Recipes

Ingredients:

4 chicken thighs 1 chicken breast (tenderloins removed) Dipping sauce 1 tablespoon fish sauce 1 teaspoon garlic 1/2 small carrot, shredded 1 tablespoon sugar 100ml warm water Juice of 1/2 lemon Diced chilli (optional)

Simple version Hainanese Chicken Rice

Boil the chicken

In a deep saucepan, arrange chicken by placing the thighs at the bottom (rolled up to look nicer after boiling) and breast on top; then add boiling water until it covers the chicken. Bring to the boil again and keep boiling for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stand for at least 2 hours (covered with lid).

Make the rice

Use the chicken stock from the boiled chicken instead of water, add a teaspoon of garlic, salt and cook the rice in rice cooker as usual.

Make the sauce

Combine all ingredients except lemon juice and microwave for 20 seconds; then add lemon juice. Simply adjust to your taste by changing the amount of ingredients used. Add a handful of mint to the sauce before serving.

If you happen to have chicken stock left over, simply throw in some seasonal vegetables and make it into a soup to go with the meal.

Nita Wong

Sweet Chicken Chilli Cos Canapés

Ingredients

2 bags Cos lettuce 500 g chicken mince ½ tsp cayenne pepper 2 tsp minced garlic ½ tsp salt 1 tbsp soya sauce 2 tbsp gin or vodka 3 tbsp of coriander or parsley 3 C crispy noodles Sweet chilli sauce

Marinate the chicken with the above ingredients. Cut at stalk and wash the Cos lettuce, then dry leaves in fridge with damp towel over the top. Heat oil and fry the marinated chicken mince until cooked. Add sweet chilli sauce and lastly add your choice of coriander or parsley.

Plate Cos leaves onto serving platter and spoon the cooked marinated chicken mince onto the Cos lettuce leaves. Then garnish with 1 tsp per leaf of crispy noodles over the cooked chicken mince. Serve.

Marj Noble

For the salad mix

Chickpea, Beetroot and Nut Salad

¾ cup dried chickpeas, soaked then cooked until tender with ½ tsp turmeric (or replace with 2 cups canned chickpeas) 1 medium beetroot, cut into matchsticks, rinsed and set aside to dry off 1 large carrot, cut into matchsticks 4 spring onions, sliced 2 sticks celery, diced 1 thumb fresh ginger, very thinly sliced ½ cup coarsely chopped parsley 1 cup coriander leaves

Toss together all the ingredients, setting aside half the coriander leaves for garnish.

For the nut mix

2cups mixture of peanuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds 2 tablespoons brown sugar ½ teaspoon each of salt, cumin and coriander powder ¼ teaspoon chilli powder 25g chilled butter

Bake the nuts and seeds for 5 minutes at 180°C then sprinkle with a mixture of the sugar, salt and spices. Grate the butter over. Bake for 10 mins more, stirring often. Set aside to cool.

For the dressing and to serve

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar ½ teaspoon brown sugar Salt and pepper ½ cup olive oil

Mix all the ingredients together well. Toss the vinaigrette and 2/3 of the nut mixture with the salad mix. Garnish with the remaining nuts and coriander leaves.

Serve 8-10. Sharon Thomas