Lovely Lavender Chicken

Summertime, and the living is easy.....


My vegetable garden is flourishing, my berries are fruiting, and my lavender is purpling prolifically

I grow a lot of culinary flowers, they're so lovely for adding colour, flavour and beauty to dishes. Nasturtiums, violets, carnation pinks, marigolds, roses, lavender and a whole heap of herb flowers too. My lavender is a specialised culinary cultivar that is very sweet and fragrant, with less of the harsh camphor sort of taste that is common in other varieties, so making mine extra yummy indeed.

A couple of months ago I was watching Rachael Khoo in her cooking show 'The Little Paris Kitchen' when she whipped up an amazing Lavender Chicken. Although I've used lavender a lot in sweets before and in Herbes de Provence with lamb dishes, at first I wasn't sure how it would work with chicken. Then I considered how similar some of the underlying flavour notes were between lavender and rosemary, and it all made sense.

I've been waiting and waiting for my flowers to bloom, and at last it all came together. I also used some Lavender honey that I picked up, but feel free to use whatever one you have on hand. I did cut the oil down from 4 tablespoons to 2, and used half the lemon instead of a whole one as I found it a bit overwhelming. The result was a very lovely dish that hit all the right savoury notes with the honey adding just enough sweetness to boost the floral fragrance of the lavender without it tasting like Nanna's sock drawer



Rachael Khoo's Lavender Chicken from The Little Paris Kitchen

6-10 Chicken thigh cutlets/pieces
4 tab Lavender Honey/plain Honey
2 tab Olive Oil
2 tab dried culinary Lavender buds
juice and rind of half a Lemon
few sprigs of Thyme
Salt



Lightly crush the lavender a little to help release the essential oils and increase the flavour. You can use a mortar and pestle if you have one or roll over them a couple of times with a rolling pin instead

 Don't forget to zest BEFORE you juice the lemon :)

Pop the oil, honey, juice, zest, thyme, and lavender all in together to create the marinade

I like to slash the chicken cutlets to the bone to really let the flavours penetrate and to soak up the yumminess

The longer you leave the marinade, the more flavour will infuse

Rub the chicken well with the marinade then leave for at least an hour but overnight would be fine. Turn the pieces around from time to time to coat evenly

Sprinkle with salt, then pop into a 200*C oven for about 45 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. You might need to check it from time to time and even cover it loosely with foil if the honey starts to burn a little. I found that mine was caught just in time, although the photo makes it look a lot darker than it really was!

I served my fragrantly flavoursome chicken up with some tiny, steamed new potatoes and some butter beans with fresh zucchini straws. Don't forget a drizzle of the pan juices to finish it off and tie all the flavours together- yummo!

So Dear Readers, what's your favourite flower, and have you eaten lavender in cooking before?

 

Spring Violets

Hello my Lovelies- I'm back!

I missed you, I really, truly did, but I'm back now Nearly-Good-As-New and ready to get into the blogging groove.
It was a bit hectic there for a while with medical bits and pieces, with the worse part being that while I was in the Operating Room having surgery, BigJ was down in the Emergency Room with a ruptured disc in his back. The hospital certainly got a double whammy from our family that day! It's just as well that we've got such wonderful girls as MiddleC and littlej did a great job helping us, and littlej didn't even mind staying home from school to play Nurse for a while :)
Thank you all for your kind thoughts and well wishes, especially Lorraine, Celia, Charlie, and Tania who cheered me up so much and made my day with their emails and phone calls xox



Anyway, today's recipe is Violet Meringue

It's still Spring, and despite the bizarre Mid-Summer temperatures hitting so early, I have had some gorgeous little violets shyly peeping through the greenery in my kitchen garden. I've mentioned before that I just love floral flavours and violet is one that is so soft and subtle that it matches well with the light, billowy clouds of meringue that remind me of Spring skies and warm weather

Basic Meringue

My basic rule of thumb recipe for meringues, is for every 1 Egg White to use 1/4 cup of Castor Sugar
I also add a tiny splash of white vinegar for acid to strengthen the protein and a good pinch of gf cornflour to prevent any weeping- just in case there are a few stray sugar crystals

You can also add a small amount of liquid flavouring- for this 2 egg white quantity I used 1 tablespoon, and some colour as well. Just make sure that they aren't oil based or the mixture won't whip. (The oil based essence you can see here, I added carefully after beating and quickly marbled through just before baking)
I also used some gorgeous candied violets to add extra yumminess and a bit of texture on top

Make sure your egg whites are nice and clean without any specks of yolk, or they won't whisk. Your bowl and beaters need to be spotless too

Whisk the whites until they froth, then add in the sugar, vinegar and cornflour

Then beat until thick, white and glossy

Add in your violet flavouring syrup and mix through

I mixed the paste colour and violet oil together in a little bowl so it would distribute well

Placed some on the mixture

Then folded it through for a marbled effect

Dollop nice, generous piles of the mixture on baking sheets

Sprinkle with candied violets

Then bake in a 120*C oven for half an hour until the outside is nice and crispy, then turn the oven off and let them cool down inside it to dry out without humidity

I know the photos are a bit different, but I started this post pre-op and have finished it post-op, so a new batch of yummies were required. I should have been clever enough to check my first photos to make them match...but I wasn't :( oops!

Nice and crispy on the outside, with a softer, fluffy middle tasting so beautifully of violets and Spring time- Yummo

So Dear Readers, what's your favourite taste of Spring and who looks after you when you're sick?