The chicken revolution

Hi Guys

We're back in Courier and with text formatting.

So, yesterday I enticed you with what lies in my refrigerator...BRINED CHICKEN

I apologise to those of you who know what I'm talking about at this point already, but this was a total revelation for me.

On Friday night my hubby and I went to the gym and decided to stop at the supermarket on our way home to by a whole roast chicken, which we split down the middle, each got a half and ate it with the skin taken off - dinner of champions!

They had some honey cured hot smoked salmon in vacuum packed packages, but they cost and arm and a leg so that got me thinking.

A year or two ago I bought a hot smoker for my husband for his birthday, but we've never really cooked anything tasty in it and it's been gathering dust for a while now.  On the way home it hit me like a ton of bricks - I have to cure what ever I put in there first for it to taste authentic.

The thought then left my mind and we got home and divided up the chicken and munched away, that evening I took a bite of the most delicious roast chicken I've ever tasted in my life, the meat was ultra juicy and somehow seemed seasoned, which is really strange for skinless chicken, since all the yumminess is lying in the bin on the discarded skins, then another ton of bricks stuck me - IT'S BRINED.

I started googling brined chicken and found a mass of brine recipes, for anything from fillets to whole chickens to even turkeys and I couldn't believe that no one has ever taught me this, I couldn't believe that anyone cooks chicken in ANY other way!

So then I started formulating my experimental brine from a few recipes I found on the Internet, and last night we ate the best chicken I have ever eaten in my life, honestly, I am a new person because of brine.

Brine for chicken

• 1.9 litres of water
• 1/2 cup of coarse salt
• one whole head of garlic, unpeeled, chopped up
• 1 tablespoon of black pepper (unground)
• 1 tablespoon of rosemary
• 6 bay leaves, crushed

Boil half of the water with the rest of the ingredients for about 10 minutes, add the rest of the water and let it cool in a large glass bowl.  Once cooled to about skin temperature you can add the chicken, the chicken needs to be submerged, if you need to make more brine, everything will need to be increased proportionally.  I used 4 breasts, bone in, skin on and brined them in this for 6 hours in the fridge.

Next is the most important part - take the chicken out of the brine and wash under running tap water and dry thoroughly using paper towel.  Now put it on a wire rack on a tray in the fridge and leave it for one to 2 hours to dry out.  Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and roast the dry chicken for about 30 minutes. No seasoning, just like that.

If you follow these instructions you will have the most wonderful, seasoned, juicy chicken and I guarantee you will not want to ever make it in a different way.  I'm sure it will work just as well with breast fillets or whole chicken, obviously the fillets will need less time and the whole chicken more time in the brine.

I hope you enjoy this and change your life as much as it has mine, I really do feel like I've been living in the poultry dark ages!

Have a great evening

God bless

Janie B

iPhone app!

Hi Guys,
I just found the Blogger app at the app store, how cool is that?? I had no idea one could blog on the run!

Being a control freak though, it does plague me somewhat that I can't change the font, or format the text :(

This also means I can't really post recipes from my phone, BUT I will tell you this, I had a very startling realisation about cooking chicken last night, which I am terribly excited about. My experiment is currently in the fridge and if it is what I hope it is, it will forever change the way I cook poultry!

Food excites me, can you tell?

Have an awesome day, I shall report back tomorrow on my chicken experiment - formatted and in courier font.

God bless
Janie B

Before and Afters

Hi Guys

Ah, got ya there, sorry, no photo's.  I just called my blog that since the idea of before and afters have been plaguing me somewhat lately.

My friend posted hers on facebook a while ago, the same one I wrote about a while back that had the really cool interview about her weight loss (check Feb 22nd, Long time no see), and she had the courage to post hers after she'd lost a whole lot of weight.  Currently, I'm so embarrassed of my self-inflicted state, that I don't know if I'll ever have the courage to post my fat pictures!

I'm sure I will though, but I definitely won't do so before I've lost all my weight, that's for sure!!

Yesterday, I felt like having some creamed spinach and sweet pumpkin, just like one of my favourite steakhouses serve with their big fat steaks, chips and onion rings.  Of course in my version there are no chips and no onion rings.

Creamed Spinach

• 1 packet of spinach
• 1 cup of skim milk
• 2 tablespoons of cornstarch ( 1tablespoon per person per day as tolerated food)
• salt and pepper
• pinch of nutmeg
• 1/4 of a packet of Woolworths fat free danish feta

Cook the spinach, drain well and chop roughly.  In a saucepan, bring the milk to the boil and add a paste made from a little milk and the corn starch to the boiling milk while stirring continuously.  You will end up with a very thick white sauce.  Add the nutmeg and season with salt and pepper.  Take it easy on the salt though, since the feta is very salty and seasons it too.

Mix the sauce and the spinach and stir in the feta - ENJOY!!

For the sweet pumpkin you don't need a recipe - just boil some cubed butternut squash ( I despise most forms of pumpkin, except these) in some lightly salted water until fork tender.  Sprinkle on some cinnamon (about 1/2 teaspoon) and sweeten with a few drops of artificial sweetener.  I know this sounds simple, but trust me, it's brilliant!!

I hope you enjoy this!

Have a fabulous day and God bless

Janie B

 

Tomato "chutney/jam"

Hi all

I've been on this diet for 64 days now, wow, it sounds very short if I put it like that!

Yesterday I broke the 100kg barrier, yes, I am down to double digits, I think this was probably my biggest goal to date and it feels so good to have broken it!

A week ago I went to a local fresh goods market.  They had a special - 3 X 500g packets of mini Rosa tomatoes for R10 ($1.30), I bought 3 packets thinking that I would quickly go through them, alas, a week later I still had two packets left, and they were starting to become less firm and pleasing to eat out the packet.

So naturally I decided to turn them into something delicious, so delicious, you won't even believe it's good for you!

Slow tomato sauce

• 500g baby Rosa tomatoes
• 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
• small hand full of thyme sprigs
• 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste
• a few drops of liquid artificial sweetner to taste

Heat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and spray an oven proof dish with non-stick spray.  Put the tomatoes, garlic and thyme into the dish and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes start bursting at the seams.

Brown the onion in a heavy casserole, you can use a little oil, but if you don't want to, it's not the end of the world if the onions aren't brown, they'll cook soft.

Now you can add the tomatoes from the oven (the reason for keeping the thyme spigs whole is so you can fish them out easily once you're done) and add the can of tomatoes.  At this point you need to put a lid on and turn the heat right down, it needs to cook for about an hour, undisturbed at a low heat.  You can give it a gentle stir every 15 minutes or so to make sure it doesn't burn.

When the hour is over, take the lid off and turn the heat up a little and continue cooking while stirring regularly now.  At this point season with salt and pepper and stir in the cumin.  What you want is for this mixture to reduce into a nice thick, chunky jam/chutney-like consistency.  Once it's done cooking, you can add a few drops of liquid sweetner to taste.

We used it as a sauce for our steak that evening, absolutely delicious, but I can think of loads of other ways to use it!

Have fun with it!!

Good night and God bless

Janie B

Sunday chicken

Hi All

Yesterday while stalking the supermarket isles for goodies that might be permitted on this diet, I found 4 awesome new treasures - Fat Free Miracle whip (very low carb too), Light Wellington's Chutney, Allgold Light Ketchup and my personal favourite, Darling Dairy Fat Free Honey Yogurt, man, that stuff's good!

Those of you who grew up in South African homes will be all too familiar with that very famous Huisgenoot Wenresepte chicken with the sauce made from chutney, mayo and brown onion soup power - I myself have been incapacitated by this chicken dish on many a Sunday afternoon. 

Naturally when I saw the above mentioned goodies, my mind went to one place and one place only - Sunday Chicken Heaven, all Dukan friendly of course.

I know chutney is off limits on Dukan, but this Wellington Light Chutney only has 7 grams of carbs per 100g, which still falls into the nothing above 10g/100g rule.
Naturally the onion soup powder is off limits, that stuff's mostly made up of starch anyway, BUT I did find these awesome little onion stock cubes, they pack a lot of flavour and also come in a garlic variety.

Sunday Chicken Heaven

• 8 drumsticks and 8 thighs - skin and visible fat removed naturally!
• 1/4 cup of Sugar free chutney
• 1/4 cup of light ketchup
• 1/4cup of fat free Miracle Whip
• 1 cube of onion stock
• 4 onions

Place the chicken along with the onions, which have been quartered in an oven-proof dish.  Mix the sauce and cover all the chicken and onions in it, mixing well once it's poured on.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 90 minutes.  Do not cover as it will draw a lot of moisture and you'll have a runny dish.  If you do end up having a runny dish, simply ladle the excess liquid into a small saucepan and reduce to a nice thick sauce on the stove top and pour over the chicken 10 minutes before removing from the oven.

Of course, once we reach consolidation phase, this will be eaten with some yummy Basmati rice... Damn, I miss Basmati rice...

I hope you have a glorious Sunday and a great week ahead!

God Bless

Janie B

PS -  I noticed that the blog posts with food in their names get read a lot more, maybe you guys are under the impression that the ones without food in the title are not about food - this is not so, every blog post one here WILL have a recipe, this is my solemn vow to you, my faithful readers (except of course for the obligatory Kony 2012 post:))

KONY 2012

Please take a moment and watch this video, together we ARE going to make the world a better place!

Fat-pants

Hi everyone

I hope that you have been well, at this end we've been faithfully pushing on with our diet, and I am very pleased to report that I've lost just over 16kg!  That certainly sounds like a lot, but sure makes a disappointingly small difference when you're my size, however, 31kg left to loose does sound a heck of a lot better than 47kg left to loose!

Plus, I'm now starting to fit in some of my previous fat-pants. 

Interesting concept this - FAT-PANTS.

They have always been my red light, my sentinel bearing warning of having gone too far, however, in recent years I have not been paying them much heed... hence my current situation.  Yep, having gone through fat-pants from a size 35 to a size 42 (probably bigger than that, the day I started this diet, I could barely squeeze into my size 42 jeans *blush*), the writing was always on the wall.

Why I chose to ignore the recurrent upgrade to fat-pants, I may never know, and usually when that day came, I felt so awesome in my new, looser fitting pants, completely

 oblivious of the fact that they were 5cm wider than the previous ones - dude, how crazy was I???

So I'm seeing this reverse journey back through all the fat-pants as a significant part of this diet, something to keep me going, hopefully fitting into the next smaller pair will inspire me to feel just as great as my prior misplaced self-confidence that came from new jeans...

This diet, as you know by now, is very much a loooong term commitment, and there is no way in hell we're going to make it without being a little inventive in the food-department. Finding alternatives to what we're used to can be tricky, but can also be a real diet-saver!  For the past week now, I've been craving cottage pie, but naturally, potatoes are off limits, so I had to make a plan..

And what a yummy plan it turned out to be, for this one, I really must pat myself on the back!

Cottage Pie - Skinny Pants edition

for the mash part:

• 2 kohlrabi
• 4 large carrots
• 1/2 cauliflower
• 1 litre of chicken stock

Peel and chop the vegetables and boil in the chicken stock till tender and place in a food processor, blend until smooth while adding milk to achieve the desired consistency.  I have to add at this point - kohlrabi is not a frequently seen ingredient in South Africa, I saw it yesterday at a market and bought 2 with this purpose in mind.  Mine were extremely tough and had very hard stringy bits in the centre, even after it was boiled soft, and the resulting puree was terribly gritty with an unpleasing texture, which was easily amended by scraping it through a fine sieve - the outcome was spectacular - a fine, buttery tasting puree with a wonderful texture.  Next time I make this, I would however skip the kohlrabi and just use carrots and cauliflower.

for the mince part:

• 1kg of lean mince - venison or ostrich is probably as lean as you'll get, I'm fortunate to have a minced Oryx vacuum packed in 500g packets in my chest freezer :)
• 2 large onions, sliced
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 2 cups of diced carrots
• 3-5 cubes of beef stock (you can really use what ever blows your hair back, I use it instead of seasoning with salt and pepper)
• 1 tablespoon of cornstarch
• 1 small tin of tomato paste

Brown the onions in the oil, add the mince and brown meticulously, it really has to be nice and separated and brown.  Add the stock cubes and tomato paste and carrots, top up with some boiling water, enough to cover the carrots.

Cover with a lid and simmer till the carrots are nice and soft, taste your mince, and add more stock cubes if not seasoned enough.

There you have it - put the mince in the prettiest oven proof dish you own and top with your puree and bake at 200 degrees Celsius till browned somewhat.

I hope you love this as much as I do!

Here's to skinny pants!

Cheers and God bless
Janie B