Fathers Day Menu

Red Pepper Sambal Roast Chicken with Cowboy Hash & Beans

Ingredients for 4

Marinade*

2 clove garlic
2 red pepper (capsicum)
8 tablespoons sambal belacan (from a jar is fine!)
2 teaspoon paprika
2 teaspoon dried parsley

Cowboy Hash

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 sticks of celery,
2 potato, diced
9 honey tomatoes, halved
2 red pepper (capsicum), diced
8 button mushrooms, quartered
½ cup frozen green peas
2 cans baked beans
2 bay leaves

4 chicken quarters

100g Mesclun Salad

Fresh parsley, for garnish

Equipment

Oven

Roasting pan large enough to fit all the chicken without touching

Handheld blender or food processor

Make the marinade for chicken in advance, at least 4 hours or night before:

Cut red peppers in half and remove seeds and all the white bits.
Place skin side up on a baking tray and grill on the top shelf until the skin is blackened and charred, about 15-20mins.
Place the peppers (blackened skin and all) in a plastic bag and twist close to steam for 10 mins. This step makes it easy to remove the charred skin.
Remove cooled peppers from bag and peel off the skin. Don’t worry if you don’t get all the black bits but whatever you do, don’t rinse the peppers under the tap or you’ll wash all the delicious juices away!
Roughly chop grilled peppers into pieces and place in a blender/food processor with the other marinade ingredients and whatever juices have collected in the plastic bag.
Zoom it around for about 10sec until everything is blended into a nice red paste.
Rub red pepper sambal all over the chicken and leave to marinate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

1 hour before dinner:

Preheat oven to 180˚C and bring chicken out of the fridge to adjust to room temperature while you’re preparing the Cowboy Hash.
Prepare the cowboy hash by dicing the vegetables into cubes.
Heat olive oil in a frying pan, and when it’s hot add the garlic, onions, carrot and celery.
Fry until fragrant and soft, but not brown.
Add potatoes and fry until potatoes are slightly brown, about 5 mins.
Add tomatoes, mushrooms, peas and baked beans and stir to combine and season with salt & pepper to taste.
Pour the mixture into the bottom of your roasting pan and tuck in bay leaves.
Remove chicken from marinade and arrange skin side up over the Cowboy Hash. Dab leftover marinade all over the top of the chicken.
Roast for 40mins, uncovered, until skin is golden brown and chicken is cooked through.

To serve, arrange chicken onto plates. Stir the cowboy hash to mix in all the delicious chickeny juices that would have dripped in and pile a generous mound onto each plate. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the top and serve with crisp mesclun salad.

Ree’s Flower Pot Oreo Sundaes

Ingredients for 4

1 tray Sara Lee Poundcake
1 tub ice-cream in your father’s favourite flavour
1 tube Oreo cookies

Equipment

4 straws
4 small plastic flower pots
Bunch of your dad’s favourite flowers (real or artificial)

A few hours before dinner, prepare the “flower pots”:

Take ice-cream out of freezer and allow to soften at room temperature while you prepare the flower pots.
Remove pound cake from tray, and slice into approximately 1.5cm slices.
Using the base of the flowerpot as a guide, cut the pound cake into circles that are slightly larger than the base.
Drop each cakey circle into the bottom of the pot, making sure it’s firmly against the bottom. This will help stop the ice-cream from leaking through the drainage holes and away from your mouth!
Stand straws up against the flowerpot and cut to approximately ¾ of the height of the pot, or just under the top lip.
Sit the straws upright in the middle of the pound cake. This will hygienically hold the flower stems in place.
Take the softened ice cream and scoop over the pound cake, around the straw until it reaches the top of the straw. Using teaspoons will help!
Smooth the top of the ice-cream as neat as you can, and clean the edges of the pot with a paper towel if you’ve made a mess (I always make a mess!).
Put all the pots back in the freezer for the ice-cream to firm up.

After dinner:

Cut flowers to fit the flower pot.
Get your Oreo cookies out and scrape away the white frosting.
Put the cookies in a plastic bag, twist the top close and fold a kitchen towel over it.
Using a rolling pen or a bottle, gently bash the kitchen towel to crush the cookies into fine crumbs.
Using a teaspoon, spoon the cookie crumbs over the ice-cream to create the “soil”.
Insert flowers into the straw holder and spoon more crumbs over the top to hide the straw.

Serve to various ooohs and ahhhs (with warnings not to eat the flowers!).