Your Dreams Coming True In The Kitchen

Happened to fall on a couple of chicken breasts which appealed to my eye.This is what I did with them.

O rzo can be treated as rice. Some Mediterranean ways of cooking orzo or rice is by frying in olive oil or butter first till all the grains are coated  before adding the right amount of water, covering the pot, lowering the temperature to minimum and letting it cook for 20 minutes.....

I tell you guys, Maria and I just love whole roasted turkey. We get to eat it once per year during the Christmas holiday and that's it! So...if you get it right all fine and dandy but if you don't then you have to wait for another year to eat whole roasted turkey hoping you will get it right.....

O ven roasted chicken with orzo is a typical Greek home dish. Nothing fancy just chicken and orzo. But the secret is how is this done....

Fried Pappadums A s a rule I always like to use freshly made broth from fresh chicken, meat, or vegetables....

O ne day I woke up in the morning and as I was walking in front of the fire place I saw a beautiful turkey sitting in it. It was plucked and nearly ready to roast in the oven. I also saw a nice size Christmas Pudding sitting by the turkey. And I said " Oh my God did Santa make a second run just for me?? So I thanked him, counted my blessing and continued on. I told my wife and daughter who were very happy and decided we would have it for Epiphany Day on January 6th just the three of us.  It is not very often that you have a whole turkey just for yourself. Usually it is for many guests such as relatives and friends and you end up eating a bite or two, or too tired to eat after all the cooking...

O k fellas I was brave enough to cook our Christmas Turkey on the BBQ. Read many of my favourite chefs' suggestions and mixed them all up to make up in my way. The legs and wings came out slightly tough but the breast came out juicy and deliciously well cooked. Exactly the reverse of what usually happens..... I think it needed another half hour on the grill....

I Admit To Over Roasting The Sesame R oasted s esame covered turkey nuggets are perfect for finger food during a cocktail party where there isn't an actual meal. Furthermore I love roasted sesame. I love the taste it gives to freshly baked bread, bread rings (koulouria) 5-10 inch thin bread rings being sold in the streets of Athens and Manhattan in New York by Greeks.  Sesame is also very much used in Chinese and Indian cuisine...

This is the Holiday Season.and turkey is a must in every family even if we ate  turkey left right and center. Having read many recipes we, as Greeks, decided to BRINE our turkey for 24 hours. This is an American/English habit which I believe is important..

A utumn is the time for mushrooms so we will be proposing lots of mushroom ideas. One of these is the following where I have chosen to separate the porcini mushrooms, once boiled,  from their juice and by using the juice to prepare the rice, and the mushrooms themselves to make the sauce for the boiled chicken and rice. I would like to emphasize the fact that one whole chicken has been boiled in water in a pressure cooker first and then used the broth to make the sauce and to cook the rice in.

T he Italians have succeeded in making delicious sausages made from chicken, not pork. They taste very good and can be mistaken for the real McCoy! Of course, like any other charcuterie, they are salty. One sausage every now and then is not bad when everything else is without salt at all. Eating them with an omelet is fantastic, even more when the omelet is a frittata, Italian style....

T andoori is definitely the Indian way of grilling. A tandoor is an non glazed clay pot which is heated on the outside and bottom by wood, coal whatever creating high heat in the interior. By sticking the food to the walls of the pot, it cooks giving the food a fantastic taste.  Here are some photos of tandoors is a courtesy of Google.....

A marvelously light side dish for an equally marvelous boiled chicken is required to start from now to slim down for the beach!! We want to be nice and thin when we come to wear our "bathing suits". Here it is: Ingredients:  -  1 whole chicken skin taken off by your butcher. -  1 big onion cut in two with 5 or 6 whole cloves stuck in them. -  3 celery sticks with leaves cut small. -  2 bay leaves. -  No salt, pepper to taste. -  1 whole medium potato pealed. -  10 frozen hearts of artichoke. -  1 can 240 gr drained kidney beans. Method:  -  Boil chicken in pressure cooker for 30 minutes using the onion with the whole cloves, celery sticks, bay leaves, whole potato, and pepper. Keep chicken closed until serving time. Open pressure cooker (by now all the steam must have gone and therefore it is safe) and cut the chicken in its segments. -  Separately heat beans. -  Separately boil...

T he second lightest and healthiest chicken (boiled is the first) is plainly grilled on a stove top grill at lowest heat for one hour to one hour and fifteen minutes depending on the size of the chicken is the other. It should however be cut in all its pieces. Upper thigh, drumstick, wing, etc......

According to Mridula Baljekar's cookbook for "Curry Lover's", the word tikka refers to the use of boneless, skinless cubes of chicken breast. This term really cannot be used for the cooking of other types of meat even if they are cooked and prepared in the same way.  Strictly speaking it should be cooked in a Tandoor, the traditional Pakistani / Indian clay oven buried in the ground....

F or Sunday lunch I wanted to make something special. Didn't have much in the fridge so I used some sweet red peppers and zucchini to stuff a 1 kg breast of turkey...

 A quick and easy way to completely tenderize chicken breasts is ......

M y newer type of cooking is far from being vegetarian.   There is no way I can become a vegetarian. I cannot live without meat, chicken, etc. This so called "newer type of cooking" will try to stay away from starch such as potatoes and wheat (with all its products) . Unfortunately wheat products are many. These include pasta, white or whole wheat bread, cakes, pizza etc. Ask your butcher to take the skin off your chicken.

I am about to give you an idea you may not have thought of before to make your chicken kebabs even tastier and more presentable to your guests. We all know rosemary goes very well with chicken. As you cut your fresh rosemary from your plant at home try to cut short branches. Hold the top of each little branch with one hand, leaving behind the top of the branch, slide your thumb and forefinger down the branch with the other hand. You will end up with a bare branch with a head of rosemary on top.  Marinade your chicken pieces anyway you like, adding the loose rosemary leaves then instead of using a normal wooden skewer you use the bare branch of rosemary to pass through each peace of chicken like in the picture below. Cut any protruding branch behind. Hope you like the idea which by the way is not mine. Enjoy Stelio

T here are ducks and there are ducks. The Landes area of South West France has just about the finest foie-gras of duck in France and by concsequence the best breast (magret) and leg (confit). Real eaters of foie gras prefer the duck's liver to that of the goose (although goose liver is more expensive). These ducks, because they undergo a special way of feeding which I would rather not mention, fortunately or unfortunately someday this method will stop, have a lot of fat. This fat must be treated with respect because when properly collected and kept, renders other foods such as potatoes very tasty.