BoF has been pretty quiet since Christmas. As far as we’re concerned, you didn’t need us adding to the already (goose fat) saturated Christmas food market. As a family, we had 18 for Christmas dinner without a single argument – a Christmas miracle. We’ve given you a little time to work off that paunch. Or at least some time to think about it. How many days did you make it through sober January? I managed a whole seven (if you don’t count the hours 00:00 – 04:00 on January 1st). The fast-breaking incident occurred at the 80th birthday party of my Great Aunt – rock and roll. I’m back off the wagon and much the better for it in my humble opinion.
A further wagon tipping event occurred yesterday when having a couple of friends over for dinner turned into a mini house party and a trip to the pub for a birthday party. What can you do…?
I was all out of ideas for said dinner (an unusual occurrence) and so I turned to the Christmas cook book haul for inspiration. I know I shouldn’t really publish recipes without permission, but suffice it to say that the Barrafina cook book is very good – if you enjoy this recipe as much as I please pop out to your local book store and purchase it. I didn’t quite have all of the ingredients for the Romesco sauce so I improvised and herein lies the beauty of cooking.
Romesco sauce:
1 pinch hot chilli flakes
4 plum tomatoes
100ml of olive oil (plus 3 tablespoons)
Salt & pepper
1 whole head of garlic
50g blanched almonds
1 thick slice of white bread
50 ml sherry vinegar (I actually used white wine vinegar)
Heat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Put the tomatoes into a roasting dish and drizzle with olive oil and season. Halve the head of garlic horizontally, wrap in foil and place in the roasting dish. Roast for 20 minutes. When the garlic has cooled push out the cloves and set aside. Toast the almonds in a dry pan until golden brown and set aside. Fry the bread on both sides until golden brown. Blitz all of the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Season to taste and warm in a pan on the hob.
Roast your chicken in olive oil with seasoning for 40 minutes. I used drumsticks. Thighs or a combination of both would also work well.
Whilst the chicken is roasting set to on the Panzanella salad. The bread in this dish goes to work very well in soaking up the dressing whilst retaining a slight crunch in texture. I used baby spinach leaves as the leaf basis and added a chopped red pepper, thinly sliced circles of red onion and half a tin of butter beans from the fridge. Really the dish should use tomatoes, and leaf basil. I didn’t have either but I used dried basil as a substitute. Shock horror it actually worked very well.
For the dressing add a generous glug of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, a finely chopped clove of garlic and season to taste. This really is a deliciously crisp accompaniment to a main course and I’m very much looking forward to furthering my experience of Italian cuisine in February.
Serve the roast chicken with the Romesco sauce and Panzanella salad on the side. My version of the Romesco sauce wasn’t as red as in the picture (…mine doesn’t look like that syndrome). I added some plain old tomato paste and it soon came up to scratch.
BoF.
Bored of Food 