Shredded Chicken Quesadillas

Quesadillas are just another of the seemingly endless variations of dishes that can be made using tortillas (either flour or corn varieties). Although authentic Mexican quesadillas are usually made from corn tortillas, in the Tex-Mex variation and also in Northern Mexico, flour tortillas are much more common.

The concept is very simple - place the ingredients of your choice in one half of a tortilla and heat in a frying pan or on a comal - a Mexican cast-iron griddle pan. Then fold over and cut into wedges and eat! In Tex-Mex cuisine, 2 tortillas are often used instead of 1. In Mexico this would be called a sincronizada (synchronised) rather than a quesadilla. Confused?!?!

Roti Kip - Surinamese Chicken Curry

Suriname is said to be a melting pot of races, cultures, languages and cuisines.

You have the original indigenous people - the Amerindian tribes of Arawaks, Caribs, Tiryos amongst others; then you have the descendants of African slaves, the town blacks or "foto nengre" and those of mixed race - the Creoles; then you have the descendants of the runaway African slaves who escaped the plantations into the vast dense jungle - the Marrons; then you have the indentured workers from other former colonies brought in to work on the plantations when slavery was abolished in 1863 - the Javans and other Indonesians; then you have the Jewish-Portuguese, who were some of the first plantation owners in Suriname; the Chinese immigrants, and then you have the whites, the Dutch, "bakras" or "boeroes".

Tandoori Chicken

This is one of the most popular Indian dishes around the world, and originates in the Punjab region of northern India. The vibrant red colour of the chicken pieces is what makes this dish stand out, while the succulent chicken that has been marinated for hours in yoghurt has influenced many other Indian and "Indian-style" dishes, like Chicken Tikka and the ubiquitous curry house favourite Chicken Tikka Massala.

In authentic Tandoori chicken recipes, the red colour comes from cayenne pepper and red chili powder (Kashmiri chili powder) but due to milder Western tastes, these are often replaced with paprika powder, or even red food colouring. However you choose to flavour (and colour) your chicken, the trick is to let it marinade in the tandoori sauce for several hours or even overnight. You can use a ready mixed Tandoori masala spice mix, or add the different spices individually. I prefer the ready mixed spice mix as you don't have to worry that you are missing out on some of the flavours because you don't happen to have a particular spice to hand.

If you want to make really authentic Tandoori chicken then you will need to cook it in a Tandoor, which is a large cylindrical clay oven fired with charcoal or wood that can reach temperatures of nearly 500 °C!!! As most of us do not have one of these at home, you can replace the Tandoor with a barbecue or an oven on high heat (225 °C).

Ingredients

4 chicken legs, skin removed

2 Tb Tandoori masala spice mix*

150ml plain yoghurt

1 tsp paprika powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp black pepper

1 Tb lemon juice

1 red onion

2 cloves garlic

* includes the following spices: coriander, fenugreek, cumin, cinnamon, chilies, garlic powder, onion powder, ginger, nutmeg, bay leaves, allspice, cardamon

Method

Clean the chicken legs well and cut each leg into 2 or 3 pieces depending on the size. Using a sharp kitchen knife, cut slits into the chicken of 1-2 cm. This allows the marinade to penetrate into the chicken, giving a fuller taste all the way through. Place the chicken in a large plastic bowl.

Peel the garlic cloves and chop finely. Peel the onion and cut into thin strips. Add the spices to the chicken together with the lemon juice and yoghurt. Mix everything well and then cover with clingfilm. Place the bowl in the fridge and leave for several hours. Depending on how far ahead you want to prepare your food this can be anything from 4 hours to overnight. You want to make sure that the marinade gets the chance to envelop the chicken completely, so don't cut corners with the marinading time!

Preheat your oven or barbecue.

Transfer the chicken pieces to a lightly oiled baking tray if cooking in the oven. Roast the chicken in the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, turning the pieces from time to time, and basting the chicken with the marinade every 10 or so minutes.

If you are going to barbecue the chicken, cook it over medium coals using the direct cooking method (so directly over the hot coals) for at least 30-40 minutes, basting the chicken with the marinade as you go.

Whichever method you use to cook your chicken, it is very important to make sure it is cooked all the way through, with no pink meat. Pierce the chicken at its thickest part with skewer or knife and check that the juices are clear. If they are not, keep cooking for additional time until they are.

If you have any left over marinade this can be heated on a gentle heat for about 20 minutes, so that it thickens slightly and removes any traces of uncooked chicken. This can then be used as a sauce to accompany the chicken.  

When the chicken is cooked, serve hot with a simple salad or white rice, papadums, and green beans.

Maujan karo! Enjoy!

DID YOU KNOW?

Many rural villages in the Punjab region would have a communal tandoor for the people to cook their food. These would be kept burning throughout the day.

DID YOU KNOW? 

The favourite curry house dish, Chicken Tikka Massala, is heavily influenced by Tandoori chicken. Popular belief is that tikka massala is actually a British dish rather than an authentic Indian dish, with several restaurant chefs claiming responsibility for inventing it!

Snesi/Chinees Tayersoep (Eddo/Taro Soup)

This is another wonderful one-pot soup so popular in Suriname. Although named for the Chinese tayer or Eddo, which is a root tuber similar to a potato in shape, this soup is more than just this one exotic ingredient. As with many Surinamese soups, the actual meat ingredients can vary each time you make it, as it is an opportunity to use whatever meat you have in the house at the time. Chicken thighs, pigs' tails, salted beef, pork rib pieces, chicken feet are favourites found in soups like Bruine Bonen Soep, Pindasoep and also Chinese Tayer soup.

Eddoes (or Taros as they are also called) are a popular plant throughout the Caribbean region and are thought to have been introduced there from China, hence the name Chinese Tayer. They resemble hairy potatoes, and when peeled have a similar look also. They take quite a bit longer to cook than potatoes however, so if you wish to mix your soup with both eddoes and potatoes you will need to add the eddoes to the pot at least 20 minutes before the potatoes.

The real star of this soup though is coconut milk! It gives such a rich yet delicate flavour to the soup and also helps to thicken the liquid. Coconut palm trees are common throughout Suriname, so there is no shortage of supply. I even planted a few coconut shoots in our yard in Suriname myself; hopefully I will be able to reap the benefits in a year of ten!!!

Ingredients

2 chicken legs, skin and fat removed

200g salted beef/zoutvlees

200g pork rib pieces, excess fat removed

1 large white onion

2 tomatoes

3 L water

4 chicken stock cubes

2 beef stock cubes

10 Allspice/Pimento berries

1 bay leaf

8 Eddoes/Chinese Tayer roots

6 potatoes

2 400ml cans Coconut milk

1 tsp Laos powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 Madame Jeanette/Adjuma pepper

2 celery leaf stalks

sunflower oil to fry

Method

If using salted beef, put this in a medium sized pot with enough water to cover and boil gently for about 15 to 20 minutes to release most of the salt in the beef and also to soften the meat. Remove from the salted water and discard this. Cut the salt beef into small cubes.

Chop the chicken legs into smaller pieces, about 5 pieces each depending on the size of the legs. Trim any excess fat from the chicken and also from the pork rib pieces. The pork ribs are not a rack of spare ribs that you might put on the barbecue, rather they are smaller bony pieces of pork, known as krabbetjes in Dutch.

In a large soup pot, fry the chicken, pork and salted beef in a little oil until browned all over. Drain any excess liquid from the pot.

Peel and finely chop the onion and chop the tomatoes and add these to the meat. Fry for a further 3 minutes. Add 3 litres of cold water to the pot, and the chicken and beef stock cubes, bay leaf and Pimento berries. Bring the water to the boil and cook for about 10-15 minutes.

Next, peel the eddoes/Chinese tayers, and rinse under cold water. Cut the eddoes into chunks of about 3cm. This will usually mean just cutting the eddoes in half, but larger eddoes can be cut into 3 pieces. Add these to the soup water. Season the soup with the Laos powder, salt and pepper.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into pieces the same size as the eddoes. About 20 minutes after the eddoes were added to the pot, it is time to add the potatoes. I prefer the quicker cooking varieties as, strangely enough, these, err, take less time to cook! Chop the celery leaves finely and add these as well to the soup pot. Place the whole Madame Jeanette pepper gently into the soup. This is left whole as the desired effect is to get the aroma of the pepper without the heat. Be careful that the pepper does not split, or your soup will be very hot!

Roughly 10 minutes after the potatoes have been added to the soup you can add the 2 cans of coconut milk. Make sure to shake the cans well before opening as the milk may have separated slightly in the can. Stir the coconut milk well through the soup and continue cooking on a medium high heat for another 5-10 minutes.

Serve the soup on its own, or as is more common in Suriname, with white rice.

Njang Switi! Enjoy!

DID YOU KNOW?
Coconut milk contains a high amount of coconut oil. This oil contains lauric acid, which is a saturated fat that raises blood cholesterol levels, and is found in similar levels in breast milk!

DID YOU KNOW?
Chinese tayer is a root popular vegetable among the Maroon communities in the interior of Suriname. The Maroons are descendants of runaway slaves who fled the plantations into the rainforest, where they lived off the produce of the jungle. Chinese tayer is able to grow in high water levels and can be found in swamp areas, which flood frequently during the long rain season.

Pollo alla Cacciatore (Hunters' Chicken)

This is a hearty and filling chicken casserole classic from Italy. Cacciatore means "Hunters' Style", so this dish would likely have been what the hunter would eat after a long day out in the forest. It is more usual to cook it with some of the produce of the hunt, perhaps a small hare, pheasant or even wild boar, but perhaps the chicken variety rose in popularity with the hunters who weren't quite so good, and didn't catch anything!

As with most Italian peasant fare, there are probably as many recipes claiming authenticity as there are villages in Italy. Each one will have its individual characteristics and the ingredients may vary in different regions, but the basic recipe is for chicken thighs/drumsticks in a thick tomato sauce enriched with white wine. The rest of the ingredients you can add according to your own taste.

This is a one-pot casserole and is perfect for a cold and wet Autumn afternoon.

Moroccan Grilled Chicken & Couscous with Roasted Peppers Salad

For today's recipe we move outside of our comfort zone of Italian/Mexican/Chinese/Surinamese to something a bit different!!!

This delicious salad is great as a main course but can also be eaten as part of a picnic or as a starter. The North African flavours of cinnamon, coriander, paprika and cumin are prominent in this dish, and the addition of fresh mint gives it a really aromatic powerful flavour. An important spice mix in North Africa is Ras-el-hanout, which will typically comprise all the traditional spices such as cumin, paprika, coriander, chili powder, cinnamon and fenugreek. There are many local variations of ras-el-hanout, but the base ingredients as listed above should all be present. 

Pollo alla Parmigiana (Chicken Parmesan)

This is not so much a classic Italian dish, more like an American take on a classic Italian dish. Chicken Parmesan is known more in the United States and outside of Italy, whereas the traditional dish, Melanzane alla Parmigiana, uses aubergine/eggplant. The rest of the ingredients remain the same and the methods of preparation are fairly similar, with the exception that the aubergine parmigiana is made up of layers of vegetable and sauce, similar to a lasagne, whereas the chicken version is only one layer.

The name of this dish itself is a little misleading. Parmigiana means in the "Parma style", but this dish is not native to Parma in Northern Italy. Instead, it is a Southern Italian dish, with both Campania and Sicily claiming versions of the dish. The most likely explanation is that the dish is named after Parmigiana-Reggiano (Parmesan) cheese, which is called for in the recipe as the cheese topping. Funnily enough though, there are plenty of chicken Parmigiana dishes out there that do not feature Parmesan cheese at all, using mozzarella in its place. So not only do they not come from Parma they also do not feature the most famous of Parma's delicacies, its' cheese!

Another theory on the Parmigiana name is that Parmigiana is an Italianisation of the Sicilian parmiciana, which refers to shutter slats, which closely resemble the layers of overlapping aubergine in the original dish. So for the versions using chicken instead of aubergine, and mozzarella instead of Parmesan, the name is a bit confusing to say the least. Maybe they should call this version "chicken"!

Anyway, names notwithstanding, both the chicken and aubergine versions are delicious, and not so difficult to make. You should give yourself at least a couple of hours though, as there are several steps involved, which are time consuming.

Ingredients

For the chicken:

4 skinless chicken breasts

300g plain flour

3 eggs

50ml milk

300g breadcrumbs

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp oregano

olive oil to fry

For the tomato sauce:

2 tins plum tomatoes

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp oregano

2 cloves garlic

For the assembly:

2 balls fresh mozzarella

75g grated Parmesan cheese

2 tsp oregano

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 C.

Slice the chicken breasts horizontally to give you 2-3 slices per breast, 8-12 slices in total. To give them all an even thickness, they can be placed between two large pieces of clingfilm and beat with a meat tenderiser or mallet.  Each "escalope" should be about 1/2 cm thick. Season these lightly with salt and black pepper.

In 3 separate shallow dishes or bowls, assemble the flour in the first bowl, the eggs and milk in the second bowl, and the breadcrumbs in the third bowl. Beat the eggs and milk together to give an even egg wash. Distribute the paprika, oregano and salt and pepper evenly between the first (flour) and third (breadcrumbs) bowls and mix these in well.

In an assembly line fashion, dip each chicken escalope first in the flour, then in the egg wash and finally in the breadcrumbs, each time ensuring that the escalope is covered thoroughly and allowing any excess to drip back into the bowl. Repeat the process for all the chicken escalopes.

Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. You should have enough oil to cover the entire bottom of the pan but not enough to submerge the escalopes. When hot enough, shallow fry the escalopes a few at a time on both sides until golden brown. When done, drain these on kitchen paper to remove any excess oil.

Peel and finely chop the garlic cloves. Fry these in a little olive oil in a high sided pan or pot on a gentle heat, making sure they do not burn. Add the plum tomatoes and chop/mash these in the pan until they are much smaller. Add the oregano, salt and black pepper and simmer this for about 20 minutes, until it is a smooth sauce.

Slice the 2 mozzarella balls into thin slices.

In a baking tray, place the breaded chicken escalopes along the bottom of the tray, overlapping slightly if they do not all fit. Pour the sauce evenly over the chicken pieces and spread it out until it covers everything. 

Add the sliced mozzarella over the sauce and then the grated Parmesan.

Put in the oven for about 20-25 minutes until the cheese has melted and turned golden brown.

This dish can be served with a  number of things, on spaghetti with Neapolitan sauce, or with chips, or even with a nice seasonal salad.

Buon appetito! Enjoy!

Chicken Chow Mein - Takeaway Style

A staple of Chinese restaurants and takeaways, chow mein is very simply fried noodles together with meat and vegetables. It doesn't have to be chicken either, you can easily replace it with beef, or pork, or shrimps, or do a combination of all of them - this is usually known the "house special" chow mein! The thing about take away chow mein though is that often you find that at the bottom of the metal tray is a large pool of oil and grease. Or maybe you don't notice as you have bought the takeaway after a night on the town, and are a little worse for wear! But it is possible to have chicken chow mein without the grease overload.

Surinamese Loempias (Spring Rolls) with Pepper Sauce

These little beauties are a Surinamese take on spring rolls or egg rolls, a common starter or snack food across East Asia. The difference between the Surinamese loempias and traditional Chinese or Vietnamese spring rolls is that the Surinamese version are thicker and softer than the crispy Asian spring rolls. The softness comes from the fact that they are dipped in an eggwash before frying.

The loempias are served with a hot pepper sauce, which is also described below.

Jerk Chicken

What springs to mind when you think of Jamaica ? Sun? Beaches? Reggae? Bob Marley?!?!?

Maybe its just my foody mind at work, but I think of Jerk chicken, possibly the ultimate summer barbecue recipe! Jerk marinade can be used for any type of meat or fish but is particularly tasty with chicken legs and pork ribs.

The key ingredients to jerk chicken are allspice or pimento berries, thyme and scotch bonnet peppers. Everything else is supplementary but these 3 ingredients are unmissable. If you don't use them you may still have some delicious barbecued chicken but it won't be jerk chicken!

Saoto Soup (Indonesian Chicken Soup)

This delicious and filling soup originates in Indonesia, and was popularised in Suriname through the contracted workers from Java who came to work the sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery in Suriname in 1863. It is a firm favourite with my kids, who ask for it almost every week!

The secret of this soup is as much in the garnishes that accompany it as in the soup itself. Rice noodles, shredded cabbage, potato sticks, fried onions, boiled egg, chopped celery leaves, bean sprouts, boiled rice - the list of possible additions to the relatively simple soup are what give it such a flavour explosion and "moreishness".

Bruine Bonen met Rijst (beans with rice)

One of the most popular Surinamese dishes; a favourite at parties and feasts, but also great as a Sunday lunch or a midweek dinner. The possibilities are endless!

Beans with rice is a Caribbean staple, and although Suriname is not strictly in the Caribbean, the ethnic diversity and laid back attitude of Suriname is much more in tune with the Island life than with it's South American neighbours.

Crispy Chicken Strips

This is a simple Tex-Mex dish that is excellent as a snack, or as a filling for a tortilla or as part of a main course. I came across it by accident really, while looking for inspiration for dinner in the local supermarket. I saw this packet of seasoning mix for "Crispy Chicken Bites", which looked pretty tasty on the picture on the packet. Just as I was about to put into my shopping basket, I took a look at the ingredient list and thought

Bami Kip

Despite the exotic name, this is a simple dish of chicken and fried noodles, of Javanese origin, and made popular in Suriname by migrant workers who came from Java island to Suriname in the 19th century as contract labourers.

It is extremely popular in Suriname and also in Holland, and is often eaten at birthday parties.

Ingredients
(serves 6-8 people)

For the chicken:
4 chicken legs (each cut into 3 pieces)
1/2 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tomato
2 Maggi bouillon blocks