A Rich Cabinet

Spicy Goan-style recipe from Madhur Jaffrey.

Can be simplified by cutting down the initial marinading (as usual I was too disorganised to get this done…) and/or using ready ground spices so you don’t need a blender. I simply mixed the dry spices together and coated the meat cubes with the mix before putting them in the pan, followed soon after by the garlic, ginger and chilli. The lime juice can be added to the pan just before or after the tomatoes. It probably didn’t taste quite like Madhur’s version but it was still very good.

I had forgotten just how good fried chicken is. But I had some boned chicken thighs and I wanted to do something slightly different from usual with them.

In the end, I cheated a bit. Once the thighs had been well cooked and crispy on the skin side and turned over and were close to done, I added some chopped tomatoes, just a little water, lemon and honey to make a sauce and not waste any of the juices. Once the chicken was done I took it out of the pan and let it rest for a few minutes while the sauce finished cooking. I served it all on aromatic rice and vegetable pilaf.

Fried chicken thigh recipes

Merrilees’ chicken thighs with parsley salad
Warm salad of crispy chicken thighs

Rice pilaf/pilau dishes

Fragrant pilau rice
Vegetable pullao

Various leftovers needing to be used up within the next day or so (for one person):

Mushrooms
A small leek
Handful of green beans
Half an onion
Mixed salad leaves
End of a loaf of granary bread

So: slice and saute together the mushrooms, leek, green beans and onion, with some garlic, in olive oil. (If you worry about fat and possess a usable grill, you could grill them instead.) Chop a half-inch slice of bread into (roughly) cubes and in another frying pan with just a little oil, make them into crunchy croutons. Arrange the salad leaves however you fancy them around a plate. (I also had some cherry tomatoes that I chopped in half and scattered around the edge.) Make a salad dressing of some kind, whatever you’d like really. Tonight I just mixed together olive oil with a bit of balsamic vinegar. When the vegetables are ready, dump them straight on top of the salad leaves. Then scatter the croutons over them. Finally the salad dressing goes over the top. Eat straightaway.

If I’d had any, I could have fried some bacon in with the veg. Other vegetables that would probably work: peppers, courgettes, etc. You could do cubed potatoes (parboil then saute) instead of the croutons.

The BBC has a nice little feature on honey. Yum.