Michelada Peri Peri Poussin

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Michelada peri peri chicken

It was sunny yesterday and it looks like it might remain so for an hour or two more. I was desperate to get the barbecue out and use it for the first time all summer and do some classics like beer can chicken and grilled sardines, but cautious of this ever changing weather this summer, I decided not to risk something that might take a couple of hours and decided to beercan a poussin instead.

Quick thinkers will have realised that a poussin is a petite bird and that the average beercan won’t fit inside it, which is how michelada poussin came about. I rather like a pre-dinner drink and often keep cocktail sized cans of tomato juice so I can have a Bloody Mary. These looked like they’d fit a poussin perfectly. Worried that the tomato juice wouldn’t give enough steam, I replaced half of it with a can of Red Stripe. I then carefully wedged the can inside the bird and marinaded with homemade peri peri sauce before cooking a few hours later.

I didn’t actually get to cook my poussin over the barbecue as my neighbours decided to throw a raucous party with a full on sound system that drove us all indoors with the windows shut, but I was delighted to see that you can still beercan a bird in your oven with a minimum of hassle!

Michelada Peri Peri Poussin: one poussin serves one person and amounts are for one bird

  • 1 poussin
  • 1 teaspoon peri peri sauce
  • 1 teaspoon tomato puree
  • splash vinegar (anything except malt)
  • drizzle of oil
  • 1 cocktail sized can of tomato juice, half and half with beer
  • 1 pair of latex gloves

First make your peri peri sauce. It’s easier than falling off a log and it’s brilliant because you can add as much heat or flavour to it as you like giving you the chance to experiment and customise

Peri Peri Sauce:

  • 8 large red chillies
  • 2 scotch bonnets
  • 4 cloves roast garlic
  • vinegar (not malt) to loosen
  • juice of 2 lemons
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon ses salt
  • two sprigs fresh thyme

Roast all the chillies until blackened and blistered. This should take about 25 minutes at 200℃. Make sure you wear latex gloves and once the chillies are cool enough to handle, top and tail chop the red ones finely. Remove the seeds from one of the scotch bonnets. Then put everything in the blender and blitz until a thick puree. Add in the lemon juice and enough vinegar to make the consistency like a thick ketchup. Pour into a sterilised jar and keep in the fridge. It’s pretty hot, and fairly addictive, especially used raw, cooking mellows it to a pleasant tingle.

To do the poussin, pour half the can of tomato juice out and top up with beer. Wedge the can up inside the bird so it is literally perched on it. Mix the peri peri sauce and tomato puree with a splash of vinegar and oil to make it loose enough to rub over the bird. Make sure you wear latex gloves to do this and work the marinade into all the nooks and crannies and leave to soak in for an hour or two.

To cook, either use your kettle barbecue with the coals on either side and the poussin in the middle to cook indirectly for about 30 minutes before giving the skin a crisp up over the heat or pop in the oven on a tray to cook for 40 minutes at 180℃. The liquid inside the can steams the poussin as it cooks so the meat is super succulent and the vertical roasting means all the skin is equally crisp. I kept it simple, roasting a few tomatoes in the tray under the bird as a side dish to soak up the juices.

Once the bird is done, set to one side to rest, making sure there is a tray or bowl to catch the juices. Ten minutes will make it even more juicy and delicious and more to the point allows the can to cool enough that you can pull it out to make the poussin easier to eat. Dust the skin with some sea salt and then sit down to perfectly poultry.

The meat is so juicy, you need some flatbread to soak it up, but as you pull the legs and wings off it’ll be dripping down your hands too. Don’t miss a morsel of the meat and revel in the good proportion of skin to meat compared to a normal chook. There’s something incredibly decadent about a whole bird to yourself and it gets round the who likes what bit dilemma nicely. I found one whole poussin and some flatbread was incredibly filling, but utterly indulgent and delicious. It didn’t stop me wanting to demolish a second crispy skinned spicy little number…

 

 

West African Inspired Mussels and Chips…

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West African inspired mussels and chips

Much and all as I love summer, the months without an ‘R’ in curb my ability to eat shellfish as much as I’d like. So thank goodness for the humble mussel which can be eaten all year round. I love them in the summer as a light simple supper that doesn’t need much standing over a hot stove (normally because of the high temperature outside, but this year so it doesn’t cut into my watching TV under a blanket time…)

The French style is most common with mussels and although I love it, I wanted something a bit fresher and punchier.  Some fat scarlet tomatoes from O Talho caught my eye on the way back from Dagon’s and I’d just picked up some picture perfect red chillis from the Wing Tai Asian Supermarket. But as well as the warmth from the capsicums, I wanted some tingle and my mind went to the pod of alligator pepper a friend had gifted me after we shopped in the Village one Saturday.

Alligator pepper pod

Highly prized in West Africa, especially Nigeria where the Yoruba incorporate it into naming ceremonies for babies, this pepper comes in a dry pod that looks like an alligator’s back and has a warm bite of pepper mixed with a slight hint of cardamom. I’ve mainly seen recipes for it involving fish and tomatoes so I knew it was likely to work with my mussels. I have no idea how authentic this might be though…

West African Inspired Mussels and Chips: serves 2 comfortably

  • 1kg bag mussels
  • 1/2 pod alligator pepper
  • 2 banana shallots or small onion
  • two handfuls of cherry tomatoes
  • 1 red chilli or 1 tsp hot sauce
  • 150ml water
  • 2 tsp oil
  • 4 sweet potatoes

First clean your mussels well. Pull the beards from them and discard any that are already open and that don’t close when tapped or that are broken. Leave them to soak in cold water to clean out any grit while you turn your attention elsewhere.

Heat the oven to 200℃ and then peel your sweet potatoes. I used orange fleshed ones from the supermarket. Cut them into chips, making sure that they are all roughly the same size and thickness so they cook evenly. Toss in a light coating of oil and then cook. I used a mesh tray like this which cuts the cooking time and washing up, but you are using an oven tray, they’ll take about 25 minutes.

About ten minutes before the chips are ready, finely dice your shallot and cook in a small amount of oil on a moderate heat until softened but not coloured. If using the chilli, cut finely and add to the shallot. Keep the seeds in if you want more heat. Then take the alligator pepper pod and scoop the seeds out and grind them in a pestle and mortar before adding to the shallot and chilli to cook out slightly. Cut your tomatoes in half and add to the pan. You don’t need any extra seasoning.

When the tomatoes start to collapse slightly round the edges, add in the cleaned wet mussels to the pan. Pour the water on top and put the lid on and cook for about 3-4 minutes or until the mussels have opened and the tomatoes are thickening the juices. Take off the heat and leave the lid on while you dish up the sweet potato fries on a separate plate. Then serve the steaming hot mussels in bowls with a good amount of the tomato rich liquor and then dig in.

The best way to eat mussels is to use the empty shell to pick the meat out of the next. Discard any mussels that haven’t opened and enjoy each flavoursome mouthful as the warmth of the chilli and alligator pepper builds a tingle on your lips and the pile of shells grows. Best eaten with a ice cold beer, a roll of kitchen paper and some non judgemental friends to hand!

 

This post first appeared over at Brixton Blog celebrating all our lovely local shops.

 

Gooseberry and Elderflower Bircher Muesli

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Gooseberry and elderflower bircher muesli

As I’ve mentioned before, I love an oat or two. They form the basis of about 75% of my breakfasts (we’ve written extensively about my other choice in the shape of a duck egg) and the year is split into two phases: porridge or bircher muesli. The latter tends to herald the arrival of summer when I switch from the creamy warmth of porridge to the softness of soaked oats and a heap of seasonal fruit to start the day. However this year, the switch has not been followed by an actual change in the seasons so I decided to make my muesli a bit more of a treat and flavour it with the light and tangy tastes of gooseberry and elderflower.

Super simple, but so good it’ll make you leap out of bed on a Monday morning, this is a seasonal treat and a half. Instead of using the more traditional apple juice to soak the oats, I used elderflower cordial.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Bircher Muesli (serves one)

  • 50g oats  (use jumbo oats or look out for Flahavans)
  • 60ml/1/4 cup elderflower cordial
  • 60ml/ 1/4 cup water
  • 2-3 tablespoons Greek yoghurt
  • handful gooseberries, topped and tailed
  • teaspoon sugar
  • vanilla extract

This is a dish best prepped the night before, but don’t panic, it’s very simple. First add a teaspoon of sugar per handful of gooseberries and add a scant sticky trickle of vanilla extract and then roast your gooseberries in a 180℃ oven for about 20 minutes or until they collapse in their own syrup slightly. Set aside.

Soak the oats in the elderflower/water mix overnight. You can do it for 5 or 10 minutes before you eat, but overnight really plumps the oats up and makes them even better.

Then next morning, fuelled by the live giving power of tea, tip a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt (proper stuff, not that weird no fat high sugar stuff that advertisers seem to think womenhood is entirely constructed of) and add in your roasted goosegogs. Stir round and then melt into the sweet creamy oats and sour kick of the yoghurt and fruit and feel ten times more awake, surprisingly healthy and totally full up til lunchtime. It might even kid you it’s actually summer…

Rhubarb Surprise Ice Cream Sandwiches

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My ice cream life was varied and disparate when I was a wain. There was the exquisite gelato of family holidays to Italy ( scene of one of my most memorable moments when I brattily declared I didn’t like ice cream to howls of disbelieving laughter), Mr Whippy style cornets with a flake on the side, the mouth puckering but moreish lemon sorbet my mum’s friend Ann made at dinner parties and slices of raspberry ripple from a rectangular carton, often served on the side of fresh raspberries from my granny’s garden but also slipped between two wafers to make a slider.

Cue quizzical eyebrow raising from our foodie readers. Well to us Norn Irish (and Scottish) folk, a slider is not a mini burger, it’s an  ice cream sandwich, usually from a van or one of those amazing Celtic-Italian ice cream cafes both countries welcomed so happily due to their super sweet tooth. Possible to make at home if you could get your Dale Farm in the right sized block and work quickly, they were more often a treat bought on a seaside trip or at the end of a Sunday out. They came in several souped up versions such as the nougat wafer (dipped in chocolate and nougat and pronounced nugget) or the seemingly sophisticated oyster, but my favourite was the version that had a Flake inside. I could work out how they got the figs in Fig Rolls, but not the Flake inside one of these.

Quite hard to eat in a dignified manner, these required a careful combo of licking, nibbling, turning and eventually biting to make sure you got every drop without it exploding down your front. I imagine it was their trickiness to eat that has led to them seemingly vanishing without a trace these days. I haven’t seen one for years and neither had the other slightly bemused people I canvassed about them. It looked like I was going to have to make my own version. It was a project worthy of one of Kavey’s ice cream challenges!

Chocolate is all very well and good but my last two batches had both been chocolatey and I felt I needed some fresher and tangier to hit the spot. One of those perfect lightbulb moments happened and I realised that a stick of poached rhubarb inside the ice cream would make a perfect grown up copy of that childhood classic…

Rhubarb Surprise Ice Cream Sandwiches:

  • 4 egg yolks
  • 250ml milk
  • 500ml double cream
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 5 stalks rhubarb
  • pack of rectangular ice cream wafers

I used a silicone tray like this one to make individual blocks of ice cream. All instructions are for this tray, but you could use something else if you prefer.

Roast your rhubarb in the oven at 150℃ for about 20 minutes until soft but still holding its shape firmly. Then set aside the narrower stalks on a plate so you have enough for nine pieces and allow them to drain any juice away. Puree the rest of the rhubarb in the blender.

Then make your ice cream base by heating the milk and sugar together until bubbling but not boiling. Add in the cream. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks in a small bowl. Then add a cupful of the warm cream mixture to the egg yolks and stir. This will temper the yolks so they don’t scramble when you add them to the hot liquid. Then add the egg mix to the warmed milk and cream and cook gently until starting to thicken and coats the back of a spatula. Take off the heat and chill well before churning in your machine.

About five minutes before your ice cream machine has done its job, add in the rhubarb puree to flavour your custard base. Make sure your ice cream is still quite soft and malleable and then put a dessertspoonful in the base of each section of your tray. Place the cut piece of roast rhubarb on top and then cover it all with another spoonful of ice cream so there are no gaps. When all are filled, put the tray flat into the freezer to chill completely for several hours so that each little block is nice and firm.

When you are ready to eat the ice cream, take the tray out about 5 minutes before and run a blunt knife round the block to loosen it and the block should pop out in one piece. Pop between two rectangular ice cream wafers (I used Askey’s for extra childhood nostalgia) and then get your chops round this awesome ice cream sandwich. The ice cream is super creamy and custardy with a proper tang from the rhubarb shot through it and the whole thing is made amazing by the frozen piece of rhubarb which makes it all taste a bit like a quarter of the eponymous sweeties. I revisited childhood memories and instead of being disappointed, it was even better than remembered…

 

Deep Fried Okra

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Recently in my travels round Brixton, I keep coming across Americans who now live here. It’s testament to what a great area Brixton is that many of them say it’s the best neighbourhood they’ve ever lived in and my recipe here is partly inspired by them. But its mainly inspired by my determination not to shudder slightly whenever I see piles of okra on the stalls in the market. I’ve only ever eaten it once when I was a child and was singularly unimpressed by its slimy texture and have avoided it ever since. But encouraged by African friends who consider it a kitchen staple and those Americans who all responded affirmatively when I mentioned it, I’ve decided to give you my melting pot take on it and like the good Belfast girl I am, fry it. I mean, what food doesn’t taste even better when fried?

I’m branching out a bit here and using cornmeal instead of a batter. I’ve only recently discovered this as a coating for things and can’t get enough of its crunchy crispness, preferably dipped in something spicy and delicious. A firey salsa made with the super sweet vine tomatoes that are perfectly in season right now, some smoked garlic and a burst of red onion would take this from side dish to star attraction at dinner, especially with an ice cold beer to accompany it…

Fried Okra:

  • about 200g of okra, cut into 1 inch chunks
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 200g yellow cornmeal (also called polenta if you’re looking for it)
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder/cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • seasoning as required.
  • vegetable oil for frying

Get your oil on to heat, making sure you only fill your pan a third full of oil so it can’t bubble over. You want it hot but not scorching.

When buying the okra, make sure the pods are nice and furry and not split at all. Wash them and dry them well. Cut each pod in roughly three pieces. Then dip the pieces into the beaten egg before putting them into the cornmeal and making sure they are well coated. Don’t hang about, do both dippings quickly and put them into the oil immediately to cook. Give them about 2-3 minutes each side or until the okra and the coating both go golden.

Serve immediately, preferably dipped into a little hot sauce and salt. We had them on the side of some curry goat, but these fried okra will go with anything and make a great gluten free vegetarian dish. If like me, you were nervous about the slime potential, don’t be. Fried up like this, it’s a good balance between soft and crunchy and I surprised myself by having seconds, as did my American dining companion…

Okra pods

*An edited version of this post originally appeared at Brixton Blog.