Chicken Satay with West African Citrus Spice and Broccoli, Cheddar and Potato Soup
(Drum roll please) and the contents of this morning’s mystery freezer bag: strips of chicken for satay! Flavoured with West African Citrus Spice blend created by our friends/neighbours who opened a spice company called The Silk Road Spice Merchant and who -by the way- are opening up a hip little shop by Caffe Rosso in Ramsay in a few months. So after you grab your latte you can pick up some true cinnamon, or ras-el-hanout, or fennel pollen, or berbere, or Cubeb berries, or Turkish baharat.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: on Halloween they dressed up as Han Solo and Princes Leia, and their toddler daughter as an Ewok. Their homemade costumes were brilliant. When we went trick-or-treating and rang the bell at their house, K answered the door as Leia (and she totally pulled it off, by the way) a few springs in Mike’s head popped loose and he blurted out something along the lines of “what is this, Christmas? My teenage fantasies are coming true?” at which point she opened the door an inch wider and said, “Mike, I’d like you to meet my Mom and Dad…”
The West African citrus blend has a base of mustard and paprika with nutmeg and allspice for sweetness, ginger and chiles for heat and dried orange peel for tartness and flavour. How delicious does that sound? It’s killer on fish and grilled chicken, which is likely why I shook some into my baggie of chicken strips and squished it around before tossing it in the freezer to marinate as it sat in wait. Any meat cut into strips thaws much more quickly than a big lump, so it’s easy to pull out, thaw, thread onto bamboo skewers and cook in about 5 minutes under the broiler. The grill would have been better, but it was cold and I was lazy.
Because in other news: I’m sick. Snotty, phlegmy, sore throat, sore head. Sneezes that feel like they just might blow my head off my body. It could be that over the past few days my defenses were knocked down while every last reserve of energy was channeled toward digesting.
Alison brought soup. Creamy broccoli with chunks of unpeeled new potatoes and grated cheese melted in. She makes it like so: dumps a 1L carton of chicken stock into a pot, brings it to a simmer with a bunch of chopped broccoli and halved baby potatoes. When the veggies are tender she throws in a handful of grated old cheddar and a couple cups of half & half. If it needs thickening, she adds a quick slurry of flour and water and lets it bubble.
Soup always tastes so much better when someone else makes it for you. Even better yet while watching The Office online, on your laptop in bed, and coming across one you haven’t seen yet.
February 22 2010 | leftovers | 21 Comments »
