Mustard and Rosemary Chicken

Chicken breasts, split lengthwise and seasoned with a marinade of rosemary, whole grain mustard and garlic, are pan-fried for mere minutes each side, until cooked through and golden on the outside. This is a great weeknight meal when time is short! 

Here’s one of those recipes that came from a dear friend of mine who is Australian, an expat wife extraordinaire, who makes me believe, sincerely believe, that we can do it all.  She’s been a vegetarian since living in India many years ago (Apparently the meat that was available then, hanging in the market, full of flies, was enough to put anyone off forever!) but she still cooks animals for her family.  She is also a brilliant textile artist, although I don’t know if she knows that.  Because she is also modest to a fault.  If we could choose our families, she would be one of my first picks for sister.

Here then, her quick and easy recipe for chicken breasts.  Made, photographed and written up especially for another of my sister picks in Beaumont.

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) wholegrain mustard

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) lemon juice

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) olive oil

4 teaspoons (1 Australian tablespoon) fresh rosemary

1 clove of garlic

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Mince the rosemary leaves.   Crush the garlic with the side of a knife and then mince.

Mix together with the lemon juice, mustard, olive oil, pinch of salt and a couple grinds of fresh black pepper from your grinder. (Don’t have one. Go buy one.  Right after you finish making this quick and easy recipe.) There is nothing to compare to the taste of fresh ground black pepper.

Give it a good whisk so it hangs together well.

Rinse your chicken breasts and cut off all the excess fat, if any.  Holding your left hand (assuming you are right-handed – if not, switch) flat on the chicken breast, use a sharp knife to cut it in two sideways so you have two more or less equal pieces, both breast-shaped.

Spread the seasoning mixture on the top of each breast half.  

Now stack them on top of each other, making sure to save a little mixture for the bottom of the bottom breast. (My Australian friend is saying, “What?!” at this point, because this is my embellishment.) 

This will mean that both sides of each piece have the seasoning, except for the bottom one.  At this point, you can pop the breasts in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook them or carry on to the pan.

Heat your pan pretty hot and drop the breasts in.  They will probably take at least four minutes a side but I hesitate to give exact times in case your breasts are thicker or thinner. When they are sufficiently browned, turn them over.

When you can see the cooked bit coming up the sides, you can probably turn them.

Cook until browned on the other side.  Once again, at least four minutes but if you have doubts, cut the thickest part before taking them off and check for pinkness.  Any pink, leave them on a little while longer.

I know you are worried about that last side without seasoning. When that piece goes on, make sure to put it seasoning side down and then finish the job with your reserved mixture. 

At home, I normally serve these along side some vegetables or salad and a starch. They are best friends with mashed potatoes!

But they also work great in a bun for feeding hungry swimmers and their supporters at a school tournament.  We sold out!

And you thought they were working up appetites swimming!

Pork and Sun-dried Tomato Portabella Mushrooms

 I am trapped at home today, waiting on the gas man. Which for some reason the Word for Mac dictionary thinks should be one word.  Gasman.  I don’t think so.  It’s not that I am completely out of gas, because, while the big red 14kg tank is empty, the smaller 12kg tank is still ready to cook.  

The question is, for how long?  The blue guy’s been on since before I got back to KL a month ago and that makes me nervous.  I’ve called and put in my order and supposedly he’s coming.  So I wait.

Meanwhile, my plan for dinner included chicken breasts by special request, but I don’t have any.  At 8:30 this morning that didn’t seem like a problem. The gas man would come, I would go out and buy breasts and all would be well.  I have come to realize as the clock ticks closer to 4 p.m. that dinner will have to be whatever I have on hand.  Time to peruse the refrigerator drawers. 

I find baby portabella mushrooms, so stuffed mushrooms come to mind.  But what to stuff them with?  This requires a trip to the outside freezer where some ground pork looks handy.  And a flavoring?  I’m thinking onions, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, perhaps.  Maybe a little of my new friend, quinoa, mixed in.  Just remembering I have feta leftover from yesterday’s dinner.  That would add salt and flavor!  This is where writing down the recipe becomes tricky because I tend to splash and dab and sprinkle and measurements are not so accurate. But I will try. 

Ingredients

1/2 pound or 250g of ground or minced pork

8 baby portabella mushrooms

1/2 medium onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

2.5 oz or 70g feta

2-3 sun-dried tomatoes (if in oil, drained, if still dry, soaked in warm water until soft)

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper or more if you like things spicy (Optional)

1/4 cup or 40g quinoa

1/2 cup or 120ml water

Sea salt

Black pepper

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Brown the pork in a large skillet with a little olive oil. 

Meanwhile, put the quinoa in a small pot with the 1/2-cup of cold water and a 1/4-teaspoon of salt.  Bring to a low boil and then simmer, covered for about 10 minutes. 

Chop the onions, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes and add to the pork.  Add a little more olive oil if the pork is too dry.  Sauté until the onions and garlic are translucent.

Check on the quinoa and add a little more water if necessary and cook another couple of minutes, still covered, still simmering.  When the grains are soft enough, drain in a fine sieve.

Clean the mushrooms and remove the stems. Cut the hard ends of the stems off and chop the rest in small pieces and add to the pork pot.  Let the mushroom stems cook down.  Add some crushed red pepper if desired.

Add the pork mixture to the cooked, drained quinoa.

Crumble the feta cheese and mix it in well. Season to taste with the salt and pepper.   Chances are you won’t need much, if any, salt because of the feta.

Allow the mixture to cool, stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes. You need it cool enough so your egg won’t cook on contact.  Now lightly beat your egg, then add in.  Mix well. This will help the filling hang together in the mushrooms.

Using a spoon, stuff your mushrooms with the filling and place on an ovenproof dish.  Drizzle the tops with olive oil and bake for 15-20 minutes.

They ended up pretty full by the time I had used all the filling.

What am I serving with the mushrooms?  At this point, STILL waiting on the gas man at 6:30 p.m., a leafy green salad because I always have the makings of a leafy green salad in the fridge.  

Quinoa Salad with Cucumber and Purple Onion

The other day, I went to what is being billed as the largest book sale in the world. I kid you not, IN THE WORLD.  I don't know how such things are judged but I can tell you it was doggone BIG.  The hall was at least three football fields large and the tables were filled with stacks and stacks of books.  And I must confess that I peeked under the tables (looking for an empty box to carry my haul in) and found FULL boxes instead.  So I had to go back two days later and see what had been put out. And, of course, I bought more books.

Part of my haul:

This recipe came from one of the first day's books, The Conscious Cook.  I had been wanting to try quinoa and the book serendipitously opened to just the right page.  Really, this was not like the Ouija board in college.

Quinoa is an ancient grain from South America but, for those of you keeping track, despite my childhood time spent in Peru, I had never heard of it until a couple of years back.  Seemingly it is notoriously hard to grow outside of the Andes and The Conscious Cook has an interview with a man named Don McKinley, who finally succeeded in the US.  My particular box was bought in Carrefour and came from Bolivia.

Ingredients

3/4 cup or 125g quinoa

2 tablespoons purple onion (half a little bitty onion)

About 2-2 1/2inches of an English or Japanese cucumber (the long skinny ones without many seeds)

5-6 basil leaves

1 endive or chicory, separated into leaves

Sea salt

2 oranges

1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salad greens (I used rocket or arugula.)

Method 

Cook your quinoa according to package instructions, substituting vegetable broth for the water.  For those of you with a small bag of bulk quinoa, without instructions, (you know who you are!) my recipe called for two times the amount of quinoa in water so I used 1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock. The instructions further said to put the quinoa in cold water, bring to the boil then cover and simmer for 12 minutes.

This is me adding the vegetable stock powder.  

Once the quinoa is cooked, allow it to cool to room temperature.  Impatient as I was, I spread mine out on a plate, and popped it in the refrigerator.  It was cool in no time.

Chop up your purple onion and your cucumber. 

Stack the basil leaves and roll them up and slice them finely. (Fancy chefs called this chiffonade.)

Juice one lemon and add to the onion, cucumber and basil. 

When the quinoa is cool, mix it in too.   Add salt as needed.

The next step is making a nice vinaigrette for the greens.  Peel your oranges and cut them in sections.

If you have any pulp left in the peels, squeeze the juice out and save it. Squeeze a few of your sections until you have about two tablespoons of orange juice in your bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of vinegar. 

Now drizzle the olive oil slowly into the juice and vinegar bowl, whisking quickly, until it emulsifies, which just means the oil is incorporated into the juice.  Add salt and black pepper to taste.

When you are ready to serve, drizzle your salad greens with the vinaigrette and toss lightly till coated.

Top with endive leaves and fill them with the quinoa mixture. Strew the orange sections around.  Beautiful and delicious.

Enjoy!

This lovely recipe came, with a few adaptions, from The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen.