Diana Henry's Roast Chicken with Quinoa and Feta Stuffing and Lebanese Beans

I love a Sunday roast but when the weather is warmer (or not cold at least) I don't feel like a full Sunday lunch with gravy and so on.

As I've mentioned before I think that Diana Henry is one of the most underrated cookery writers I have come across and this is one of her recipes which I love.

She roasted the chicken with the stuffing inside but I don't like to do this as I don't think you an fit enough in!

So I just simply roasted the chicken with a little herb butter under the skin and no stuffing. I like to use roasting bags (which you can buy in the supermarket near the cling film) as I think they result in really moist chicken. I forgot to take a photo of the chicken but it just looked like a roast chicken so nothing unusual!

I made the stuffing separately. I mainly followed her recipe but removed the bread that she uses and replaced it with quinoa so that it was gluten free.

While the chicken is roasting sauté one finely chopped onion in a little olive oil until soft. Add 2 crushed garlic cloves and cook for a couple of minutes. Add a packet of chopped cherry tomatoes. Stir into quinoa cooked according to the instructions on the packet add 100g chopped feta, a handful of chopped mint and parsley, 1 tbsp tomato purée, an egg and seasoning and stir. Put into an oven proof bowl and bake in the oven with the chicken for around the last 45 mins. You may need to cover it with foil to prevent it from getting too brown and dried out.




I served it with her Lebanese beans and some green salad.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and add a roughly chopped onion and sauté until soft. Add 2 crushed garlic cloves and cook for a couple if minutes. Add 4tsp ground cumin, 800g tomatoes (I used tinned) and season. Stir well and add 75ml of water and 1/2 tablespoon of tomato purée and a squeeze of lemon juice. Cover the pan and sweat the tomatoes for about 15 mins until they are soft and mushy. Add 500g chopped runner beans and cook for 15+ mins until they become really soft. Add additional water if the moisture starts to dry out and additional seasoning if you need it. You can finish with a few torn mint leave if you like.

Quinoa Salad

Quinoa is a funny thing. It looks and acts a bit like couscous but is in fact a seed so it's a lot better for you. I love it's flavour as well which is slightly nuttier than couscous. This could also be made with bulgar wheat or buck wheat, or a mixture.

Start by cooking the quinoa according to the packet instructions. Mine was to boil it for 20 mins. Drain well and put to one side to cool. Diana Henry has a recipe which toasts the quinoa first, which I imagine to be delicious, but I haven't tried this yet.

While it cools make a dressing from a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, the juice and zest of half a lemon, a handful of chopped mint and parsley, half a tablespoon of olive oil and salt and pepper.

Chop your choice of veg up. I uses carrots, cucumber and spring onion, all raw but a mixture of roasted onion, peppers and courgette would be good, or some blanched asparagus.

Once the quinoa is cold mix with the dressing and vegetables. Taste for seasoning and add more salt, pepper or lemon to taste

Apologies for the rather ugly container but it was ready to go to work!

Diana Henry's Vietnamese Chicken with Nuoc Cham

I have admired Diana Henry's simple but very tasty recipes in the Waitrose magazine, Waitrose Kitchen, for some time. When I saw the fantastic reviews her recipe books had on Amazon I had to put one on my Christmas list. I was lucky enough to find a copy of her book Food from Plenty under the Christmas tree.


Here is the first recipe I have tried from it. It is in the section which is a collection of recipes to use up left overs. This one is for left over roast chicken, which I had in the freezer from the last roast I made. I've made a few adaptations, some for choice and some through need, as I haven't been shopping in a while!

I started by making the nuoc cham which is a Vietnamese sauce which is hot, sour, salty and sweet in equal measure.


I then cooked the rice. She uses white rice but I prefer the taste of brown rice, plus it's healthier so I substituted this for brown rice (and slightly smaller quantities). It's cooked using the absorption method. Brown rice needs about 40 mins cooking time.


I also didn't have any spring onions so used some lightly stir fried cabbage and also added a few thinly sliced carrots. I also didn't have shallots so used onion instead and cooked them for a little longer than she suggested.


Finally it was a case of assembling the dish by mixing the chicken, rice and veg and topping with the onions and a sprinkling of nuoc cham and shredded mint leaves.



This really was a delicious way to use up leftover chicken and this dish is definitely a sum of more than its parts. The only thing I would do differently next time is to either reduce the amount of garlic or cook it a little first as for me the raw garlic flavour was slightly strong.

Recipe

Serves 4

For the nuoc cham:
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 red chilli, finely chopped
Pinch of salt
Juice of one lime
2 tbsp fish sauce
4tsp caster sugar

For the chicken and rice:
300g brown rice
600ml chicken stock
4 slices of fresh ginger root plus a little for grating
1 tbsp oil
1 onion thinly sliced
400g leftover roast chicken shredded
6 large cabbage leaves
2 carrots finely sliced
A handful of mint leaves, torn
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Start by making the nuoc cham by mixing all of the ingredients together in a small bowl. Set to one side

2. Put the rice, sliced ginger, seasoning and stock in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Put the lid on and reduce the heat and leave to simmer gently for about 40 mins. Do not stir but if the rice starts to stick add a little boiling water. Remove the ginger slices, add a little finely grated ginger and set aside with the lid on.

3. When the rice is almost cooked fry the onions in a little oil until golden and slightly caramelised. Set to one side.

4. Stir fry the carrots for a couple of minutes. Add the cabbage and the chicken and cook until heated through.

5. Stir the chicken and veg into the rice and share between 4 plates. Top each one with the onions and mint leaves. Serve with the nuoc cham.

Festive Clementine Cake

Unfortunately I can't take the credit for this one, but it was a bit of a gem so I wanted to write a post on it anyway. So this is a guest post made by my mum. Last week was my dad's birthday and my mum made a lovely meal of butternut squash soup with a swirl of pesto oil, roasted quail with apples and this lovely cake/dessert.

It is a Diana Henry recipe, but from the Waitrose Kitchen magazine not from one of her lovely books.

It's very simple and a similar method to the flourless chocolate orange cake in my previous post This also means it is gluten free so great for any allergy suffers.

Boil 5 unpeeled clementines in water for about 1.5 hours until they are totally soft. Whizz them in a food processor (skin and all). Allow to cool slightly and blend in 6 beaten eggs, 225g light brown soft sugar, 250g ground almonds, 1tsp baking powder and the finely crushed seeds of 8 cardamom pods. When fully incorporated pour the batter into a lined and greased 20cm round cake tin and bake for about 50mins in a oven preheated to 180C/gas mark 4. Cool in the tin. She suggest pouring over a glacé icing made with 150g icing sugar and 2tbsp clementine juice and 1/2tsp of orange blossom water and then pour over the top and allow it to drip down the sides. We simply dusted with icing sugar.




This would make a perfect festive treat due to the clementines and spice.