Cajun Chicken Ma Stayl

Episode 1

‘Cajun Chicken’ with creamy potato bake, Cabbage, Apple and Zucchini Salad and Mango Salsa

I have never been the greatest chef in the kitchen but I do enjoy cooking. Take away the cleaning up and I believe cooking can be the most enjoyable hobby. So today I wanted something different. I thought what I can cook that my family has not eaten. I began to search chicken casserole dishes and nothing jumped out at me. Then I saw this lovely Cajun chicken recipe by Jamie Oliver. I thought why not try this. The only problem I had with the recipe is that he encouraged using his packet ingredients and I don’t particularly like doing that.

3 months ago I got inspired and started my own vegetable patch. In my vegetable patch I began by growing lettuce and zucchini. 3 months later I have tripled the size of my vegetable patch. I now grow; cucumber, tomatoes, capsicum, chilli’s, watermelon, corn, rockmelon, pumpkin, eggplant, carrots and a range of different herbs. I like to use my own produce when cooking so a lot of my recipes are based upon these.

 I started by making my salad – so I wasn’t stressed when the family arrived home.

Ingredients:

¼ red cabbage
1 Zucchini
2 carrots
1 cucumber
1 apple
1 lime
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons Greek yoghurt
Fresh coriander leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

 

Method

Grate the cabbage, zucchini and carrots. Place them into a large bowl.

Dice the cucumber and slice the apple into fine parts.

Mix all ingredients together.

In a separate bowl mix yoghurt, oil and lime together. Add the coriander, salt and pepper. Poor over salad and place the salad bowl into the fridge.

I next prepare the potato bake (note this is optional)

Ingredients:

4 potatoes
1 garlic clove
100ml cream
1 teaspoon nutmeg
3 rashers of bacon (optional)
Grated cheese

 

Method

Peel and slice potatoes.

Place potatoes in a heatproof dish.

Dice bacon and sprinkle over potatoes. Finely cut the garlic and sprinkle over potatoes.

Pour cream over potato dish.

Sprinkle the grated cheese covering the top.

Finely shake the nutmeg over the cheese.

Place the dish in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 1 hour.

 

I then prepared the mango salsa. This is extremely easy.

Ingredients

1 mango
1 avocado
1 capsicum
2 tablespoons of lime juice
1 tablespoon of fresh mint

 

 

 

 

 

 

Method

Dice mango, avocado and capsicum and put into a bowl. Mix ingredients. Add lime juice and fresh mint. Mix. Place in fridge until chicken is ready.

Cajun Chicken (again extremely easy)

Ingredients

Enough chicken thighs or breasts to serve party size. I used 8
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoons grounded pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 red chilli finely diced
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

 

 

Method

Combine all ingredients but the chicken into a bowl and mix well.

Add chicken and coat with the mixture.

Remove and let it marinate for 20 minutes (longer is fine also).

Heat a pan over medium to hot heat. Reduce heat to medium.

Cook chicken skin side down first for 4-5 minutes. Turn over and cook skin side for 6 minutes.

Transfer to plate.

You are now ready to eat!

So that is a lot of recipes in one. I wouldn’t say you need to do all recipes for a family dinner I would say you could do one of the salads with just the chicken. We did have some left overs.

So what was the shopping bill like? Let me be honest. I had most of the ingredients. So my shopping wasn’t too bad. I bought the following:

-          Onion powder

-          Mango

-          Avocado

-          Chicken

-          Cabbage

All of this came to the grand total of $17.

 

What did the family rate it?
 

Family member one: 7/10

Family member two: 8/10

Family member three: 7/10

Family member four: 9/10

I rated the dinner 8/10.

 

 

What was the family’s favourite? The mango salsa was a really winner!