Sometimes you just don’t want to work too hard, so there’s Chicken Satay

Chicken Satay

You know those weeks that are endless and tiring and you just don’t have the energy to work too hard in the kitchen but you have to feed your families? Sure you do and I have them too, so I love the recipes that allow you to throw together a delicious meal that doesn’t take too long to cook but makes everyone happy.

Here’s a quick and easy way to make Chicken Satay skewers. The sauce is simple, cooking takes minutes and the most labor intensive part is threading the chicken onto the skewers. Every now and again I haul this one out of the recipe archive and it never fails. Make sure you don’t overcook the skewers though…

They can be cooked in the oven or on the BBQ so it’s good for winter and summer as well.

I serve this with a super quick and easy Asian pasta salad.

CHICKEN SATAY

Ingredients

4 boned and skinned chicken breasts (2 doubles) cut into strips about 2 cm or less than an inch wide.

3 cloves garlic crushed

All those beautiful spices chopped and ready

1 teaspoon chopped coriander

½ teaspoon curry powder

¼ teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon fresh chopped ginger

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Juice of half a lemon or lime

4 tablespoons smooth peanut butter

1 cup coconut milk

How to do it

1. Soak wooden skewers in water for about 5 minutes. Thread the chicken pieces onto the skewers – no more than two per skewer. Set aside.

Skewered chicken

2. Mix together all the rest of the ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for a few minutes until the sauce thickens. Allow to sauce to cook down a little.

3. Spoon about two thirds of the sauce over the skewers, turning the skewers to make sure all the sides are coated. Allow the the skewers to sit for about half an hour. (Tip: You can cover the tips of the skewers in foil so they don’t burn – if you have the energy!)

4. Pre-heat your oven grill. Cover a baking tray with foil and spray it with non-stick spray or lightly oil it.  Place one layer of skewers on the baking tray and place the tray on the highest rack in the oven. Grill for no longer than 4-5 minutes on each side. Repeat with the remaining skewers if you didn’t get them all in the oven in the first batch.

5. Reheat the remaining sauce and serve with the skewers.

Serves about 4-5.

That Good Old South African Coke Brisket Recipe

Brown Brisket with Carrots, Potatoes and Onions

I’m sure that the ubiquitous Coke brisket/chicken recipe that took the South African Jewish culinary community by storm in the 1980s is widely available in various forms all over the internet. Still, I felt that I had to publish my version on my blog because it’s just one of those trusty stand-by recipes that gets dusted off every now and again and proves why it is around all these decades later. From my earliest days of cooking, when I was a student at The Hebrew University and had just met my husband, I have been making this recipeץ Back then I used chicken and among my friends it was know as “Brown Chicken”. Here, we’ll call it Brown Brisket.

I have a few versions in my tattered pile of recipe cars and fading A4 pages, even one that uses Diet Coke (which I’ve never made and don’t intend to). I use the one with good old fashioned sweetened Coke, because it’s Rosh Hashana and food should be sweet, right? Those of you who prefer healthy cooking avert your eyes. I prefer to use natural ingredients in my cooking (I’m not talking about dessert here) but every now and again I am prepared to veer off the path of the righteous cook into iffy territory. It’s all about moderation, isn’t it?

The original recipe is for oven cooked brisket (instructions included), but as stated previously, our Israeli brisket demands to be slow cooked, so I used almost the same recipe and it came out great after 10 hours of cooking. Now my house smells just how a Jewish home a few days before Rosh Hashana should.

BROWN BRISKET COOKED WITH COKE

Ingredients

2-3 kg (4½-6½ lb)brisket

1-2 onions sliced about 1 cm wide

1 kg of peeled small potatoes (optional but highly recommended)

4-5 large carrots peeled and sliced into thick slices (also optional but highly recommended)

1 cup tomato paste (200g)

1 cup chutney or apricot jam

3 tablespoons onion soup powder

2 tablespoons chicken soup powder

4 bay leaves

2 teaspoons ginger powder

About 2 cups of Coke (enough to make 4 cups of sauce with the rest of the ingredients above)

How to do it

1. Place the vegetables at the bottom of the slow cooker. Put the bay leaves on top of the veggies and then the brisket on top.

Ready for cooking

2. In a mixing bowl or large measuring jug, mix the tomato paste, chutney/jam, soup powders, and ginger. Then add the coke to make up about 4 cups of sauce. Pour over the brisket.

3. Cook the brisket on low for 10-11 hours or on high for 4-5 hours. (To oven cook, preheat the oven to 200°C/375°F, place the brisket in a roasting pan, cover and cook for about 2½ hours. Make sure to cut they vegetables you use quite small to ensure they cook through.)

4. Allow the brisket to cool before slicing.

Note: This brisket freezes really well with the sauce.

Serves 10-12 people depending on the size of the brisket.

My favorite summer chicken recipe

I could barely wait for the summer to begin so that I could share this wonderful dish with you. I first tasted this classic Chicken Marbella dish many years ago, when my boss, at the time, made it for a work gathering, and I was blown away. She shared the recipe with me back then, and I haven’t let go of it since. Adapted from The Silver Palate cook book version, this is the perfect summer Shabbat main course. Why, you may ask. It’s because this chicken tastes best when it’s at room temperature, and not hot. So this is one less dish for you to squeeze onto the hot plate.

What I love about the taste of this chicken is that it’s far more delicious than the sum of its parts. Ingredients include capers and green olives, neither of which I am fan. But in this dish, these flavors combine beautifully with the dried prunes, garlic, herbs, white wine and brown sugar to ensure that you are serving a winner every time. The most important part of this dish though, is its marinading time. It must sit overnight in the marinade. This way, all the flavors really permeate the meat and make the chicken exceptionally delicious.

CHICKEN MARBELLA

Chicken Marbella

Ingredients

2 chickens cut up into 8 pieces each (then I always ask the butcher to cut the breasts in half again so you have 4 pieces of breast meat per chicken)

10 cloves of garlic crushed (you can add more if you feel like it)

2 tablespoons dried oregano

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/3 cup red wine vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil

1 cup pitted prunes

1/2 cup pitted green olives with some of the juice

1/3 cup capers with some of the juice

4-5 bay leaves

Brown sugar to sprinkle over the chicken before cooking (about half a cup)

About 1 cup white wine

How to do it

1. In a large bowl combine the chicken pieces, garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, vinegar, olive oil, prunes, olives and juice, capers and juice, and bay leaves. Mix through well so all the pieces are coated with the marinade. Cover and marinate overnight in the refrigerator (whatever you do, don’t skip the overnight marinading process!).

2. The next day…pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

3. Spray a baking dish with non-stick spray. Arrange the chicken pieces in a single layer and pour the marinade over. Sprinkle each chicken piece with a little brown sugar and pour the white wine around the pieces.

4. Bake for about 45-50 minutes, basting every now and again with the marinade. After around 45 minutes, check to see if the breasts are done using a fork to make sure there’s no pink in the center. If they are done, remove them from the baking tray and set aside. If they aren’t done, cook till they’re done, but don’t let them dry out – another 5-10 minutes. Return the dark meat pieces to the oven and carry on cooking for another half an hour or so, basting the chicken. When the dark pieces are done (the meat from the legs starts coming away form the bone and clear juices run from thigh pieces pricked with a fork in the meatiest parts, remove from the oven and leave to cool down.

5. Serve at room temperature. The chicken can be frozen and thawed, but make sure you leave enough time for the chicken to reach room temperature after thawing.

Serves about 10.

Last Minute Wings on the BBQ

If you’re anything like me, then you probably get to the day before you’re entertaining and decide that you haven’t prepared enough food. I am guilty of doing this over and over, and it’s got nothing to do with being prepared, it’s just got to do with my genetic predisposition to overcook.

If you are looking for a last minute, easy item for your Yom Ha’atzmaut BBQ, try these barbecued chicken wings. I basically make the sauce by throwing in some of my favorite sauces.

Wings on the BBQ

There are some rules of thumb, though, and this recipe highlights them. You will need a tomato base – I use tomato paste, but you can also use ketchup. I add sweetness with either chutney, brown sugar or silan date honey, so I prefer not to use ketchup. You can make the sauce as spicy as you want. Simply increase the quantities I have here for the cayenne pepper and chili or tobasco sauce. I like mine to have a spicy kick, but I don’t like to overwhelm the sauce with heat. I also recommend always adding some kind of meat sauce, like HP or Hunt’s. Play with this recipe and have fun. As long as you have enough sauce to coat all the pieces of chicken, you will be OK. Please note that my quantities are approximate. You really don’t have to be accurate with this recipe.

I also highly recommend letting the chicken sit in the sauce overnight to get the flavor deeply into the meat.

BBQ CHICKEN WINGS

Ingredients

3kg (6½ lbs) chicken wings

BBQ sauce in progress

250g (8 oz) tomato paste

¼ cup chutney or silan or brown sugar (or all three or any two!)

1/3 cup sweet chili sauce

2-3 tablespoons BBQ sauce (such as HP or Hunt’s – but do not use hickory flavored sauces.)

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper flakes

A few drops of Tobasco sauce or 1 small chili finely chopped (optional but recommended)

¼ teaspoon meat spice

Salt and pepper

How to do it

Cover the wings thoroughly with the sauce

1. In a large bowl, mix together all the sauce ingredients. Add the chicken wings, tossing them through the sauce thoroughly so that all the wings are coated with sauce.

2. Transfer to an airtight container or cover with cling film and leave the wings to marinade overnight, or for at least 4 hours if you are in a rush. You can also freeze the wings in the sauce, but make sure you then defrost the wings so they are not frozen when you cook them.

3. Barbecue the wings until they are ready – this varies depending on how plump the wings are. Make sure they are properly cooked through – if the meat just starts to come away from the bone, they are probably ready.

Yom Ha’atzmaut – Israel’s BBQ Festival

Over the years, Yom Ha’atzmaut has become known as the BBQ festival or “Chag Ha’mangal” in Israel. The large clouds that form over Sacher Park in the center of Jerusalem every Yom Ha’atzmaut, and over all other Israeli public parks, gardens, parking lots and even traffic islands, are proof. Israelis, who, on average, consume 9,500kg of beef per month, guzzle down 15,000kg in the month of Yom Ha’tzmaut. Sounds crazy, but Israelis are still nowhere close to meat eaters in other developed countries: Israel is last on the list of developed nations when it comes to meat consumption per person per year with 14kg – lagging far behind world leaders Argentina (of course) with 54kg; Australia with 46kg; and the US with 41kg.

But enough with the stats. I too am guilty of upping our meat consumption in the month of Iyar, and enjoying a good, meaty BBQ along with the rest of Am Yisrael. It makes perfect sense – the weather in this pre-summer time of year is perfect for being outdoors, so BBQs are the meals of choice.

Oh so juicy and delicious

In my family, there’s no such thing as having a BBQ without my home-made hamburgers. I started making my own burgers years ago. With a little advice from the guy at the supermarket meat counter, I set off on my odyssey to create the ultimate burger. I do make my own breadcrumbs, and I definitely believe that this makes a difference. I don’t add anything green to the patty, and my kids are grateful.The result is a burger that goes back to basics, and keeps things simple. And as opposed to those awful factory-made pieces of fake meat that go by the name “hamburgers” these shrink very little when cooked as they are not pumped full of water to increase the volume and make them look bigger in the store.

Of course, the BBQ chef is an essential part of the process, and I am always happy to hand off the cooking side to my husband, who does an amazing job every time. He can’t give a real time on how long they need to cook, rather watches them turn a nice hamburger brown before he takes them off the flame.

Before you BBQ your perfect burger, don’t forget to prepare some fun condiments to go with it. Take a little extra time, and fry 4 large onions slowly in a little oil until they are really caramelized and brown.You can also saute mushrooms, which make another delicious addition to your burger. Uou can also thinly slice eggplant and fry those for the ultimate Israeli topping that will give your burger a special Yom Ha’atzmaut flavor. These are in addition to the fresh tomato and lettuce and pickled cucumbers that you’ll serve, along with mustard and ketchup, or course.

MY “SECRET” HAMBURGER RECIPE

Ingredients 

Juicy and ready for the BBQ

1 kg (2 lbs) ground beef (make sure it’s not the lean beef – you need the fat in the meat to keep it from getting dry)

2 eggs

1 tablespoon ketchup

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

½ teaspoon meat spice mix (any one you like). Note: If there are spices you like in your meat, go ahead and add them – you can add paprika, cumin, garlic, freshly chopped parsley, etc. Whatever suits your taste will work.

½ tablespoon chicken soup powder

About 1/3 cup breadcrumbs (or more if needed) – preferably freshly made*

How to do it

1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs, ketchup, seasoning and chicken soup powder together.

Add the breadcrumbs carefully so you don't dry out the mixture

2. Add the meat and mix together well. Then start adding the breadcrumbs, and keep adding and mixing until you get a firm consistency – the meat needs to be firm enough to easily form into a patty. Don’t add too many breadcrumbs though.

3. When you have the right consistency, start forming your patties. Line a tray or oven pan with baking paper. Take a large serving spoon and scoop up a spoon full of the meat, You can use the shape of the spoon to smooth out the one side of the patty. Create a ball and then start patting the meat down until it forms a patty that is round and about 1½cm (½ inch) thick. Place it on the paper, and keep going until all your meat is used up. 1 kg of meat should yield about 7-8 patties. You can store them in the refrigerator until you need them, or you can prepare them a couple of days ahead of time and freeze them.

4. Cook on a hot barbecue until brown on both sides.

*Fresh breadcrumbs: Slice 3-4 thick slices of day-old+ bread into cubes and put them in the food processor using the large metal blade and process for about 1-2 minutes until you get crumbs. You can store any leftovers in the freezer. (Because you aren’t using these to fry with, you don’t have to dry them out in the oven, so it really is a quick process)

Pesach is over, roll on Yom Ha’atzmaut with some slow cooked Moroccan chicken

Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief as we pack away our Pesach kit and get back to “normal” cooking. But as one festival passes, another is always on the horizon. This time, we look ahead to one of the most fun holidays on our calendar – Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day). In Israel, it’s the only official holiday on which no religious observance is required. This means carefree cooking, and no worries about getting it all done early and how each dish reheats. Cook it in the morning, cook it in the evening, cook it at supper time!

This time of year begs for the flavors of the region, and I plan to post recipes with an Israeli touch in the coming week. So for my first recipe of this series, I am adding one from Seattle! But what’s Seattle got to do with Israel, you must be wondering. Not a whole lot, except that I found a great recipe for slow cooked Moroccan Chicken, Apricot, and Chickpea Tagine on the wonderful Seattle Foodshed blog. I’ve been wanting to make this type of dish for a while, but most recipes require cooking the dish in a tagine, which is a traditional North African earthenware pot. I have resisted buying one as it’s big and takes up too much place. So when I saw this recipe, which not only didn’t require a tagine, but also called for the dish to be cooked in a slow cooker, I knew it was the one for me. And I wasn’t wrong! It was terrific.

Mary from the Seattle Foodshed kindly gave me permission to publish the recipe. I have made a few tweaks to her original recipe, including pan frying the chicken in flour so that it doesn’t dry out (I’ve had bad experiences with slow cooked chicken breasts), which keeps the meat moist, and adding some extra vegetables. I find it so hard to resist adding potatoes to anything that’s slow cooked – they come out so well. Just make sure to cut them up small, as this recipe calls for a 3-hour cooking time.

I love this recipe as it brings in all the wonderful spices and flavors of the Middle East (don’t be put off by the long ingredients list – most of it is spices). I doubled the recipe as I have a large slow cooker and the leftovers were delicious too.

SLOW COOKED MOROCCAN CHICKEN, APRICOT AND CHICKPEA TAGINE

Ingredients 

Moroccan Chicken Tagine (Picture from the Seattle Foodshed)

1kg (2lb) boneless skinless chicken breasts

Flour for pan frying seasoned with salt, cumin, cinnamon and pepper. (About 1 cup, or as needed)

1 tablespoon flour

2 large onions roughly chopped

4-6 garlic cloves crushed

1 knob of fresh ginger, finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup dried apricots

100g (3.5 oz) tomato paste

1 large can chopped tomatoes

1 can chickpeas or 2 cups cooked chickpeas

1 sweet potato cubed

3 potatoes cubed in small cubes (bite sized)

2 carrots thinly sliced

3 tablespoons honey of silan (date honey)

2 cups chicken stock

1 teaspoon turmeric or a few hairs of saffron

1 teaspoon ground coriander (flakes)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (for a hint of heat)

Salt and pepper

A handful of chopped fresh coriander

How to do it

1. Cut the chicken breasts into small pieces (about 5-6 cm in length) and dip in the seasoned flour.

2. Heat the oil in a large skillet or pan and pan fry each piece for about a minute on each side (do not brown), and set aside.

3. In the pan in which you fried the chicken, saute the onions and garlic until just soft (do not brown).

4. Add they honey/silan, tomato paste and chicken stock to the pan and mix in. Then sprinkle the flour and mix till there are no lumps.

5. Add all the spices and the chopped tomatoes and mix through.

6. Place the vegetables, chick peas, chicken pieces, apricots and the sauce in the slow cooker, give it a mix to ensure that all the ingredients are coated in the sauce.

7. Cook on high for 3 hours.

Serves about 6. Serve with cous cous or rice.

Taking the Fat out of the Chicken

Staying with my post-Purim “keeping in light” theme, I have to share an amazing recipe I found and adapted a little from my favorite new recipe book – Everyday Asian by Bill Granger. It’s another home run recipe from the Aussie chef.

This happens to be a recipe for sticky wings. I posted my own sticky wings recipe a few weeks ago, which is super easy and really takes no time to prepare. I still stand by that recipe as a very quick way to cook wings. This recipe requires a little more work and a few more ingredients, but if you are looking for a way to cut out the fat without skinning the chicken (and wings really can’t be skinned), then this is the recipe for you. I also plan on experimenting with using this method with other parts of the chicken and other sauces…watch this space.

The idea behind this method is to cook the chicken dry halfway through, and only then cover it with sauce and keep cooking. My husband was very skeptical, and didn’t trust Bill like I do. I saw the potential and went with it and I was glad I chose Bill over Peter! When I took the wings out after half an hour of cooking, they had yielded about a cup of fat (ugh!), which I could discard. Then by adding the sauce to the wings, which were quite dry from the cooking, I really got that stickiness that’s so appealing in chicken.

Sticky Chicken Wings

So once again, thanks to Bill Granger, my new best kitchen friend, for this wonderful recipe and method.

STICKY CHICKEN WINGS II

Ingredients

2 kg chicken wings (tips cut off)

1 tablespoon oil

4 cloves of garlic crushed

1 small red chili finely chopped or 1 teaspoon of crushed Cayenne pepper (you can adjust according to your desired heat level; I use the Cayenne pepper, which is a little more consistent in flavor than chilies.)

5 tablespoons mirin or mirin substitute (1-2 tablespoons of sugar mixed into a half a cup of white wine – use 5 tablespoons)

5 tablespoons soy sauce

5 tablespoons sake or sherry (Tio Pepe sherry is kosher) or white wine

A few drops of sesame oil

2/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds for garnish (optional)

How to do it

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F).

Dry baked wings ready for the sauce

2. Line a large roasting pan with baking paper and place the wings evenly on the tray. Roast the wings for 35-40 minutes, until they are golden. Remove the wings and transfer them into a clean tray lined with baking paper. (You can also just pour the fat off and reuse the pan, but I found it easier to just transfer the chicken into a clean pan and let the fat cool for easier disposal – never pour hot oil down the sink as it clogs the drain.)

3. While the wings are cooking, in a saucepan, heat the oil and cook the garlic and chili (if using) until the garlic is just golden (about 1 minutes). Add the Cayenne pepper (if using) mirin, soy sauce, sake/sherry/wine, sesame oil and sugar. Stir together, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes until the sauce has reduced by about half.

The fat from the wings!

4. Pour the sauce over the wings, turning them to make sure they’re all coated, and return to the oven. Cook for another 20-30 minutes or until the wings are dark and sticky. Turn the wings every 5-10 minutes. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the top to serve, if desired.

Serves about 6-8.

Tip: You can have your butcher cut the wings in half and serve them as a starter or as finger food.

Some Food Between the Purim Sweets

With all this talk of sweets for Purim, I didn’t want to forget that there’s a seuda that needs to be prepared, and that there is food that should be cooked to balance out the sugar intake that so defines this chag.

Here’s a recipe for a delicious tomato-based chicken that I have adapted from a recipe from Marlena Spieler’s “Complete Guide to Traditional Jewish Cooking”. This recipe is dubbed Varna-style chicken. Not being very familiar with Bulgarian Jewish cuisine, I have to take her word for it that these are the origins of this dish. For me, it’s a simple, tasty chicken dish that works well and offers lots of gravy to go with a side of rice.

VARNA-STYLE CHICKEN

Ingredients 

Varna-Style Chicken

2kg (4.5 lb) chicken pieces (I used thighs, legs and wings, or you can used a whole cut up chicken)

Vegetable oil for frying

Salt and pepper

Fresh thyme leaves or about 1 teaspoon of dried thyme

Sauce

2 large onions chopped

5-6 cloves of garlic crushed

½ cup dry sherry

100 g (3 oz) tomato paste

A handful of fresh basil leaves chopped

2 tablespoons wine vinegar (white or red)

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 large can crushed tomatoes (800 g/28 oz)

About 250 g (8 oz) fresh sliced mushrooms

How to do it

1. Season the chicken pieces with salt, pepper and thyme. Heat the oil in a large frying pan or skillet and brown the chicken pieces and place in a large baking pan.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

3. When you have done browning the chicken pieces, do not discard the oil. Keep the oil hot and dry the onion until translucent and then add the garlic and fry for another minute. Add the sherry, tomato paste, salt, pepper, basil, vinegar, sugar, mustard and crushed tomatoes. Bring to the boil and reduce the heat and simmer for a few minutes. Add the mushrooms and stir them in. Add more sugar or vinegar to taste.

4. Pour the sauce over the chicken and cover the pan with foil. Cook covered for about 1-1¼ hours, or until cooked through (for me, this is when the flesh starts falling off the legs).

Serve with rice.

Another one for the Slow Cooker: Beef Stew with Beer and Apricots

You know you’re in South Africa when you’re paging through a magazine and you come across a recipe for Braised Kudu with Beer and Apricots! And then the kicker is the note at the end of the recipe that says you can substitute the kudu with springbok or impala! I still laugh at this more than 10 years after I first saw this recipe during a visit to Cape Town, and brought it back home with me .

Needless to say, a meat substitution was required, so in went beef in place of the more exotic venison! While I have never tasted this stew with its originally designated meat, I can honestly say that it comes out beautifully with beef, and I really don’t think you need to take the extraordinary measures required to find kosher venison for this dish. I have made this stew on a pot on the stove and in the slow cooker. I love the slow cooked version, but the pot stew comes out tender and delicious as well.

So as we “enjoy” the last few weeks of real winter, slip this stew into your menus and enjoy a hearty main course that will put a smile on everyone’s face, especially the deer.

BEEF STEW WITH BEER AND APRICOTS 

Ingredients 

Beef Stew with Beer and Apricots

2-3 kg stewing beef  cut into large cubes (I use neck/tzavar – see diagram for a guide to beef cuts in Hebrew)

About ½ cup of flour seasoned with salt, pepper and a bit of powdered garlic and sweet paprika

3-4 tablespoons oil

1 large onion peeled and sliced

4 carrots peeled and cut into 2-3 c, (1 inch) slices

330 ml (11 fl oz) beer (the darker the better)

500 ml (1 pint) beef or chicken stock (or enough to make sure the meat is covered)

100 g (3 oz) tomato paste

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 tablespoons grainy Dijon mustard

300g fresh or dried apricots (I always use dried because fresh apricots are seasonal in summer, when I don’t make this stew!)

Salt and ground black pepper

2 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley

How to do it

1. In a large skillet or pan, add the oil and heat up. Roll the pieces of beef in the seasoned flour and seal the meat in the hot oil, making sure all sides are sealed and lightly browned. Put sealed pieces into a large pot or the slow cooker. Add more oil to the pan if required to seal all the pieces. When you are finished sealing the meat, do not discard the oil.

2. Fry the onion and carrot in the oil from the meat until the onion begins to soften (about 4 minutes) and add to the meat.

3a. If you are cooking the stew in a pot, add the beer, stock and tomato paste to the meat, bring to the boil, turn down the heat, cover and simmer for about 1½ hours until the meat is tender, stirring every now and again.  Then add the sugar, mustard, seasoning and apricots and simmer for another 30 minutes until the meat is very tender. Stir in the parsley, add more seasoning if required and serve.

3b. If you are cooking the stew in a slow cooker, add all the remaining ingredients, cook for 8 hours on low or for 4 hours on high.

Serve with rice or mashed potatoes.

Serves about 8.

Quick Fix Sticky Wings

When you’ve grown up in a home where entertaining meant making sure that there was enough food on the table for the visitors to have thirds and take home doggy bags as well, then you’re probably like me, and continue to cook huge quantities of food when you entertain. What this means to me is that I am always looking for quick and easy ways to make additional dishes that can supplement the large quantities of food I am already preparing for my guests.

If I am concerned about whether kids will eat the main course, I supplement it with chicken wings . Kids love them, and so do the adults. Here’s one way to make them that’s really easy and doesn’t fail. This is one of the times that I indulge myself in using a prepared ingredient – sweet chili sauce. I love this sauce in chicken as it offers a combination of sweet, spicy and sticky and tastes good. These wings takes minutes to prepare (not including cooking time) and everyone loves them.

Sticky Wings

STICKY WINGS

Ingredients

About 20 wings

½ cup sweet chili sauce

¼ cup soy sauce

A few drops of sesame oil (optional)

½ cup chicken stock (or less – just enough to make sure there’s enough liquid to coat all the wings)

How to do it

1. Mix the chili sauce, soy sauce, oil and stock in a bowl. Add the wings and mix together, making sure all the wings are covered with the sauce. Marinade for at least 6 hours

2. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C (400°F).

3. Put the wings and some of the sauce into an oven proof dish and cover with foil. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Then remove the foil, turn the heat down to 190°C (375°F). Bake for another about one hour, turning the wings every 15 minutes, until they are cooked and sticky.