Paulchens FoodBlog?!

Last Wednesday lovely Ilva announced the new ingredients for this months Paper Chef challenge: “quail, cabbage and lime are the ingredients and the theme is….July.”

When I first read this I cringed. Not only that I am not a huge fan of quail you just can’t get it here easily. We do not have special poultries who sell them not will you ever see them in our common supermarket. They only chance might be the Naschmarkt, where you get nearly everything your heart desires in terms of food… and I knew there would be no way to get there and cook something ’till Tuesday evening with Sweetheart’s Birthday and the weekend ahead.

So I am really sorry but I had to substitute the cute little quail with cute little chicken wings because all chicken I saw where HUGE compared to quails *sigh* I am sorry!  Other than that I used all of the ingredients given.

Ilva said: “…start thinking and get going!” – so I put on my thinking cap and gave the ingredients a second thought:

• Quail: well, we discussed that above. need substitute – chicken wings must do.
• Cabbage: I love cabbage. Could eat it year round and in every imaginable combination with other food. But with temperatures high up in their 30ies and rising I needed to find a light, summery use… a light coleslaw will do.  Served chilled it is perfect for a summer dinner!
• Lime: there is always lime in this kitchen. One of my most loved ingredients. would be perfect to spice up this coleslaw and the chicken wings.
• theme July: “ingredient that is typical where you live in July” – needed one or two extra rounds of thinking, but then everything cried “apricot” to me ’cause this is THE typical thing in July in Wachau where I and the famous “Wachauer Marille” (more on that subject in my P2P assignment post coming soon) come from.

Apricot-Lime glazed Chicken Wings

3 chicken wings

3 tablespoons apricot jam or 2 fresh apricots mushed

4-5 small twigs of orange thyme

Hungarian smoked paprika to taste

juice of 1 lime

salt, pepper

1. Wash the chicken wings gently under running water and tap them dry with a kitchen towel.
2. In a small bowl mix together the apricot jam, lime juice and spices.
3. Preheat your oven to 200°C with grill turned on.
4. On a baking tray rub some oil on a piece of aluminium foil, place thyme on top.
5. Place chicken wings upside down on thyme. Glaze with the apricot mixture. Bake for about 10-15 minutes until nicely brown.
6. Turn them upside down again and glaze with remaining apricot mixture. Bake for another 10-1 5 minutes. make sure not to burn them, the sugar will caramelize and if you do not watch closely they will be as black as a piece of coal on no time. 

Meanwhile prepare the coleslaw:

Coleslaw

adapted from Jamie Oliver  in Cooking with Jamie

1/2  small cabbage, thinly sliced
4 medium sized carrots, thinly sliced
1 apple, cored and thinly sliced
1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
3-4 tablespoons greek yoghurt
1 heaped teaspoon English mustard
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Combine all the ingredients in a salad bowl.
2. Have a taste and add seasoning as needed.
3. Note:  I omited the mayonnaise and used greek yoghurt instead. Does not harm in any way and tastes way better to my mind. Also I did not use as much parsley as the recipe wants me to ’cause I found it would dominate the delicate taste of the raw cabbage and carrots too much.
   If I have the time I also like to give the cabbage an extra time after slicing with just a little bit of salt and a few spritzer lime juice – makes it a bit more tender and less crunchy.  

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I am sure this method will be lovely with quail too ’cause it add subtle sourness through the lime and a nice fruity component through the apricot which complements the delicate taste of quails without outplaying it totally.

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If you are not familiar with the concept of Paper Chef it’s quite easy to explain:

Paper Chef follows the thought of TV competitions like Iron Chef or Ready, Steady Cook (the German version was called Kochduell) where chefs had to cook with a rather unusual combination of ingredients. Well this is what Paper Chef does as well.

4 ingredients will be announced at the fist whole weekend of the month and you have 7 days to cook something from it, snap a nice pic and write up your blog post. Submit your blog post to paperchef AT gmail DOT com. That’s it!

If you still need more information please continue to read here.

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