Recipe: Cajun chicken

Our family loves roasted chicken, so I try to make it in many types of ways as possible. And here is another way. It's a child friendly recipe. My children love it. Usually I serve roasted vegetables, such a carrots, parsnips and swede with roasted potatoes with it. The best part about that is that you can put the chicken at the top shelf and the vegetables with potatoes in 1 oven dish on the bottom shelf in your oven and it is all done at the same time. I put the vegetables at the bottom of the dish and the potatoes at the top, so they get some more crunch to them.

Origin: Louisiana maybe. I don't really know, but I use a cajun spice mix.

Difficulty: easy
Time: 2 hours in total from start to finish, but that is including the 1h30m in the oven, so 30 minutes real work
Serves: 6
Yield: 6 pieces 
Traditional/GAPS/SCD legal, Primal, Paleo

Equipment:

• Oven
• 1 oven dish
• 1 roemer topf or a oven dish with a lid

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken of about 2 kg
• 1 jar of cajun spice mix of Steenbergs
• 1 bunch of thyme
• celtic sea salt
• black pepper

Things to do ahead:
1 day ahead - defreeze chicken
1 hour ahead - soak your roemer topf and take your chicken out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas4
• Put your chicken in the roemer topf.
• Cut your lemon in half and cut one half again. The other half you squeeze out over your chicken. The other 2 you squeeze out into the cavity and put the squeezed lemons inside.
• Put the part of the thyme inside and part under your chicken.
• Spread about 2 tablespoons of cajun spice mix over your chicken on all sides. Massage it in well.
• Close the lid of your roemer topf.
• Put your roemer topf into the oven for 1 hour.
• After the hour take the lid off your roemer topf. Put up the heat to 220C/430F/Gas7. Pour the cooking juices as well as you can over the chicken.
• Leave the chicken in for another 20 to 30 hours. Depending on how heavy your chicken has been. When it's somewhat under 2 kilos 20 minutes is usually enough. When it is over 2 kilos 30 minutes is often necessary.
• Make sure your chicken is cooked well by checking whether the juices run clear.
• Take your chicken out of the oven, put the lid back on the roemertopf and leave it standing for 30 minutes to an hour to rest.
• Take the bones out of the chicken and let the chicken absorb the juices a bit.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Whole chicken shawarma from the slow cooker

In the slow cooker, adding the rub

Finished cooking, just put it on a plate.

Here is another family favourite. When we lived in The Netherlands we sometimes got Shawarma from the Shawarma take-away. In The Netherlands it is actually written differently: Shoarma. Either way, all of us loved it. Frequently we would get it with mushrooms and peppers added or things like that. There were quite some varieties possible in most of the take-aways. But since we moved the first time to the UK we haven't had it much anymore. When we lived in The Netherlands the last time somehow in the area where we lived then there were mainly döner take-aways there. So we hadn't had it in many years. So when I read about it again a few years ago I realised how long it had been ago since we had it and how initially we had all craved it and the kids had asked about it. At some point they asked me to make it myself. But I couldn't see myself buy one of these upright grills or how to actually make it. It looked very difficult from the way they made it in the take-aways. So I had forgotten about it altogether for years. Until a few years ago when I read about it. At that point it was described on how to make it as a roast in the oven. Of course that worked. But it didn't taste as great as I remembered it. So I started tweaking the recipe and read up on other sites about it and asked friends from the Middle East how they made this type of food. So slowly but carefully I ended up getting it better and better. But then I got lazy and found it too much effort to make a roast in the oven. I started reading a bit more and looked up whether I could make it in the slow cooker. I found that some had done it with good results. So I had to try of course. The first time was right away a great success. The whole house smelled wonderful and everyone was more than ready for dinner by dinner time, they had been smelling it all day long LOL. Since I have made it quite regularly and because we love it so much I felt I should share it with you. We usually eat it with pita breads, garlic sauce, lettuce, onions, tomatoes and cucumber. Not everyone eat all with it. I love the raw onions, my kids not so much :-)

Origin: Middle east

Just before eating

Difficulty: easy
Time: 8 hours
Serves: 6 
Traditional/GAPS/SCD legal, Primal

Equipment:

• Slow cooker

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken
• 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
• 2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp allspice
• 3/4 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• Pinch of cayenne
• Salt and black pepper
• 3 tbsp yoghurt
• juice of 1 lemon
• butter, chicken fat or such

Things to do ahead:
2 days ahead - thaw chicken in fridge
1 day ahead - start sourdough pita breads
1 day ahead - make garlic sauce

Directions:

• Grease the slow cooker with butter, chicken fat or such.
• Make a nice rub with all the spices, yoghurt and lemon juice. 
• After mixing it well, rub it all over the chicken, which you could cut in bits if you prefer. I usually keep it whole. 
• Put the chicken in the slow cooker and turn in on low for 8 hours. or 4 hours on high.

Possible substitutions:
dairy - coconut
butter - coconut, tallow, etc.

Ready to dig in

Fu yung hai

Here comes another family favourite. This time the recipe originated in China. I can't tell how close to the original this is though. In the deep dark past we would sometimes get some Chinese food from a Chinese take-away, back in the day when we still lived in The Netherlands. I was never a big fan of Chinese take-away as I never liked the oily flavour of most things. Though there was the odd Chinese restaurant that was really good. Usually those were serving foods from a particular ethnicity, such as Mongolian, which is really great food.

Often we would have Fu yung hai with our take-away. It was one of the dishes that was tasty. But as I learned more and more about healthy foods, I started wanting better versions of it. At first I tried to make it with a supermarket packet. It didn't do it for me, so I started experimenting with making it from scratch. The below is the result. Mind you I don't make it exactly the same every time. I still experiment with food, sometimes I do put grated carrots in there, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I put sweet pointy pepper in there, sometimes I don't. I don't really do quantities very well. I just do something, so you can totally divert from the quantities I have given here, those are what I used today, any other time it will likely be different. This recipe is flexible :-)

 The noodles

The mix of chicken, vegetables and eggs

The sweet and sour sauce

All of it together on a plate.

Origin:China

Difficulty: easy

Time: 45 minutes

Serves: 6

Traditional, Paleo*

Equipment:

• pans
• kitchen utensils.

Ingredients:

• 500 grams of chicken (pasture raised)
• 4 grated organic carrots
• 2 sliced organic sweet pointy pepper
• 2 large organic onions, in half rings
• 500 grams sliced organic mushrooms
• fish sauce
• shoyu
• ginger powder
• 1 organic garlic clove
• coconut oil
• 10 eggs
• 500 grams (home made) egg noodles or 500 grams courgette noodles (grated on the largest setting of the kitchen machine)
• raw honey
• raw apple cider vinegar
• organic tomato paste
• salt and pepper to taste

Things to do ahead:

• 1 day ahead: make the egg noodles
• 1 day ahead (optional): cut meat and vegetables
  
  

Directions:

• Cut the chicken in cubes, cut the vegetables.
• Put coconut oil in the pan, fry the chicken.
• Add the vegetables
• Add the spices, fish sauce and shoyu
• When all is nicely fried, add the eggs and let them cook until firm.
• During the above cook up the noodles until they are soft.
• For the sweet and sour sauce mix honey, apple cider vinegar and tomato paste until you have the taste you like.
• Put it on a plate and yum!

Enjoy!

* To make this a Paleo dish, substitute the egg noodles with courgette noodles.
It is possible to make this recipe GAPS legal. Omit the Shoyu and substitute the egg noodles with courgette noodles.

Thai cashew chicken.

This dish is one of the favourites of my kids. It is also super easy and quick to make. We hardly ever have left-overs of this one, which is unfortunate for me as I love taking it to work the next day for lunch.

Finding a way to make this dish started many years ago.
When we lived in The Netherlands there were these boxes, with which you could make certain ethnic dishes. Thai cashew chicken was one of them. So once in a while we used it. After we moved to the UK in 2005 and I learned about traditional cooking, I learned that some of the ingredients in the boxes had not been so wonderful. So, because I couldn't get it that easily anyway anymore and because it didn't have such great ingredients I started searching on how to traditionally make this myself.

I searched the internet and found many recipes which were called Thai cashew chicken. But most didn't really have great ingredients and others didn't taste so well. So I started experimenting. And this is the result of my experiments.

So I will share it here with you in hopes that you will like it just as much as we do. 

Enjoy!

Soaked rice, ready for eating, still in the haybox, nice and warm.

The chicken sauce

Here it is on a plate

Origin: Thailand

Difficulty: easy

Time: 30 minutes

Serves: 6

Traditional/GAPS/SCD legal, Primal, Paleo, Vegetarian, etc.

Equipment:

• hay box (optional)
• 2 pans
• spatula

Ingredients:

• 600 grams (or more) pasture raised or organic chicken, cubed
• coconut oil
• 2 hands full of crispy cashew nuts
• organic whole grain rice
• a bunch of organic spring onions
• 2 tablespoons of rubbish free thai fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons of rubbish free oyster sauce.
• 2 cups of home made chicken broth
• organic corn starch for thickening (optional)

Things to do ahead:

• 3 days ahead, soak organic cashew nuts in salty water for 6 hours and dehydrate
• 1 day ahead, make chicken broth
• the evening before, soak the rice overnight in an acidic medium
• the morning before, cook rice for 20 minutes and put for the rest of the day in the haybox, alternatively cook it a few hours before

Directions:

• Make the crispy nuts, broth and rice ahead of time, as described above
• Cut the chicken in cubes
• Fry the chicken in the coconut oil, add the fish sauce and oyster sauce
• Clean and cut the spring onions
• Once the chicken is fried well, add the spring onions and the cashew nuts
• Add the broth
• Optionally thicken the sauce with the corn starch. Often enough I don't thicken as the rice soaks up the sauce well enough. In the pictures above I haven't thickened the sauce as I had not motivation to do so :-)

Substitutions

It is not easy to get rubbish free oyster sauce. In case you can't find it, use shoyu or tamari, or just omit altogether and add a bit more fish sauce. With shoyu and tamari it will taste slightly different, but it is still equally tasty.