Simmered Chicken

Cold autumn night? Need to cosy up to something warm, but just don't have a wombat handy? Try this.

The original recipe for this was 'Chestnut Simmered Chicken' but the damn chestnuts just make the dish infinitely tedious, increase the price and add nothing to the flavour or texture. So won't be adding them again! This is fantastic comfort-food with no preparation time whatsoever, and we all really liked it. Definitely on the menu (minus the chestnuts).

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken (Let's stick to free range, shall we)
• 500ml chicken stock
• 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 1 celery stalk, roughly sliced
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced
• 1.5cm fresh ginger, sliced
• 4 spring onions, thinly sliced
• Steamed rice to serve

Rinse out your chook and put it into a heavy saucepan. Cover with the stock, plus added water (frankly I used wine) to just cover it. Add all the veggies apart from the spring onions, season, and simmer slowly for over an hour.

To serve, put the whole thing into a a deep serving dish complete with juices (there'll be lots). Serve with steamed rice, the juices ladelled on top and furikake on the side. If you don't have furikake the recipe suggests merely pestle-and-mortaring some ground sea salt and toasted sesame seeds.

Coconut and Chili Seafood

This was meant to be just with prawns, but no prawns were on special so I just brought home some marinara mix. Now, not so sure about the mussles in this but fish, squid, scallops and prawns all worked beautifully, so any combination of those as ingredients would be acceptable.

Ingredients:

• Fishy stuff (as above) 700g for 3 people was loads
• Marinade: juice of a lime, salt, olive oil
• Grated fresh coconut (about 75g)
• chili (as you like it)
• some mint leaves
• coconut cream (a little)

Marinate your fishy stuff (reduced to chunks if not naturally so) for ten minutes or so, then grill or fry dryly (i.e. don't overcrowd). Arrange on plate. Mix the grated coconut with the chilli and the remaining marinade, fry briefly, put on top of the fishy stuff. Serve with a bit of coconut cream drizzled over the top and some shredded mint leaves.

I did this one with corn fritters on the side, which turned out quite nicely. Was really thinking green papaya salad but they didn't have any.