Chicken liver pâté with sour cherry chutney

I absolutely adore chicken liver pâté and you certainly can not compare home made stuff to the store-bought one. Besides those have hardly seen any liver, not to mention the list of the rest of the ingredients. It is really difficult to find free range chicken liver in my area and when I manage to find it I always try to make the most out of it. I am a huge fan of chicken liver with freshly baked bread and an onion-tomato salad, of course only when tomatoes are in season. I am so looking forward to end of summer, the best time of the year to eat tomatoes. Anyway, back the the pâté that this time I served with a spicy sour cherry chutney.

Ingredients:
for the chicken liver pâté:
150 g chicken liver
50 g butter + 1/4 teaspoon
1 shallot
3 tablespoons madeira
3-4 sage leaves or as desired + a few more for the top
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
chicken lard for frying the liver
2 tablespoons ghee
salt
freshly ground pepper

for the sour cherry chutney:
150 g pitted sour cherries (mine from the freezer)
1 red onion
30 g dried sour cherries
1 cinnamon stick
2-3 green cardamom pods
2-3 cloves
2-3 allspice berries
4-5 black peppercorns
3 tablespoons brown sugar
4 tablespoons port wine

Melt chicken lard (best if you get it fresh right out of a free range chicken) over low heat and fry chicken liver, then set aside. In another saucepan melt butter and sautee onion until it is caramelised, add madeira and reduce by half. Puree liver with the madeira-onion liquid, add butter and sage and puree again. Mash it through a fine sieve, season with salt and freshy ground pepper and pour into a small ramequin and put a few sage leaves on top. Melt ghee and let it cool slightly and pour it on top of the pâté. Chill for at least 3 hours.

For the chutney chop onion and bring it to the boil with the rest of the ingredients. Then reduce heat and cook over medium heat for 30-40 minutes, then remove the spices and fill into a jar and chill.

Breaded chicken drumstick confit with pommes frites

There is actually nothing that I do not like doing in the kitchen, even the washing up is fine with me, however what I absolutely dislike is breading. It takes me hours to overcome my "i hate breading"-mood and get going. And no, it is not because it sticks to my fingers and afterwards you have to scrub, no. In fact I can not even explain why! Maybe the mess, though it does not actually have to be a messy task, but still, there is always some breadcrumbs and flour flying onto the kitchen flour. Grrr! So it is rare that we have Wiener Schnitzel for lunch on a Sunday. In Hungary it is pretty common to eat rántott hús on Sundays, so in my family.  As a child I enjoyed helping mom with breading meat or veggies, but not nowdays. But when my mom is not there to preapre my most favourite breaded chicken wings for me, I do not eat. That simple it is. However, now I simply could not resist to try this thing out. Chicken confit breaded and deep fried. I bet, you have never had such a tender drumstick under crisp breadcrumbs, like this!

Ingredients:
6 chicken drumsticks
1 liter olive oil
1 clove garlic
2 twigs rosemary
salt
pepper
flour
eggs
breadcrumbs
for the pommes frites:
4 large potatoes
peanut oil
salt

Remove the skin from the chicken drumsticks, season with salt and pepper. Put drumsticks into a bowl, and pack them really thight. Add halved garlic clove, rosemary and pour the olive oil over it. The drumsticks should be covered completly. Preheat the oven to 140°C. Cover and leave it in the oven for 2 hours, then allow to cool until lukewarm, remove from the oil and dry with kitchen paper. Roll drumsticks in flour, then in beaten egg and finally coat with breadcrumbs. Deep fry within a few minutes in 190°C hot oil. You can do this right after you fried the last batch of pommes frites. Peel and cut potatoes in sticks and place in a bowl filled with ice water for at least 30 minutes or over night. After wash it again under running water and dry with a help of a kitchen cloth. Heat the deep fryer to 140°C and fry potatoes in small portions for 6-8 minutes. Let them cool for 15 minutes while heat the deep fryer to 190°C. Now it is time for the second frying for 2-3 minutes. Place a kitchen cloth into a bowl, add fries on it, sprinkle with salt, remove the cloth and shake it for a moment or two. Serve immediately.
 

Cayenne pepper spiced chicken breast with avocado, mango, sesonal salads and basil-yoghurt dressing

After I managed to put an end to my sugar and white flour free month, which frankly I do not really mind, I thought to prepare something light for lunch. It is time to enjoy winter salads as long as they are still available, though I know most of them you can buy throughout the year, but mâche and red chicory taste best right now. Agree? There is not much to tell about this salad: a spicy and hot chicken breast served with bunch of different greens, mango, avocado with a basil-yoghurt dressing. Perfect on a busy day, as you are done within 10 minutes with the whole thing!

Ingredients:
per person:
half of a chicken breast
1 handful mâche
1 radicchio
1 red chicory
1/2 mango
1/2 avocado
1 small onion
saltcayenne pepper
peanut oil

for the dressing:
100 ml yoghurt
1/2 garlic clove
handful basil leaves
juice and zest of 1/2 lime
3 tablespoons rapeseed oil
salt
pepper

Season chicken with salt and cayenne pepper. If you do not want it to be very hot mix cayenne pepper with paprika powder. Wash and drain salads, slice avocado and mango. Sprinkle avocado with lime juice to prevent it from turning brown. For the dressing put the ingredients into a mixer and blend it and season. Fry chicken breast over medium heat and serve on the salad.

Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Chicken Tikka Masala

Another dish that is unknown in its country of origin or let's say chicken tikka masala is the same for India what spaghetti bolognese for Italy. After all this hybrid was born in Great Britain when some Bangladeshi chefs tried to create Indian dishes that cater British tastes. According to a story an Indian chef served traditional chicken tikka (in tandoori oven cooked chicken that was marinated in a yoghurt and spices) to guest, who didn't like it, because it was too dry and asked for a gravy. So the chef improvised one based on a tomato soup that he flavoured with Indian spices. If this really happened or not is impossible to find out, especially since in 2001 Iqbal Wahhab, who is the owner of a elegant Indian restaurant, said that he invented this story. Anyway, meanwhile this combination of tikka and masala is claimbed by a number of places in England and of course there are many explanations for it. Allegedly, it was like a wildfire in the 60ties and 70ties on the menu of the restaurants. Anyway, one thing is for sure that the chicken tikka masala was inspired by Indian dishes like murg makhani or butter chicken, where the tandoori chicken is served in a buttery tomato sauce.

However, it is not that simple as it seems! Heston Blumenthal travelled to India to find out more and things got even more confusing. He met several people who insisted that it was an Indian dish, after all spices belong to India. Finally, when he was back in England he went to his favourite Indian restaurant to have a plate of chicken tikka masala. Only now he realised that what he really loved about the dish was coconut milk.

There is no better proof of Blumenthal's vocation in the search of perfection than the MRI scan to find out if the marinade penetrates the meat or only coats the surface. That helped to find the best way of preparation of the chicken meat. The best result was achived with the chicken that had the rub for 5 hours and was marinated for 10 hours. So everything was ready for cooking, however an ordinary housewife has no tandoori oven at home. Blumenthal found a simple, yet effective way to solve this problem. Well, we do not own such a grill and I didn't want to buy one, so we improvised.

The preparation? Well, it is neither complicated nor time consuming! Everything starts the same way like with the perfect roast chicken: the chicken thighs spend 6 hours in salty water, then another 2 in water where you gotta change it every 30 minutes. Okay, that is the worst part, but it is worth it! Then comes the preparation of the rub using raw and baked garlic, ginger and olive oil. The deboned chicken thighs spend 5 hours in the rub. After it is time for the yoghurt marinade that contains home made garam masala (coriander, green and black cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, clove, cumin, mace, bay leaf) chili and fenugreek leaves. I didn't manage to get the leaves so I used ground fenugreek, but only a 1/4 of the required amount. After 10 hours of marinating it is time to cook the chicken! And finally, you only have to prepare the masala. For this you need a pressure cooker, but I do not own one, so I baked the tomatoes covered in foil in the oven. Then the rest is really quickly: add ginger, baked garlic, chili, yoghurt and coconut milk. Finally, stir in cashew nut butter and butter and sprinkle with melon seeds and fresh green chili. Serve with freshly baked naan and enjoy.

The taste? Brilliant, simply BRILLIANT!