Chicken almond curry

After all the cooking of the Family Feast - I wanted some totally different food. Curry.
I decided on a nice, but hot, chicken, yoghurt, almond curry.
Overall - the sauce wasn't thick enough, and I don't like cream in it (i added to try and thicken the sauce). Just yoghurt next time, and the onions need to be blitzed once cooked, so there is a puree (again, will help thicken the sauce).
its all about the sauce. Flavour good tho' :)
And I really like the brown basmati rice, sprinkled through with wild rice. Great texture and flavour.

Chicken liver parfait

Chicken Liver Parfait. Raymond Blanc style.


Soak 400g livers for 6 hours in milk, water, salt.
Reduce madeira, port, with shallots and thyme. Then add cognac and pureed garlic.
Whizz the raw livers in the blender. Add the alcohol reduction.
Melt 400g (!) butter, then add to the livers.

All this was too much for my little blender! I had to make it in two goes. It was also too much for my 1lb loaf tin/terrine. 400g of livers makes a LOT of parfait :)

Once it was all evenly whizzed - taste (raw livers, yes) and season.

Cover with silicon paper to stop discolouring and a skin forming while cooking.

Bake in bain marie in 130C oven for an hour. Cool for 2 hours, cover with melted butter to make sure the air doesn't get to it.

I made two. Quite unintentionally. That's a lot of parfait. The house entirely smells of chicken livers. Slightly freaked out.

Hot chicken salad :)

I've always been a fan of the 'hot salad'. And after Matt's cri de coeur for veg, I responded with this - on a blustery, wet, gale-y night.
Roasted the chicken with butter, thyme, rosemary, garlic and lemon (juiced over the chicken, and put into the tray to roast). Placed the potatoes in the same roasting dish - no par-boiling.
The salad was one of those living salads (baby leaves in soil trays), added rocket, and blanched broccoli and finely ribboned spring greens. Spring greens are amazingly cheap and delicious.
Dressed salad with olive oil and sherry vinegar - I thought it would go well with the lemon/thyme on the chicken.
Also sauteed some mushrooms until juicy, and cut up some room temperature tomatoes.

All in - it was rocking. Really deep chicken flavour in the potatoes, with syrupy lemon in there too. Chicken was lovely - i got a really good one, and it really showed. Money well spent. The spring greens gave the salad depth to match the chicken and spuds, as they really liven up with olive oil and salt. Mushrooms were succulent, and toms juicy and fresh. Everything was seasoned to the hilt. Beautiful. A top hit - I think we'll be seeing this again.
So we got veg, and much tastiness besides.