heat right down again, covering the pan with a lid & cooking on low-low for a further 15 minutes.

*Lastly, lift off the lid & cover the mejadra with a clean tea towel, putting the lid back on top & letting it sit off the heat until you are ready to use it
*To finish your mejadra, just before serving toss half the crispy fried onion through the rice/lentil mix, reserving the remaining onion as a garnish to sit on top, once served.

Harissa is a condiment common on the tables of Tunisia & in other North African cuisines. Meant to be smokey & hot, harissa is a great coating for grilled meats, lamb or goat, chicken or fish, dare I say it, even pork. Harissa works well with roasted vegetables too, tossed together then into the oven, caramelising as it cooks & permeating with its wonderful flavours. In this combination, the fiery spices are tempered by our mejadra - though rice, bulgur wheat or couscous, for example, work just as well.

Ingredients: Harissa
2 red capsicums, good size
1 good solid pinch each of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, caraway seeds
olive oil…oh y'know, a good dollop or two, 2 tablespoons or so I guess
1 small red onion, diced
4 or 5 galric cloves, diced
3 or 4 red chillies, diced (or a good pinch of dried chilli flakes if nothing is available)
a spoonful of tomato paste
1 lemon, we need the zest & the juice
Method:
*in a roasting pan, roast the capsicums til their skins begin to blacken
-done over a flame is even better, on a gas hob or over the bbq embers is best

*remove from the oven & put in a bowl, cover airtight with glad wrap & let sit 1/2 an hour, by which time the skins should quite easily come off. I used a paring knife to get all mine off in this pic, but it's not overly necessary to be so pedantic. Scoop out seed & core also.

*toast the spices then grind them in mortar & pestle, I add the garlic to this

*in blender, add peppers, tomato paste, oil, onion, spices & blitz it

-I like my harissa to be a little chunky not totally smooth, but that's my preference.

*Correct the seasoning/consistency with salt, lemon juice, olive oil to suit your taste

-be aware that the flavour of the garlic & the chilli will continue to develop, so tread gently

>I also like to keep the stalks from the fresh herbs I use, in this case coriander. Chopped up really finely, I like to throw them in to the paste after it's been blitzed. This gives my harissa a nice cool crunch factor & also uses an often neglected part of the herb, which has great flavour.

Anyway, having prepared the harissa, simply spoon it over the meat & cook as usual: a whole chicken, covered with harissa then roasted in the oven on about 180 or so for an hour should do it, or chicken breast/drumsticks, covered with harissa then cooked on the bbq. As an alternative, toss a couple of spoonfuls of harissa in a bowl with some roughly minced (Terakihi/Gurnard/Kahawai work well) fish fillets & a handful of chopped herbs, then form little balls & cook gently in the pan.

Bringing it all together, I like to serve a bowl of mejadra, topped with crispy fried onion, with a bowl of grilled harissa chicken sliced or shredded into pieces, & a platter of panfried harissa fish balls, side by side on the table so that people can help themselves. A bowl of roughly chopped herbs from the garden, coriander, parsley & mint, maybe cut some lemon zest through it to make a sort of rustic gremolata is just a little sensational.

The addition of a yoghurt dressing is a bit special too. Call it raita or tzatziki, toasted cumin seeds are ground in a mortar & pestle then sprinkled over a bowl of grated cucumber & yoghurt - about two cups of yoghurt to one whole cucumber, grated by hand, skin & all. Chopped mint &/or coriander is added last. Mix it all with a spoon (ok, or a spatula) & serve it alongside the rest.

As a final note: a confession. In a foolishly paranoid state, I compromised the heat factor when I prepared my harissa for the fridaynightdinnerboxers, wanting to moderate so that none of my diners would find it too spicy. I rarely do such a thing & regretted it later. Better to stand up & say "hello chilli!" & just go & get the heat right in there - don't be shy, to not do so is to deny this wonderful dish its full potency. Offset by the lentils & rice, cooled by the yoghurt, it is the chilli's fire which makes the dish, in my opinion, & really should be included. Just to be on the safe side, a nice cool brewski could quite easily be stashed nearby, should there be an emergency.

Left-overs the next day:

tossed all of it together in a casserole & warmed through in the oven...

friday25oct2013: harissa rubbed chicken with mejadra, lentils & spiced rice, crisp fried onions

 

Along the narrow central alleyway of the Shuk in Tel Aviv is a small open air kitchen selling Yemeni dishes, run by Elad. Elad is a chef who cooks the flavours he grew up with, learned in his mother's kitchen, learned on the streets of Tel Aviv & Jerusalem. I ate there every chance I got. 

"Hello, my brother!" he'd shout out as we elbowed our way closer to the counter, finding empty stools & climbing up to get a clear view of the menu - a scrawl of English & Arabic chalked up on the wall above. "What will you eat today?"

"Anything Elad, surprise me. I want everything & I can't decide!" My standard reply.
I knew I'd be eating something fabulous in moments. Elad's cooking was delicious from the very first mouthful, & that's how it was until my last mouthful, weeks later when the time to return home to Auckland had finally arrived. I just love those flavours!

The secret of his ras-el-hanout blend I never learned, but these are spices used across the Middle East in all manner of ways, in Jewish & Arabic food, & eastward across Persia & into India...coriander & cumin, cinnamon & clove, ginger & paprika. Inspiration lingers here for me, so this week's fridaynightdinnerbox dishes have been written with these dishes & flavours in mind.

So then, this week in the fridaynightdinnerboxes: free-range chicken rubbed with a home made harissa paste & flame grilled. Served along side, Mejadra, a dish common in the markets & small restaurants all over Israel & Palestine which combines rice & lentils, cumin & coriander, crispy fried onions. A small Israeli salad of cucumbers & tomatoes also.

Your part is simple: get in touch by Thursday afternoon, cos that's when I go shopping, & tell me how many dinnerboxes you'd like.

Drop-offs Friday from 4pm onwards, to the office/site/home just let me know what suits.

To order, contact me by txt or email:

txt: 021 676 123

email: pabloskitchen@yahoo.com (subject heading: “fridaynightdinnerbox”)

& I’ll confirm your order when received.
talk to you soon…

recipe: pea & ham soup, fresh brioche loaf

This is one of those soups that can sit on the stove through the Winter, adding to it a juicy bone or two now & again,  maybe some more split peas from time to time, onions & garlic, a carrot maybe...or whatever takes your fancy. When I was little my mother had a giant Le Crueset casserole & through the Winter months she'd make her sauces & casseroles, stews, soups & broths in it, litres & litres of the stuff, which would simmer away for days & days at a time, constantly replenished. My grandmother's silver ladle would lay on the bench next to the stove, usually with a fresh loaf of crusty bread somewhere on the scene, one of the country style wholegrain loaves she'd bake or maybe just a loaf of Vogels, for when all us kids would charge home, half the neighbourhood in tow, & we'd spoon out big steaming bowlfuls, wolfing it down before going back for more, while my ma would take our coats, telling us off for bringing muddy shoes inside, asking us about our day, 'slow down, it's not a race...'. Nice memories. 

In preparing for this week's dinner box, I asked around the chefs I work with for their versions of Pea & Ham Soup. What I got was both similar versions of the soup & similar versions of the story, so intertwined is this dish with the comfort food ideal, so fixed is it in this way to our shared memories, to days gone by when the hearty soups & stews our mother's made would see us through. Every single person I asked answered with a story about their mum. I love that. But what also emerged is that when it comes to this kind of recipe, there are no hard & fast rules: a dried pulse or three, a few handfuls of vegetables, a juicy bone, a flavoursome stock, time. Let it be enough to say then, that this is the soup I like to make, my comfort food & remedy to Winter blues, even if Spring is already supposedly here. 

This week, the recipe in narrative form...

It all starts with a good ham bone. I got mine from work where, over the last week or so, the functions we've cooked for have called for ham carved from the bone. Two nice meaty knuckles from the champagne ham for me, thanks very much. I've used bacon bones in the past, but there's an added saltiness & intensity of flavour there that regular ham bones don't bring. But hey, it's an either/or deal: this is food of necessity; you use what you've got.

.

And then you need a good broth, a nice chicken stock works for me. Again, saving the offcuts from a mountain of chicken prepped at work one day, drumsticks & thighs it was, I boiled up the boney/skinsy/tendony/meaty bits. Adding to the pot some stalks of lemon grass, a couple of kaffir lime leaves, a few red peppercorns, an onion/carrot/ends of a leek/head of garlic & a bottle of cider for good measure...hmmm or maybe it wasn't quite a full bottle. Anyway, covered with water, that bubbled away for several hours before I let it cool, setting in the fridge overnight, straining it the next day & bringing to a gentle simmer in readiness for its switch to the soup scene.

Meanwhile in a big pot nearby, onions & garlic sweated off, careful with salt seasoning at this point, just go easy, & a few fistfuls of yellow split peas were added, along with a bay leaf & a few stalks of thyme. I like to save the skin of the ham, cutting it to a small dice which I add at this stage. It stays firm-ish, but softens & imparts lots of rich flavoursome goodness as the soup develops. 

Stock is added, the meat is torn from the bone & shredded, then added to the soup. In goes the bone.

And now it's simmer time. Because of my timing constraints, & a change in roster, I needed to leave the pot on the stove overnight so it would be ready in time for Friday afternoon - the kind of thing that I'd have worried about & probably kept waking through the night as a result. Fortunately exhaustion took care of that annoying state of affairs & I slept like a baby, my Pea & Ham Soup quite happy & not burning or sticking at all. But, the element was set to #1, the lowest possible setting, & the pot wasn't even simmering, more like just really hot, all night long. Anyway, it worked for me this time, though to a crock pot would have been a better piece of equipment to use in this situation.

I woke early, turned the heat off, & by the time I left for work on Friday morning the soup was cool enough to refrigerate until I got home. Of course, because of the high stock content & all those bones, the natural gelatinous nature of the soup caused it to set to a stiff jelly, fat rising to a layer on top which could be skimmed off before reheating.

Final stages, the soup gets gently reheated & thinned down with a little boiling water to serve, meanwhile the brioche dough sat in a bowl prooving & I prepared the salad. To all intents & purposes though, this part of the meal is ready.

...

Phase two, making brioche. The recipe I generally use came from a chef who worked for me a couple of years ago, when I was running the kitchen at Orion Cafe in Mt Eden. Normally a sweet item, most commonly seen on counter displays in cafe's everywhere rolled with cinnamon & sugar. (Just because it's so worth the mention I can't bear to leave it out, the best brioche I know of is baked by Jennifer Perry every morning at the Bennetts of Mangawhai Cafe) Anyway, I've adjusted the recipe here since my brioche will accompany a savoury dish, so have reduced the weight of sugar originally called for.

 Ingredients & Method: Brioche:

250ml milk; 1tsp dried yeast; 1Tsp sugar

125g melted butter; 3 eggs; pinch salt

425g flour

*stir yeast & sugar into lukewarm milk & sit for 5 mins, till frothy

*in a bowl whisk butter & eggs, pinch salt, add yeasty milk mixture

 *make a well in the flour & pour in wet mix, folding/stirring in with a spoon

*stir the batter smooth, adding a little flour, bit by bit, if too wet

 Since I was making this batch of brioche at home, & it's freezing outside at the moment, there are no conveniently warm places in my kitchen where the dough can happily kick back & do its thing at. The oven is too hot, the hot water cupboard ok for overnight, (actually, wrapped & left in the fridge the dough is useable for a good 3 or 4 days, at a stretch) but for my purposes a towel folded a few times & rested on the heater in the lounge will do just fine. The dough is covered with cling film & left to double in size over a couple of hours.

*when the dough has doubled in size, knock it back & stir smooth once more

*divide the dough & put into greased/lined moulds to prove

*allow to prove once more, & when puffy brush with egg wash

*bake at 180° & check after 20 minutes. These slightly larger loaves took about 45 minutes.

(I experimented with porcelain bowls, greased, but next time will use baking paper to help remove after baking. Also, the dough didn't colour so well, though the taste was fine...metal is better)

...

Phase three, last of all, the salad. Something fresh & crisp to cut through the buttery bread & rich saltiness of the soup, with a little citrus to take it that step further...

I decided upon a simple salad, throwing together a few things I had on hand, choosing one of those things & making it a little bit special. No need for simple to mean plain & boring, right? In this case, pumpkin & sunflower seeds in hot candy. The sweet crunch & shot of heat will contrast nicely with the soft textures of baby spinach leafs, alfalfa sprouts & segments of Kerikeri orange. A perfect component for the meal as a whole. 

First preheat the oven to about 160°. What you do is, take a good spoonful of icing sugar, a little shake or two of powdered chilli flakes & toss it altogether in a bowl with the seeds (or nuts or what ever). Pour out onto an oven tray lined with a sheet of baking paper, space apart & put the tray in the oven. DON'T FORGET! The sugar will burn really quickly so it pays to be attentive. I removed the tray from the oven a couple of times, reshake it all about & back in it goes. Eventually, most of the icing sugar has caramelised & the seeds/nuts are a lovely golden caramel colour. 

Tossed with the salad at the last minute, the seeds stay crunchy, giving a wonderful texture to the salad & a delightful sweetness to the savoury overtones elsewhere in the meal.

To serve, turn the bread out & rip it into chunks; toss the salad with a splash of olive oil & a squeeze of lemon juice; pour the Pea & Ham Soup into bowls & garnish with some chopped parsley & mint. A nice glass of white goes well, or a cold beer. And, well, that's all there is to it!