kylezy

Day 21 → a recipe

Sorry in advance for the metric. Here's a website with a conversion calculator.

Peanut Satay Chicken - the dinner everyone agrees on

2 chicken breasts (thighs are okay to use of course)
½ teaspoon ground paprika
½ teaspoon crushed black peppercorns
½ teaspoon dried parsley
½ cup unsalted cashews

Sauce:
½ cup Peanut Butter
½ cup Coconut Cream
½ cup Chicken Stock
2 tablespoons Sweet Chilli Sauce
2 tablespoons Kecap Manis (aka Ketjap Manis, aka Sweet Soy Sauce, aka Indonesian Soy Sauce)
1 tablespoon Brown Sugar
1 tablespoon Lime Juice

To make sauce place peanut butter, sweet chilli, kecap manis, brown sugar and lime juice in a bowl and stir for one minute or until combined. Add coconut cream and chicken stock to the sauce, stir again. Put aside.

Dice chicken or cut into strips and put into a bowl. Add paprika, peppercorns and parsley and stir until chicken is coated. Add butter or oil to frying pan and then add chicken, cooking on medium heat until almost cooked through. Toss in cashews with chicken and cook until both are browned. Add sauce and let simmer until thickened.

Serve with rice and veges like peas, corn, beans and capsicum.

Chocolate Marquise - the most decadent dessert

7 egg yolks
3/4 cup (165g) caster sugar
200g good-quality dark chocolate, roughly chopped
250g unsalted butter, chopped, softened
65g good-quality cocoa powder, sifted
600ml thickened cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Lightly grease an 8cm x 22cm (1-litre capacity) terrine. Line with plastic wrap, leaving the excess to hang over the sides.

Use an electric mixer to beat yolks and sugar in a heatproof bowl for 5 minutes or until thick and pale. Place bowl over a pan of simmering water (make sure bowl doesn't touch the water). Add chocolate and whisk for 5-6 minutes until melted. Good-quality chocolate is important in the setting process later on, I understand. Anything with over 50% cocoa solids is usually considered good quality, I usually go for around 70-75%. Add butter one piece at a time, whisking between each addition until melted. Remove from heat and fold in cocoa.

Beat cream and vanilla until soft peaks form. Fold a little cream into chocolate mixture. Fold in remainder until combined. Pour into terrine, fold over plastic wrap to cover, then refrigerate overnight.

Turn out terrine and cut into slices. The original recipe suggested you top with strawberries and creme anglaise. I usually use double cream.

Open Roast Pumpkin and Feta Pies - entrée I get praised for the most at parties

350g pumpkin, peeled, cut into 1cm cubes
2 tsp olive oil
3 sheets frozen puff pastry, thawed
2 eggs
100ml thickened cream
100g feta, crumbled

My notes tell me I double the amount of eggs and cream because I normally use a bit more than the recipe suggests. I also usually added cooked bacon and cashews to the pies.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease two 12-hold muffin pans. Place pumpkin on a baking sheet lined with baking paper, drizzle with oil and season. Roast for 20 minutes or until cooked.

Cut 20 rounds from the pastry sheets using a 6.5cm cutter. Press into muffin holes to cover base and a little of the sides. I usually just use a cup to measure. As long as the circle of pastry comes up no further than three quarters of the way in the muffin hole, you should be right.

Whisk eggs and cream together.

I normally mash the roasted pumpkin slightly, but you don't have to. Add fried bacon (chopped into small pieces) if using and spoon pumpkin/bacon mix into the pastry rounds. Top with 1 teaspoon of egg/cream mix (I use a tablespoon to be honest), then sprinkle with feta and chopped cashews, if using. Drizzle just a slight bit more of the egg/cream mix on top to bind feta and cashews (not necessary though) and then bake in over for 15-20 minutes. Cool slightly then turn out.

You can eat them straight away but I've found the flavour increases if you let them rest for another 15 minutes or so. I also make this as one big pie for dinner sometimes, just use a quiche dish, one whole sheet of puff pastry and half the cream/eggs.