Almost-Anniversary Celebration!

I was planning to do a ‘one year of NOT blogging’ celebratory post, but I’m going to have to settle for an almost… Manu’s non-stop pestering to blog, blog, BLOG finally got to me. Every time I cooked anything even slightly out of my normal routine, his first reaction would be, “You should write a blog about this.” So yes, I gave in. I rarely remember to photograph my food – usually by the time I finish cooking, its half past the time for eating! But over the almost-one-year, I did plan a few posts and out of them perhaps managed to photograph half. Hopefully, I’ll catch up on those! (Although knowing me, that’s probably too much to hope for.)
Today being St. Patrick’s Day, I too played at being Irish for a day, or rather for a meal. Dinner for two :- Soda Farls, Fried Cabbage, and Irish Chicken. Oh yeah, orange slices for dessert!

The farls I had tried once before, and the cabbage was a very basic recipe with just oil, salt, pepper and parmesan. The show-stopper, at least I hope so, was the chicken. Not too complicated or time consuming, but definitely finger-lickin’ good. Inspired by a recipe from the Food Network, here’s how I did it…

300 g chicken (with bone)
2 carrots (sliced)
1 medium potato (cubed)
1/4 cup green peas
1 medium onion (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (minced)
salt, pepper to taste
2 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
2 tbsp oil
AND….
1 cup Strong beer (I used Tuborg, simple because that had a smaller bottle available)

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan and fry the onion and garlic. Remove from oil and set aside. In the same oil, add the chicken pieces and cook on medium high. Make sure to turn the chicken so that all sides are evenly browned. Once the chicken browns, add the onion and garlic, carrot, potato, salt, pepper, and coriander. Pour the beer over it, bring to a boil.

Then turn down heat and cover and cook for 30 minutes. Add the green peas, cook for another 10 minutes. By then, the chicken should be done, and only a little bit of sauce left. (If you like more sauce, you can always add more beer… or water).

I was slightly apprehensive about cooking this one since I don’t like the taste of beer, but somehow the cooking process took the unpleasantness away, while still leaving a recognisable flavour behind. I’ve never cooked chicken with vegetables before (except onion and capsicum for tikka), but the carrots and peas added a nice colour to it, I think. My test subject did clean up his plate very very thoroughly, so I’m guessing it was a hit!