Tag Archives: food

Occasional recipes: Marilyn Monroe’s Chicken Cacciatore

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I have no idea if this really is Marilyn Monroe’s recipe (or variation hereon), but why would iON Oxford Tube, the Oxford Tube’s inflight magazine, lie to me? Anyway, this comes from page 21 of issue 3, apparently winter 2009, though I’d have said in March 2009 that’s impossible and winter 2008 was probably what they meant.

Anyhoo. They say/ [I say]:

  • 4 chicken quarters [or 2 drumsticks each]
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • crashed black pepper and salt
  • 1 yellow pepper, sliced
  • 1 small chopped onion
  • 2 cloves chopped garlic [um, 5, I think it was]
  • 1 glass dry white wine. [A glass? Just what the heck is a glass in official terms of measurement? I dunno, so I gave it exactly one wine glass full and it seemed to work.]
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 1 cup chicken stock. [Cup? See remark about glasses of white wine. Best Beloved suggested about half a pint and again it seemed to work.]
  • 1/2 tsp crumbled oregano [omitted in favour of lemon thyme, that being what we had to hand]
  • 2 bay leaves [simply omitted]
  • 1 cup finely chopped mushrooms [here we go again … I just went with my judgement of what looked like a good quantity]
  • 1 can peeled tomatoes, juice reserved [whatever that means. I put the whole lot in and, you guessed it, it seemed to work]
  • 2 tbsp fresh, torn basil leaves [see bay leaves above]
  • 1 tbsp slivered black olives [I don’t think I’ve ever had a slivered olive in my life. Black olives! Whole! Lots of them!]
  • 3 anchovy fillets [a tin from Tesco has more than 3 and did fine]
  • freshly grated parmesan [so much nicer than the pre-ground type you get in sprinkler cans which smells of sick]

Season the chicken with blackpepper and salt. Heat olive oil unilt a haze forms over it, then saute the chicken until skin goes golden brown. Transfer onto a plate.

[I know from experience that this will just fill the kitchen with chickeny olive oily smoke. Instead I roast the chicken pieces for 30 mins at gas mark 5. Meanwhile …]

Saute the yellow pepper, add onion and garlic and cook for 8-10 minutes [more like 5]. Add the vinegar to deglaze the pan, then add the white wine and boil until the jucie is reduced to about 1/4 glass. Add black pepper, pour in chicken stock, turn down to low, add tomatoes and half their juice [or, as I say, the whole lot], oregano, bay leaf, half the basil [if you’re having any of this] and the mushrooms.

Return the chicken to the pan, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 30 mins. Transfer the chicken onto a plate.

To the sauce add the black olives, remaining basil and anchovies. Stir and cook for two minutes. Spoon over the chicken and sprinkle with parmesan. Serve with buttered spaghetti.

[Now, at this point I want to know why I have never heard of buttered spaghetti before. Where has it been all my life? Just think of it. Roll the words around on your tongue. Buttered … spaghetti. It’s spaghetti, and it’s buttered. Got that? Buttered spaghetti. I have just done you a greater favour than you can possibly imagine.]

And, wow. If Norma Jean was in the habit of cooking that little lot up then she wasn’t half as dumb as she appeared. It’s rich, make no mistake, but with a range of flavours jostling for attention and each one pointing out to you what an utterly fabulous meal this is. Go to it, people.

And remember, buttered spaghetti.

Occasional recipes: honey mustard pork chops with peppercorn

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This one comes from the BBC Food site (apparently Mike Robinson from Saturday Kitchen), with adaptation.

Ingredients
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp runny honey
2 pork chops
50g/2oz butter
1 red onion, halved and sliced
2 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and cut into 8 slices
200g/7oz new potatoes, lightly cooked and halved
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
6 shredded fresh sage leaves

For the sauce
3 finely chopped shallots
1 tbsp green peppercorns
small glass cider
100ml/3½fl oz double cream

I’ve done this a few times before with the drawbacks that (a) Bonusbarn doesn’t like it and (b) the original recipe suggests griddling the chops for 6 minutes each side with the honey mustard sauce already slathered on them. This means you do the rest through a haze of pork flavoured smoke.

Oven roasting the chops takes longer but makes them much nicer. Cover and roast for 1 hour in an oven at gas mark 4, over a tray full of water to keep them moist. Mix the honey and mustard together and, at the 55 minute mark, paste it over the chops, then return them to the oven for another five minutes.

Before that, stick to what the original recipe said:

  • Melt some butter, add the onions and apples and cook for 2-3 minutes.
  • Add the potatoes and another teaspoon of mustard.
  • For the peppercorn sauce, melt some butter in another pan, add shallots and peppercorns and cook for a minute. Add a splash of cider and bring to the boil, then add the double cream and cook until it thickens
  • Serve it all together. Pork chops lovely and moist, sauce deliciously creamy, potatoes and apples adding body and interesting flavours to the mix. Yum.

So that’s Thanksgiving

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Mashed potatoes with turkey? I know, shocking.

We have an American vicar, for reasons I’ve never quite gathered. (I know why we have a vicar, because we’re that kind of church, and I know why he’s American because you don’t really get a choice in that when your parents are American and you’re born in Pittsburgh. I’ve just not yet quite understood how he ended up here, but I’m very glad he did because he’s a great guy.)

Last night we commemorated the fact with an American-style Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, corn bread, peas and sweetcorn. All ingredients genuinely American, acquired somehow from a US airforce base. And the menu …

The vicar explained beforehand that American palates are not quite the same as British ones. They don’t draw the same distinctions between sweet and savoury. And how! The corn bread is essentially dry Victoria sponge. It could have served with the sweet potato casserole as our dessert – except of course that dessert was pumpkin pie and pecan pie. (I was surprised to hear how many people present had never had pumpkin pie – I’ve had it often thanks to my mother’s cooking at home. Never had pecan pie, though.) I think the Americans must have invented cranberry sauce in a desperate attempt to drag it at least a little over to the savoury side of the taste spectrum.

But I quibble. This was my first Thanksgiving dinner and very nice it was too. It certainly whetted my appetite for the real thing in 25 days time …