After a long absence of cooking posts, I am writing about what I have cooked once again. I’ve been cooking for the family this week because our wonderful cook at home had to take a brief vacation to visit her mom in the province 🙂 Believe me, any excuse to stay home and cook, I will gladly take! (If I only had time, I’d be cooking everyday, for serious!!) I am a food- loving bag hag. And cooking is really therapeutic for me– just please don’t make me wash the dishes. I really don’t (to the 10th degree) like washing dishes 🙁
On the menu this week:
Rosemary and Lemongrass Chicken topped with Zucchinis and Mushrooms
I used my trusted ol’ turbo broiler for this– and this was how I did it:
You need 1 whole chicken– poke meat with fork and rub salt and pepper all over the chicken. Then drizzle with olive oil. Set aside (refrigerate for an hour or so). If you have store- bought dry chicken marinade/ rub, you can use that as well.
For the stuffing, I used:
Lemongrass stalks (just because we grow them in the backyard hahaha)
Rosemary twigs
8- 10 cloves of pound garlic
8- 10 cherry tomatoes
Sliced mushrooms (depends on how much you want them)
Sliced zucchinis
Half a lemon
Whole peppercorns
Sliced red onions
Salt, Pepper to taste
Olive Oil
Mix all those ingredients for the stuffing and stuff mixture into the chicken. Pre- heat turbo broiler to 250degC. Place stuffed chicken with breast and skin part up. Drizzle remaining olive oil mixture on chicken. On the 15th minute, you can brush more of the drippings/ mixture onto the chicken. When chicken skin already turns into a nice golden brown (about 40 mins. into broiling), you may turn heat down already and allow chicken to sit for 5- 10 minutes more before removing it. What I do is, I actually turn the chicken around so the skin part will soak in that olive oil- drippings mixture for a bit 🙂 I know, sinful! But oye, it’s olive oil! Then you can use Himalayan salt (my preferred “drizzling” salt of late) to taste 🙂
Use the remaining drippings/ flavored oil mixture to make gravy if you fancy, or just pour it over the chicken when you serve it 🙂
I like to eat this with roasted potatoes but I obviously forgot to buy them (they’d have been nicely prepared by slicing potatoes and allowing them to “cook” in the drippings of the chicken). Sigh. So we ended up having rice with this. Hahaha, totally Asian- style! 🙂
And the other day, it was Confit de Canard with Concorde Grapes Sauce for the kids before my husband and I headed out for dinner with friends.
This was pretty simple because the Confit de Canard already came in a can! 2 legs in a can to be exact. It was swimming in its own lard, and that was what I used to “cook” it. I just followed the instructions on the can on how to cook the duck leg. After that was done, I used the lard to sauté the veggies– corn earns, diced carrots, peas, cherry tomatoes. Then as the oil simmered, I added Concorde Grapes jam- yes, breakfast jam 🙂 Allowed the jam to melt while stirring it into the oil mixture, added a little salt and brown sugar to taste, and a dash of freshly ground pepper! Then I poured the super hot mixture on top of the duck leg, and served it over rice 🙂 And that was that!
One of the things I’d honestly LOVE to learn how to make is the Filipino dish called Adobo— I don’t know how yet! (Does anyone know how to make this???) I want to learn!
What about you, are you eating out or staying in and having a cookout this weekend? 🙂 And if you are cooking, what are you going to make? SHARE!!
x
The Cooking Bag Hag aka Domestic Kitchen Goddess 😉