Asian Style Roast Dinner

The other day I bought about a million (that may be a slight exaggeration) snow peas from Costco, god only knows why. Ever since I have been trying to figure out what you can make with lots of snow peas to use them all up. We had stir fry, we had feta mint pasta and still there were heaps of snow peas left! I came across a Stephanie Alexander recipe that had snow peas in a spicy paste. This combined with my hankering for a roast dinner gave me the idea to cook an Asian stye roast dinner. I decided to do roast chicken, with the snow peas and beans dish plus some pak choy and rice. It is absolutely delicious and makes plenty of food, you could probably feed four people with these quantities. I am sure if you wanted to feed more people you could roast a whole entire chicken, but for the two of us I just used chicken breasts. Here is my recipe:

Ingredients ~
Chicken:
  • 2 chicken breasts
  • 2 tsp tamarind paste
  • 2 tsp honey
  • 1 lime
  • handful of coriander
  • canola oil
Spice Paste:
  • 1/4 onion
  • 1/2 long red chilli
  • 1 large tomato
  • 1-2cm piece ginger
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tbsp dark brown sugar
  • handful of coriander (including stems)
  • juice of half a lemon
  • canola oil
  • 3 handfuls snow peas, topped and tailed
  • 1 tin 4 bean mix, rinsed
  • 2 bunches pak choy
  • cooked white rice
To Cook ~
  • Preheat the oven to 190 degrees.
  • Cut 4 or 5 diagonal slits on one side of each of the chicken breasts. Smear one tsp of tamarind paste onto each piece of meat.
  • Heat some oil up in a griddle pan. When the oil is hot put the chicken in and cook for about 30 seconds on each side, just to seal it. Make sure each surface has been sealed and then place in an oven dish.
  • Drizzle the honey over the chicken and squeeze the juice of half the lime in as well. Chop the other half of the lime into quarters and add to the oven dish. Sprinkle over the coriander and put in the oven. Bake for about 30mins of until when cut open the juices run clear. 
  • Whilst the chicken is baking move on to the spice mix. Blitz the onion, chilli, ginger, coriander and garlic with a stick blender. Then add the tomato and blitz again until it forms a paste. 
  • Fry the paste in a little canola oil in a fry pan until it has dried out a little. Then add the fish sauce, sugar and lemon. Fry until it has gotten darker in colour. It makes about a quarter of a cup. And you can store it in the fridge for a month (according to Stephanie Alexander - I haven't actually tried doing this yet).
  • Steam the snow peas and pak choy.
  • mix the snow peas with the bean mix and about 1 tbsp of the spice mix (add more or less to taste).
  • Serve the chicken on a bed of rice and spoon some of the juices from the pan over the top.
  • Serve the pak choy with some of the spice mix spooned over the top. 
  • Enjoy :) 

Yummy final product
spice paste cooking
aromatic roast chicken
snow pea salad



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