It’s Recipe Redux time again and I love this month’s challenge: A trend in every pot. The aim is to take inspiration from 2013 food trends and design a meal that cooks in one pot. Don’t you just love one pot meals? And what perfect timing for Scoop Nutrition? Not only have we posted about hot food and nutrition trends already here, I’m also off on a week’s camping holiday as this post is published. We’ll be celebrating Australia Day and my Mother’s 70th birthday and cooking by the campfire. Check out more holiday eatcards on instagram. But here’s one I prepared a little earlier….
Campfire brick chicken
From the fire pit was definitely a big trend in 2012 and looks like staying with us this year, especially with all the paleo people around town. I love this simple way of taking a chicken, cutting out the back bone to butterfly, marinading with lemon yogurty yumminess and cooking on the grill, with a weight of a brick or large river stone when camping. We par cooked our chicken while our pot was bubbling along and then added it in to finish off as a braise.
Make mine native
Another hot trend this coming year is the use of more foraging and native or wild foods going mainstream. Our Indigenous Australians have been experts in bush foods for hundreds of thousands of years, but only now are our big supermarkets stocking native ingredients like lemon myrtle. Lemon Myrtle has a delicious lemongrass-like flavour and aroma of lemon verbena, with a subtle eucalyptus background. It reminds me of the smells of hiking, or bush walking as we call it, in one of our forests, just after the rain. The leaves of this large rainforest, native tree are dried and used whole or more commonly ground into a spice. It’s prefect for camping in the wilds when there isn’t a European lemon tree in sight to flavour match with chicken. Check out more on Lemon Myrtle and US stockists on my guest post for the fabulous Robyn Webb.
Far out farro
The trend in ancient grains isn’t letting up but roll over freekeh, as farro is the new grain on the block. We cooked up a Tuscan style soup in a Dutch Oven with farro, vegetables, chicken stock and crushed tomatoes before popping in the par cooked lemon myrtle chicken to braise on top. Serve up campfire style in enamel mugs with pull apart pieces of luscious chicken and a garnish of Greek yogurt and Aussie macadamia nuts. Grab the recipe here and check out all the pots of pleasure below. Happy Australia Day and happy 70th to my darling mum!
