Month: October 2019

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Stratta blog

Smoky Spanish pot-roast chicken

  • 8 good quality chicken thighs (with their skin and bones intact)
  • 200g smoked bacon lardons or diced pancetta
  • stratta smokey Moroccan olive oil
  • 2 onions finely sliced
  • 1 tin chickpeas, drained and washed
  • 5 garlic cloves, finely sliced
  • 4 bay leaves
  • handful thyme sprigs
  • 250ml white wine
  • 230g roasted red peppers – a quick option is a jar of roasted piquillo peppers, drained and sliced
  • 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
  • 75ml single cream
  • 25g flat leaf parsley, chopped

Heat a large heavy bottomed saucepan or casserole, season the chicken and sear in a little stratta Smokey Moroccan oil for around 5 minutes skin side down until golden; set aside.

Add the bacon to the pan, cook for around 5 minutes then add the onion, chickpeas, garlic, bay leaves and thyme; sweat gently for 5 minutes.

Pour in the wine, add the peppers and return the chicken to the pan.  Cover, bring to the boil, then simmer gently for 15 minutes.  Uncover and cook for a further 15 minutes until the chicken is cooked.

Just before serving season, stir through the paprika, cream and parsley.

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Rooting around!

Baby tromboncini – Tuesday’s was their daddy!

Mary has done so well in the garden this year with fruits and vegetables and herbs all making their tasty way into our kitchen. There can be no surprise (from seeing our last blog) that when time came to create supper on Tuesday, a couple of black radish, the size of tennis balls, scrubbed up well.

Three dainty beetroot, a curly squash (tromboncini) and a handful of late green beans also wandered in along with a sprig of thyme. Chopping the root veg into orange segment sized pieces, adding the coarsely chopped onion and beetroot stems and fine diced garlic, I dressed the mix with rosemary infused oil, chilli salt and fresh thyme leaves.

Sliced ready.

Into a hot oven for 20 minutes before adding the sliced tromboncini (and a Romano pepper that sat looking at me forlornly, desirous of being included in the party!) that I had sprinkled with orange infused olive oil and sumac.

The colourful roast

A further 10 minutes should be enough to keep the crunch and texture of the various elements.

We had the result with fresh picked chard sliced with the best of the beetroot tops and a bowl of cous-cous. Ahah – cous-cous – now there is the subject for another blog!

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Its black radish season!

A dish of the beauties.

I read a piece not long ago that was extremely disparaging about these autumn vegetables – how in Paris the market stalls are heaped with them at this time of year and how the good people of Paris have run out of ideas for their use! Perhaps they are better viewed as a friendly turnip rather than an unfriendly radish. Taken in that way, the uses become rather interesting. We have used them grated on salads, diced into casseroles and roasted as wedges. Generally they do not need to be peeled, simply scrubbed well with a vegetable brush thus retaining that fab colour contrast.

Thickly sliced

The choice today was to slice them in thick slices, brush them with aromatic olive oil, sprinkle with black pepper and chilli salt and then roast in a hot oven for 20-25 minutes. A grating of parmesan topped them and then back in the oven for 5 more minutes. They retained a goodly crunch and offered a fine texture contrast alongside our veal escalopes with sage and lemon.