Chilli chicken with cavolo nero

Spotting cavolo nero in our local ASDA made me stop and squeak with delight, much to the bemusement of my hubbie and my son who had not tried it before.  Let me explain: cavolo nero is a brassica, so is related to cabbages, Brussels sprouts, curly kale, etc...  but is so much nicer! It originates from Tuscany in Italy, hence it is sometimes known as Italian kale, and has high levels of iron and vitamins A-C so is good for you as well.

The dark green of cavolo nero contrasts well with the paler greens of  celery, scallions, and flat-leaf parsley

Unlike many other members of the brassica family it isn't odiferous (smelly) when cooked - in other words you do not get the horrible school-dinner / wet-knicker pong of cooked cabbage hanging around for days after you've cooked it. And that has to be a good thing!

In addition cavolo nero has a great dark green - sometimes almost black - colour when raw and goes a fabulous bright green when cooked, unlike so many other greens that fade on cooking, plus it has a super wrinkly crinkly texture that it keeps, as long as you do not overcook it!

So there I was clutching my £1 bag of cavolo nero to my bosom and planning how to use it. The bag supplied enough for use in four different meal recipes, so proved great value too, and the first idea I came up with was the recipe I'm showing below:

Chilli chicken with cavolo nero (serves 4)

Chilli chicken with cavolo nero

Ingredients:

• 300g chilli chicken breast strips - you can leave them as strips or cut strips into smaller pieces if preferred.

Note: We used a ready marinaded pack from Booth's but you can use any other chicken breast, cut into strips and marinaded in a chilli sauce for a few hours if you prefer, or aren't near anywhere that sells it ready done. It probably works out much cheaper and tastes just as good! 

• 1 large leek, finely sliced
• ½ a long sweet mild red pepper (Anaheim / Long Red Macaroni type pepper)
• handful of cavolo nero leaves, cut into pieces (Tip: use kitchen scissors rather than a knife, it's easier!)
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• handful of mushrooms sliced  (chestnut ones are best for flavour but white ones work too) 
• 1 small red chilli (bird's eye or similar heat level) deseeded and finely chopped
• 1 stick celery finely sliced
• 1 tablespoon dried mixed herbs (any generic mixed herbs will be fine)
• 1 green OXO
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• ½ pint boiling water
• olive oil for cooking

Method:

Dissolve veg stock cube in boiling water and add herbs, leave to stand and infuse whilst you do the next step.

Stir fry the chicken and the garlic in hot olive oil in large frying pan or wok until outside of all chicken turns white (it won't be cooked through but that doesn't matter yet). Add a little of the stock if it looks like sticking, the marinade will wash off the chicken but that doesn't matter as it helps make the sauce.  Remove from heat and set aside once sealed. 

(Note: As we made this recipe using two woks we left the chicken in the first wok and used the second wok for the next step, but you can transfer the sealed chicken / garlic mix to a big bowl if you have only one pan to cook with.)

Chilli chicken, garlic and stock, set aside to rest the chicken whilst cooking the vegetables

Into the frying pan / wok add a little more olive oil and heat up, then add leeks, red pepper, chilli and celery, and stir fry for around 2-3 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook for a further 2 minutes, adding as much of the stock as is needed to prevent sticking. 

Leeks, red pepper, chilli, celery, mushrooms stir fried

Transfer all to the same dish / pan as the previously cooked chicken / garlic mix, add remainder of stock and mix, then leave to stand.

Chicken and vegetables and stock added,  set aside

In the frying pan / wok add a little more olive oil and stir fry the cavolo nero for 1 minute.  Set aside. 

Cavolo nero being stir fried

Add the chicken / veg / stock back on to the heat for 3-4 minutes to ensure chicken is cooked through, then add the cavolo nero into the mix and stir. 

Everything is now in the pan and being heated through thoroughly before serving 

That look pretty hot - just look at the steam rising!

Serve with egg noodles, rice noodles, or rice, as preferred (we did it with egg noodles.)

Three hearty portions ready for eating!  Yum!!!

This made enough for four people (but as there is only three of us there was enough in the pan for someone later!)

No need bread!

"What do you mean, no need bread? Of course we need bread!" was our response to this. It soon became apparent that it wasn't no need, but was in fact no-knead, bread!

A friend over on Facebook was explaining that her hubbie had become smitten with bread-making after finding the no-knead bread method, so we decided we had to check this out for ourselves. Armed with the link we watched the video tutorial on TimesVideo and then wrote out the basic recipe and headed for the kitchen... the recipe comes from Jim Lahey at the Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan (USA) and uses just flour, water, yeast and salt... and no kneading!

Here is the basic recipe we used:

3 cups plain flour (not strong or bread flour, just normal plain flour)
¼ teaspoon of dried yeast (ours is The Pantry own brand from ALDI)
1¼ teaspoons salt
1½ cups tepid water

Put the flour, yeast and salt in large bowl, mix together. Make a well in the centre of the dry mix, pour in the water, mix the dry stuff into the water until it makes a dough. In the video Jim used his hands for this, but we found it was a claggy sticky process, so experimented a bit and found a flat bladed dinner knife worked best as a mixing tool.  It only took a minute or two to mix, so not too onerous.

Once the dough was well mixed, we put the bowl into a warm spot - we set ours on a chair next to the radiator - with a towel wrapped round the bowl, and a clean tea towel over the top, then to keep in the heat we spread 3 or 4 more thick hand towels over the top of the bowl so the top and sides were well-covered.

We left the covered bowl in its warm spot for around 14 hours, then cautiously lifted the covers and peered inside. The dough was beautifully bigger! At least twice the size, heading for three times the size of the original dough.

Next we pre-heated the baking tin. We used a very heavy 10" diameter Le Creuset casserole pan with lid, a gentle wipe round the inside of the pan with a bit of olive oil on some kitchen roll just to prevent sticking, then we popped the pan (without its lid) into the oven and let it heat up. The oven was on maximum - the video says 500F degrees, but ours only goes to Gas Mark 8 which is around 450F degrees but what the heck! We left the pan to heat up for around 15 minutes.

Meanwhile the dough was lifted from the bowl and put onto a floured board and made into a ball shape, then flattened a bit, folded over, dusted with flour, turned upside down and dusted again with flour, then dropped into the pre-heated oven pan, and the lid popped on.

Back into the oven it went, still on full, for around 55 minutes. In fact we should have lifted the lid after about 30 minutes and finished it off open topped, but we forgot to do that! It obviously didn't do any harm, as when we lifted the pan from the oven and removed its lid, the bread looked amazing!

After letting it cool enough so the heat didn't fog the camera lens, we took photos, and then sampled it. What wonderful bread! It would be fab with home-made soup, but very enjoyable as I had it, just smeared with butter.

Our next attempt will involve a double quantity, a much larger baking pan, and possibly sun-dried tomatoes and olives... watch this space!

 Edited to add for clarity: Gas Mark 8 equates to 450 degrees Fahrenheit or 230 degrees Celsius