Last year I shared an amazing recipe for Valentines' Day by my foodie friend Adrian Critten. We share a love of home cooking with big flavours. His lamb recipe with Parmesan champ and blackberry jus can be found here: http://snigskitchen.blogspot.com/2019/02/adeys-lamb-with-parmesan-champ-and.html
Adey and I know each other through Twitter, where we frequently swap cooking tips, recipe links and food pictures. Adey can be found at his handle of @515mm, a reference to the bike frame he favours. Adey is also a wine buff who can always give you a great wine recommendation, no matter what you are cooking. His other interests include cycling, rugby, music and hi-fi. He doesn't understand my love for sushi, and I don't understand how wearing tight shorts perched on a razor-blade thin bike seat in the freezing cold can be fun. But we don't let it get in the way of our interest in food and home cooking.
Adey is also an avid member of Foodie Twitter, where he engages in food chat with a passionate gang of food fans who love cooking, eating out, and bickering about our food preferences.
Adey has shared with us his recipe for his "weapons grade" garlic griddled chicked with roasted vegetables. This is a recipe he has been working on for a little while, making refinements and tweaks. We share a love for the errant lily that is the garlic bulb, so I am delighted he has perfected the recipe. Thank you, Adey for sharing this on my blog as a guest post.
The photos are by Adey's wife and life partner Julia Harries. She's a highly skilled photographer who takes gorgeous photos of the Welsh countryside which is local to her. If you want to follow her on Twitter, her handle is @Joolsharries. I would like to thank her for her high quality photos accompanying this guest recipe post.
Adey’s Weapons Grade Garlic Griddled Chicken with Roasted Vegetables
I developed this dinner over a number of months. It cooked and ate very differently in the beginning and took twice as long to make.
Whilst experimenting for ways to cook meat involving:
i) the sunny flavours that I enjoy
ii) creating an accompaniment to robust red wine
iii) incorporating more vegetables into our diet
I hit upon the combinations of crispy chicken, garlic, lemon, fresh herbs, roasted peppers, toasted Parmesan and gooey tomato sauce. So here it is; pretty much store cupboard ingredients, readily available from all good supermarkets and your local Middle Eastern grocers.
Quantities are approximate, I'm more Nigella than Delia so don't worry about exact measures. You will need to alter the seasoning of the tomato sauce; a splash of vinegar perhaps, if it's lacking in acidity; a touch of sugar if it needs more sweetness; a squirt of ketchup if it needs both. It's your dinner, make it so you'll enjoy it.
I really meant it about the robust red wine.
Serves 2; generously.
Chicken thighs: 500g boneless, opened up to sit flat and dried with a cloth or kitchen roll
Red peppers: 2 (if you can, find those awesome sweet pointy ones)
Courgette: 2 big ones say about 6-700g in total
Aubergine: 1 big one or 2 little ones
Salad leaves: a bag of whatever you like that looks pretty on the plate
Passata: about 300g (much faster and tastier than tinned tomato)
Red wine: about 200ml of something hefty but cheap. Gotsta love Aldi here.
Lemon juice: from 1 medium lemon
Garlic: 4 fat cloves at least (1 for the sauce)
Red chilli: as hot as you want it. I don't do hot, so I use about half a mild one.
Fresh thyme: say a small handful on the stems (I grow it in a tub in the garden)
Fresh rosemary: a sprig say 10cm long retaining 2cm for the sauce (I have a bush in my garden)
Bay leaf: 1 (I have a tree. You guessed it, it's in my garden)
Dried herbs: for the roast veg; anything really, herbes de Provence, mixed Italian, but avoid anything minty
Olive oil: 50ml of the good stuff for the sauce & on the leaves,
75ml of the basic cooking stuff for the chicken and veg
Unsalted butter: 50g ish. Good for the sauce, excellent for melting over the finished chicken if you want your guest(s) to go "Ooooo"
Parmesan: about 30g grated finely with a microplane
Balsamic vinegar: 30ml maybe; some for the sauce, some for the leaves
Tomato puree: 15ml ish, just a squirt really
Salt and pepper: the tidy grindy gear, for preference
You will need:
An oven with a grill. Two gas burners or electric rings. A pan in which to make a tomato sauce. A pan in which to cook the chicken. 2 large baking sheets/trays
Special kit:
A stovetop griddle pan and a microplane. You can use a frying pan if you have to, but the chicken will turn out a bit differently. Not appalling, just different. (You’ll need a lower temperature so the lemon juice doesn’t burn before the chicken cooks through.)
You can use a knife and salt to grind down your garlic into a paste if you want to. Microplaning is faster for larger quantities, but I get the thrill of your chef skills, so knock yourself out. Careful you don't burn your now salty garlic when you make the tomato sauce though.
'Planed Parmesan gives us an amazing, polished veneer of cheese on the surface of the aubergine, but if you haven't got one, well, I'll never know unless you tell me, so use the finest cheese grater you’ve got.
Method:
Put the oven on 180C, put the music on - some Django Rheinhart perhaps - pour yourself a glass of something nourishing and have a good mouthful. Dinner will take a bit of time, this is best done with company.
Top and tail the courgettes, take about 1/4 of the skin off in 2 long strips from the sides and bin it. (See the aubergine photos) Of what remains, slice thickly. Depending on the size of your courgette, they may be 1/4 or 1/3 of the diameter. We're aiming for large, oblong slices about 5mm thick and 100mm long to stack into a tower. In a large bowl, toss the courgette in a little olive oil, salt & pepper. Place on a baking tray and sprinkle over some dried herbs. Get it in the oven now.
Top, tail and remove the cores of the red peppers. Slice the main body into 4 big squares, the bottoms and tops. In the big bowl, toss the peppers in some seasoned olive oil, arrange on a 2nd baking tray, sprinkle with herbs, put it in the oven.
Top and tail the aubergine. Cut 2 sections of the skin off down the long axis of the veg. (see image) Carefully cut the aubergine down the long axis into four equally thick slices. This is not easy, so take your time and plan the job. Rub the cut slices with olive oil. Be careful as aubergine soaks up oil like a sponge. Season and herb it up. Turn them over and do the other side.
By now the peppers will have shrunk a touch during cooking, so you *should* just about have enough room to arrange the aubergine on the baking tray next to them. Do it and get them in the oven.
Time for the sauce.
I've used a medium frying pan here, I'd recommend a medium saucepan. On a low-medium heat, warm 15ml of good olive oil with 12g unsalted butter. Finely mince/microplane a clove of garlic and cook it very gently in the butter/oil. As soon as you smell cooking garlic, squirt in 15ml of tomato puree, cook that for a few seconds then add the passata. Season with a couple of twists of salt and turn up the heat. Once it's boiling, add the red wine, the bay leaf and the top 2cm of the rosemary sprig. Bring back to the boil, then simmer on a fairly low heat until it goes nice and thick, stirring occasionally. This will take a little time, so whilst that's looking after itself, we can see to the chicken.
Drink your drink; dehydration is a killer.
On a medium heat, warm up that griddle pan. We'll need it smoking hot by the end, so we need it warmed up ready.
Finely chop as much chilli as you like. I've found that half the one you see in the image is quite enough for me, thank you. Microplane/grind
3 (or more) fat cloves of garlic, squeeze that lemon, chop the fresh herbs. Pour 30ml of cooking olive oil into our big mixing bowl, add the lemon juice, garlic, chilli and herbs. Grind in a generous amount of salt and pepper and mix it all up with a finger.
Add the patted dry chicken thighs and get them coated in the marinade. Set aside and see to your sauce.
Remove the rosemary, bin it and have a taste to see how reduced your sauce is. Is it thick yet? Add a couple of teaspoons of the Balsamic vinegar, stir it up, wait for a bit and taste again. Your sauce should be tangy, full bodied and strong, very tomatoey, slightly sweet and a little bit herby. Cook it down until it's pleasingly thick, remove the bay leaf and adjust the seasoning if it needs it. When it's ready, cover and turn off the heat.
Meanwhile, the vegetables are probably done by now. Take a big swallow of that drink, you'll be busy from here on in.
When they are all soft and browned, move the courgette and peppers to the same tray and put it on the floor of the oven to keep warm. Turn the oven off and switch the grill on to medium-high. Turn the griddle pan up full gas.
Arrange the now roasted aubergine into soldiers and grate/plane the Parmesan cheese over them. Place under the grill, but keep your eye on it. Pop your plates into the oven to warm up a bit.
When the griddle pan is hot and I mean smoking, lay the chicken in, smooth side down. It will smoke and hiss like crazy, this is a good thing.
Check on the aubergine. When it’s covered in a delicious shiny brown veneer of melted Parmesan, turn off the grill and move it lower into the oven.
Warm your sauce up gently, check the seasoning, sweet/acid balance, this is your last chance to make any adjustment. To give it a shine and a luxurious feel, whisk 12g of butter into it, if you fancy.
Check the chicken and see if it's ready to turn. If it's still sticking to the ridges it isn't quite ready yet. Once it'll pull free with little effort, turn the chicken over. Pull the warmed plates out of the oven.
Put a spot of sauce on each plate and then lay in alternating layers:
3 slices of courgette; spot of sauce; 2 slices of pepper; sauce; 3 courgette and so on until all the veg and sauce are used. If it wasn’t earlier, the aubergine should be ready by now. When it is, turn off the grill and lay two slices of aubergine each on top of the vegetable tower.
Slide some salad onto the plate and dress with Balsamic and olive oil
When the chicken is cooked through, turn the pan off and cut some really thin slices of the butter ready. Pile the chicken on the plates, lay on the butter so it melts pleasingly into the smoking hot chicken, grind on a final flourish of salt and strut triumphantly to the dining table.
Bask in the lavish praise of your significant other. Enjoy your dinner!
Addendum
If you don’t want to use wine in the sauce, use vegetable stock instead, but easy on the salt when you add the passata.
Chop chillies or black olives into the tomato sauce if you like. Green aren’t great with the sweetness of the Balsamic IME though.
If you like your chicken very lemony, grate some peel into the marinade with the juice.
If you wanted a wine recommendation, I favour a robust red from Languedoc, Ribera del Duero or Sicily. Sturdy whites would work well too.
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