The restaurant is full tonight and I’m grabbing a quick bite before they chain me to the oven. In line with my new and improved eating habits, designed to make me the thinnest (and meanest) chef in town, I’m having chicken and vegetables. Now that’s not a punishment at all, if you know how to cook the stuff. The chicken I’m using is an organic bird, marinated in Guinness for goodness. That simply because it’s something that’s on the menu anyway, so I wasn’t going to find an un-marinated bird in the chiller. Doing it at home, you might just rub the old chicken with a little lemon peel, olive oil and any chopped herb you may have floating around and leave that to infuse for a little while. Like an hour or five.
Now take a nice, healthy zucchini, or a courgette, if you can’t find a zucchini, preferably a green one. Wash it, cut it in quarters lengthwise, cut out the seedy middle and cut each quarter into three (again lengthwise) and then cut into reasonably even batonnets (meaning sticks in French). Now don’t be anal about equal size, just get it roughly right and you’ll be fine.
The next step is a really difficult one: Find a nice, red, ripe and tasty tomato. Make it a big one. Start by checking out the tomatoes on the vine. I suggest you invest about five ringgit per tomato. Anything less and you’ll probably end up with a pulpy, green, tasteless piece of rubbish disguised as a tomato. Even at that price you’re not immune from imposters, so I suggest biting into it before buying the thing. Take home good tomato, wash, seed and cut into strips (how you do that is up to you).
Next step: Put your chicken into a frying pan, or slap it on the grill if you have a grill and cook until almost done, then leave to rest while doing the following:
Heat olive oil in pan, add a very generous amount of chopped garlic and a little chopped shallot and fry until the garlic turns just lightly brown. Add zucchini bits and toss about in the pan for 30 secs. Salt very generously, grind a fair amount of black pepper over it and keep tossing the things about every now and again. The cooking of a zucchini takes longer than you think, so don’t undercook, there’s hardly anything more off putting than the squeegee sound undercooked zucchini makes when you bite into it. Tip: When the thing starts to look translucent on the flesh side, it still has a good amount of crunch, so that’s when you add: The Tomato!
Now don’t cook the life out of the tomato, just heat it through and warm it up and make it give you a little juice. I suggest you add a little more salt at this stage. Dip a finger into the pan quickly and taste. Now toss a shot glass of white wine into the pan and wait for it to bubble away. You don’t want the taste of uncooked wine in there, no matter how much you love the stuff.
Put your vegetables on the plate, pour some very good olive oil over it (we use stuff that costs almost RM 200 per litre and you shouldn’t be stingy either), cut chicken into three thick slices, place on top, pour yourself a glass of wine and eat your healthy, tasty meal.
Oh, and by the way, it took me just fifteen minutes to cook this meal, much less time than it took to write it down!