A birthday dinner - Orzo pesto salad, roast chicken and chocolate mousse
So last night was my boyfriend's birthday, and I had promised to cook a roast chicken with all the trimmings. Come midday yesterday, however, and we were both languishing in the heat of a southern hemisphere summer, to the point where the last thing I wanted to do was hover over a stove basting roast vegetables. So I suggested that I still make the chicken, but instead of having hot vegetables, substituting a cool orzo salad. This made his eyes light up, because orzo is one of our favourite foods which we eat far less often than we should.
No photos, unfortunately, because the camera batteries weren't charged enough, but imagine tender slices of lemon and basil basted roast chicken, laid out over a heaping serve of chilled, perfectly al dente rice-shaped pasta stirred through with a generous amount of basil, cashew and parmesan pesto, chopped red peppers, homegrown cherry tomatoes, red onion and roasted chopped cashews, with the added tang of whole, roasted and caramelized garlic cloves and salty feta. Mmmn. Served with a fresh leaf salad tossed with balsamic vinaigrette which seeped into the edges of the orzo and imparted extra flavour, this meal was a definite hit, and I think I'll reprise it again sans the chicken as an easy and delicious house-warming party meal.
We finished our meal with another favourite, dark chocolate mousse topped with lightly whipped cream and blueberries. Even though this is a recipe I've made many times, I managed to screw it up a bit by putting in about four times the amount of butter and twice the amount of chocolate the recipe called for (yup, when I glanced at my recipe, I managed to mix up the amount of chocolate and the amount of butter, and my conversions from oz to grams). This meant that the texture of the mousse was much more solid than normal, almost like a cross betweeen a mousse and a cake. It wasn't bad - in fact my boyfriend and flatmate proclaimed it as better than the original- but I prefer the light fluffiness of the original mousse recipe.
Roast chicken and pesto orzo with feta and cashews
Ingredients:
- whole, fresh chicken. I always use free-range chicken, because the meat is much more flavourful and our household tries to stay away from food hormones as much as possible.
- 1 packet orzo pasta. In better supermarkets, you should be able to find this with the other pastas, but I found mine in the international foods section, or try looking at an Italian market. It's also known as rissoni.
- 300-500g basil pesto. I cheated and bought a tub from the deli, but it'd be even more delicious if homemade. Our basil plant was looking kind of sad, so I didn't want to make my own.
- 1 red onion
- 2 lemons
- dried basil, oregano, cracked black pepper
- olive oil
- 1 red capsicum/bell pepper
- 1 packet feta
- 2 bulbs garlic
- handful of cherry tomatoes
- handful of roasted cashews, chopped. You can use salted or unsalted, depending on your preference. We don't eat much salt, so because of the saltiness of the feta, I used unsalted nuts. If you're going to sub out the feta to make a vegan orzo salad, I'd advise using salted cashews to replace the salt.
1. Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Place chicken in a roasting pan, baste with a little olive oil, cracked pepper, basil and oregano. Make deep cuts into the lemons and squeeze juice over the chicken, then stuff the cavity with the lemons. The juice will slowly flavour the chicken from the inside as it roasts. Cover with tinfoil and roast for 45 minutes, then take it out, baste with juices and turn the temperature down to 180. Continue roasting for another hour to an hour and a half, until juices run clear. Take off the tinfoil and finish roasting to get a nice golden-brown finish. Rest for ten minutes, then carve into slices.
2. Break up the bulbs of garlic into individual cloves and put them in a smaller roasting pan with a tiny splash of olive oil. Cover with tinfoil and put in the oven with the chicken. About half an hour before serving, take them out, take off the tinfoil and pop the garlics out of their papery outer layer. Put them back into the oven - they will caramelize until chewy and almost crispy.
3. While the chicken is roasting, prepare the orzo. If you have a huge pasta pot, you can do it all in one, but we had to use our two largest saucepans at once. Boil the orzo until al dente in lots and lots of water (8 pints to 1 pound of pasta) then drain well, rinse with cold water and drain again. Put it in a large mixing bowl and stir through a tablespoon of olive oil and the pesto. Put it back in the fridge until you're almost ready to serve.
4. When you take the chicken out of the oven, add the finely-chopped red onion, red bell pepper, crumbled feta, cherry tomatoes and cashews. Stir the garlic cloves through and serve onto plates, arranging the hot slices of chicken over the top. Serve with a little parmesan sprinkled over the top if desired.
Chicken serves four, orzo serves 4-8 depending on the servings. We all had heaping serves last night and still had enough to eat a bowl each for breakfast this morning.
Dark chocolate mousse with whipped cream and berries
I always use this recipe for chocolate mousse, because it's amazingly good and very simple. As the original recipe says, raspberries go very well, but my boyfriend loves blueberries so we had them instead. For a mousse-cake type dessert, follow the amounts of chocolate and butter in parentheses.
Ingredients:
- 4 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used an entire 250g block of Whittaker's 72% cocoa dark chocolate, when I normally use half - I had forgotten that the last time I made this, it was a double batch)
- 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter, diced (I used about 100g of butter, because when I glanced quickly at my recipe board, I saw 4.5oz instead of 1oz, but upon googling conversions, I didn't trust the entire 130g it asked for. If you like mousse-cake and despise your arteries, use this amount of butter)
- 2 tablespoons espresso or very strong coffee
- 1 cup cold heavy cream
- 3 large eggs, separated
- 1 tablespoon sugar (I used my baking sugar, which has a vanilla pod pushed into it to flavour it a little)
1. Whip the cream to soft peaks, then refrigerate.
2. Melt the butter, chocolate and espresso in the top of a double boiler over hot, not quite simmering water. Let cool until the chocolate is slightly warmer than body temperature. (I find that removing from heat, but leaving it sitting on top of the hot water keeps it to the right temperature.)
3. Whip the egg whites until foamy and beginning to hold a shape, then add the sugar and whip until soft peaks form.
4. Stir the yolks into the chocolate. Gently stir in about 1/3 of the whipped cream. Fold in half the whipped egg whites, then the remaining whites, then the remaining cream.
5. Spoon into serving dishes (I used small ramekins) and leave in the fridge to chill. The original recipe calls for at least 8 hours chilling time, but I chilled mine for about four and a half, and they were still delicious. It's best if you prepare them early, though.
6. Serve with a dab of lightly whipped cream (I leave my cream plain, because it helps cut down the richness of the mousse) and some blueberries or raspberries.
Serves 5-8, depending on serving size.
No photos, unfortunately, because the camera batteries weren't charged enough, but imagine tender slices of lemon and basil basted roast chicken, laid out over a heaping serve of chilled, perfectly al dente rice-shaped pasta stirred through with a generous amount of basil, cashew and parmesan pesto, chopped red peppers, homegrown cherry tomatoes, red onion and roasted chopped cashews, with the added tang of whole, roasted and caramelized garlic cloves and salty feta. Mmmn. Served with a fresh leaf salad tossed with balsamic vinaigrette which seeped into the edges of the orzo and imparted extra flavour, this meal was a definite hit, and I think I'll reprise it again sans the chicken as an easy and delicious house-warming party meal.
We finished our meal with another favourite, dark chocolate mousse topped with lightly whipped cream and blueberries. Even though this is a recipe I've made many times, I managed to screw it up a bit by putting in about four times the amount of butter and twice the amount of chocolate the recipe called for (yup, when I glanced at my recipe, I managed to mix up the amount of chocolate and the amount of butter, and my conversions from oz to grams). This meant that the texture of the mousse was much more solid than normal, almost like a cross betweeen a mousse and a cake. It wasn't bad - in fact my boyfriend and flatmate proclaimed it as better than the original- but I prefer the light fluffiness of the original mousse recipe.
Roast chicken and pesto orzo with feta and cashews
Ingredients:
- whole, fresh chicken. I always use free-range chicken, because the meat is much more flavourful and our household tries to stay away from food hormones as much as possible.
- 1 packet orzo pasta. In better supermarkets, you should be able to find this with the other pastas, but I found mine in the international foods section, or try looking at an Italian market. It's also known as rissoni.
- 300-500g basil pesto. I cheated and bought a tub from the deli, but it'd be even more delicious if homemade. Our basil plant was looking kind of sad, so I didn't want to make my own.
- 1 red onion
- 2 lemons
- dried basil, oregano, cracked black pepper
- olive oil
- 1 red capsicum/bell pepper
- 1 packet feta
- 2 bulbs garlic
- handful of cherry tomatoes
- handful of roasted cashews, chopped. You can use salted or unsalted, depending on your preference. We don't eat much salt, so because of the saltiness of the feta, I used unsalted nuts. If you're going to sub out the feta to make a vegan orzo salad, I'd advise using salted cashews to replace the salt.
1. Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Place chicken in a roasting pan, baste with a little olive oil, cracked pepper, basil and oregano. Make deep cuts into the lemons and squeeze juice over the chicken, then stuff the cavity with the lemons. The juice will slowly flavour the chicken from the inside as it roasts. Cover with tinfoil and roast for 45 minutes, then take it out, baste with juices and turn the temperature down to 180. Continue roasting for another hour to an hour and a half, until juices run clear. Take off the tinfoil and finish roasting to get a nice golden-brown finish. Rest for ten minutes, then carve into slices.
2. Break up the bulbs of garlic into individual cloves and put them in a smaller roasting pan with a tiny splash of olive oil. Cover with tinfoil and put in the oven with the chicken. About half an hour before serving, take them out, take off the tinfoil and pop the garlics out of their papery outer layer. Put them back into the oven - they will caramelize until chewy and almost crispy.
3. While the chicken is roasting, prepare the orzo. If you have a huge pasta pot, you can do it all in one, but we had to use our two largest saucepans at once. Boil the orzo until al dente in lots and lots of water (8 pints to 1 pound of pasta) then drain well, rinse with cold water and drain again. Put it in a large mixing bowl and stir through a tablespoon of olive oil and the pesto. Put it back in the fridge until you're almost ready to serve.
4. When you take the chicken out of the oven, add the finely-chopped red onion, red bell pepper, crumbled feta, cherry tomatoes and cashews. Stir the garlic cloves through and serve onto plates, arranging the hot slices of chicken over the top. Serve with a little parmesan sprinkled over the top if desired.
Chicken serves four, orzo serves 4-8 depending on the servings. We all had heaping serves last night and still had enough to eat a bowl each for breakfast this morning.
Dark chocolate mousse with whipped cream and berries
I always use this recipe for chocolate mousse, because it's amazingly good and very simple. As the original recipe says, raspberries go very well, but my boyfriend loves blueberries so we had them instead. For a mousse-cake type dessert, follow the amounts of chocolate and butter in parentheses.
Ingredients:
- 4 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used an entire 250g block of Whittaker's 72% cocoa dark chocolate, when I normally use half - I had forgotten that the last time I made this, it was a double batch)
- 2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter, diced (I used about 100g of butter, because when I glanced quickly at my recipe board, I saw 4.5oz instead of 1oz, but upon googling conversions, I didn't trust the entire 130g it asked for. If you like mousse-cake and despise your arteries, use this amount of butter)
- 2 tablespoons espresso or very strong coffee
- 1 cup cold heavy cream
- 3 large eggs, separated
- 1 tablespoon sugar (I used my baking sugar, which has a vanilla pod pushed into it to flavour it a little)
1. Whip the cream to soft peaks, then refrigerate.
2. Melt the butter, chocolate and espresso in the top of a double boiler over hot, not quite simmering water. Let cool until the chocolate is slightly warmer than body temperature. (I find that removing from heat, but leaving it sitting on top of the hot water keeps it to the right temperature.)
3. Whip the egg whites until foamy and beginning to hold a shape, then add the sugar and whip until soft peaks form.
4. Stir the yolks into the chocolate. Gently stir in about 1/3 of the whipped cream. Fold in half the whipped egg whites, then the remaining whites, then the remaining cream.
5. Spoon into serving dishes (I used small ramekins) and leave in the fridge to chill. The original recipe calls for at least 8 hours chilling time, but I chilled mine for about four and a half, and they were still delicious. It's best if you prepare them early, though.
6. Serve with a dab of lightly whipped cream (I leave my cream plain, because it helps cut down the richness of the mousse) and some blueberries or raspberries.
Serves 5-8, depending on serving size.