Chicken Brochettes With Vegetable Rice

Sunny and clear days the past two days and more sunshine today. Woo hoo! Having said that, the low chilly temperature doesn’t feel like summer at all. No, I did not cook any comfort food but recreated that summer-feel with these chicken brochettes. Brochette is a French word for skewer or kebab and is also the term for this method of cooking. Marinating the chicken before grilling on the skewers makes the meat more tender and flavourful.Ingredients

(Serves 3)

• 3 skinless chicken breast fillets
• 1 large red capsicum ( bell pepper), halved and seeded
• 9 button mushrooms
• 1 onion
• 200 ml corn oil (or vegetable oil)
• 100 ml soy sauce
• juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tomatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 100 ml white wine vinegar
• 500 ml chicken stock
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
• 30g capers, rinsed and roughly chopped

Vegetable Rice

• oil, for cooking
• 1 onion, finely sliced
• 200g long-grain rice
• 1/2 red capsicum, diced
• 1/2 green capsicum, diced
• 60g frozen baby peas, thawed

Method

1.   Cut each breast fillet into six nuggets. Cut the capsicum into 9 rough squares. Remove and discard the mushroom stalks. Halve and then cut the onion into large pieces to match the capsicum. Thread the chicken, capsicum, mushroom and onion alternately onto skewers and place in a shallow dish. Mix together the corn oil, soy sauce and lemon juice, spoon over the brochettes and baste well.2.   Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour but preferably overnight.3.   To make the vegetable rice, preheat oven to moderately hot 200C degrees. In an ovenproof casserole, heat 2-3 tablespoons oil and on the stove top, add the onion and cook gently until transparent but not coloured. With a wooden spoon, stir in the rice and cook for 1 minute. Add 400 ml water and bring to the boil, stirring continuously. Season with salt and pepper. Cover the dish and put into the oven for 15 minutes, or until rice is tender. Lightly mix in the red and green capsicums and the peas and season to taste. Turn the oven to very low, cover the rice and return to the oven to keep warm.

4.   To peel tomatoes, click on these link for instructions. Peeling tomatoes.

5.   Lift the brochettes from the marinade, reserving the liquid, and grill for 4 minutes on each side, or until the chicken juices run clear when pierced with a skewer. Transfer to a tray, cover and keep warm in the oven.

6.   Add the onion to the juices in the grill pan and place over low to medium heat on the stove top, stirring until lightly coloured. Pour on the vinegar and stir until reduced by half. Add the reserved marinade and cook for 2 minutes. Add the stock and cook for a further 10-15 minutes, or until reduced to a syrup. Stir in the tomatoes, thyme and capers and season to taste. Serve the rice and brochettes with the sauce spooned over the top.If it was truly summer here, I would have served the brochettes with mixed salad but not really summer so the vegetable rice was a good complement to the brochettes.Recipe from Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection Chicken cookbook.

09 Jun This entry was published on June 9, 2012 at 11:30 am. It’s filed under cooking, food, recipes and tagged Brochette, Capsicum, Cook, dinner, food, ml chicken stock, Onion, Oven, Skewer, skinless chicken breast, Soy sauce, Stock (food), vegetarian, white wine vinegar. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.