Spicy Chicken Drumsticks

David and I were out food shopping a few days ago in Morrisons when I spotted an excellent deal in the fridge section. They had an offer on for ten chicken drumsticks/legs for just £2.16. I can be a bit of a 'food snob' at times, or at least that's what my mother calls me. I like to prepare nutritious home cooked meals for my family using fresh ingredients. This can sometimes make my shopping bill quite expensive. From week to week I notice that prices for fresh meat are rising, even if it's only by a few pence it all still adds up, so when I saw this bargain today I snapped it up!

Chicken is a wonderful meat because it can be used in so many different dishes, from a cooked dinner, to Mexican wraps to an Italian pasta dish. Having recently learned to make a Chinese curry from scratch, I decided to utilise my new culinary skills and make Chinese spiced chicken with vegetable rice and boiled vegetables. 

I made a marinade for the chicken by combining the following ingredients in a large bowl:

• About 6tbsp of olive oil (I coated the bottom of the mixing bowl. You need to make sure that you have enough so the mixture is wet enough to coat the chicken, but not so wet that the meat is drowning in oil). 
• 1 tbsp of curry powder. 
• 1 tbsp of paprika. 
• 1 tbsp of mixed herbs. 
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce. 
• 1 tbsp of tomato purée. 
• 1 tsp of tumeric. 
• 1 tsp of garlic purée. 
• Generous amounts of salt and pepper. 

Although I understand that mixed herbs, garlic purée and tomato purée are not commonly used ingredients in Chinese cooking (to my knowledge) they help to create a richer, rounder flavour. You can ,of course, adjust the above quantities according to your own taste.  

Once you have made your marinade mixture, add between eight and ten chicken legs to the bowl and mix everything about with a sturdy mixing spoon until the chicken is evenly coated. Leave in the mixture for up to four hours for all those lovely favours and scents to penetrate the skin and for the chicken to reach room temperature, and then cook in the oven on Gas Mark 6 or 200c for between 30 and 40 minutes or until the skin is crisp and the meat itself is white. Many people will tell you to stab the meat and check the knife. If the juices run clear the meat is meant to be cooked. For some reason I have never trusted this method - I think it's just paranoia, so if you (like me) want to be extra safe, then just take a knife and cut some of the chicken away from the bone. Check to make sure the meat is white, and if in doubt return to the oven for a further ten minutes.  

Serve with rice, chips, vegetables or whatever you fancy. Eat them on their own if you like! If serving to young children you might want to remove the skin. Although the flavour is not overly hot (in fact it's quite mild) it might be a surprise to little mouths. For an additional cooling effect serve with savoury mint yoghurt. 

Blackberry Picking and Blackberry Cooking

It is typical in Wales, that in September when the kids go back to school, after a summer of rain, that the weather will be beautiful. Yesterday was a lovely sunny day, and David had the day off work, so we all went black berry picking. This is the time of year that the blackberries start to ripen, and we were lucky enough to find some really plump ones, just about to fall from their branches.

It is also typical in Wales, after picking blackberries, to make a blackberry tart, and this was something I delighted in as a child. I and my friends would roam around the neighbourhood like lost boys collecting tubs full of blackberries, then we would take them home, our fingers purple with their juices and our mothers would make blackberry tarts. My mother's fore has never been cooking, and she would roll out two sheets of pastry, throw some berries in the middle and call it a blackberry pie. It was always sour and full of pips and hard bits... But I loved it, and with a lashing of evaporated or 'ideal' milk, Mammy's blackberry tart always went down a treat. 

I am no longer a child however, and since I have a child of my own now, I wanted to be the blackberry-baker. 

Before doing anything with your blackberries you should always give them a nice long soak (at least 1-2 hours) in cold water, salt an sugar, to bring out and kill any bugs. 

I decided to go down the less traditional route and I made a Blackberry cheesecake and some little blackberry tartlets. Yum! 

My cheesecake didn't turn out just as I'd hoped, I adapted recipe I found online for strawberry cheesecake (Google simple cheesecake recipe) and I didn't use a scale to weight my ingredients so the consistency was a bit off on the biscuit base, and the cream-cheese filling.

Here is the finished product! 

My tartlets however turned out great! I used short crust pastry, baked in the oven until golden brown and hard, and filled it with a blackberry filling made by melting butter in a pan, adding blackberries, flour and icing sugar, then I topped them with blackberries and icing sugar. 

The perfect way to end summer and welcome winter!