Sumptuous Sunday 5

I thought that I would be adventurous this weekend and cook dishes which I have not cooked before.

For Friday night, I decided to cook 'butterflied chicken with orange'. I bought a fresh, whole chicken from the butcher on Thursday and asked the girl on the counter to chop the chicken in half. This process is called 'butterflying' the chicken as it makes the two halves look like a butterfly (so I am told). The idea behind this is that all parts of the chicken are cooked equally well, whereas when one roasts a whole chicken, the breasts get exposed to different temperatures than the legs. I marinaded the chicken halves in a mixture of jam, freshly pressed orange juice and olive oil overnight. On Friday afternoon, I placed the chicken halves in the cooking pan and poured the marinade over the halves. I chopped a peeled onion in half and placed the two halves flat face upwards. The chicken was cooked for an hour and a half at 170 degrees C; I turned the halves over after about an hour. 

None of us were particularly impressed by this dish. The onions caramelised nicely and even had tasted slightly of orange, but the marinade barely flavoured the chicken. My wife said that the meat did have a slight orange taste, but I couldn't detect it (not that this surprises me - my taste buds are not the strongest in the world). We agreed not to repeat this recipe.

While I was at the butcher's, I bought a packet of frozen salmon steaks, generously sized. I had bought similar slices in the past from the supermarket, but those were smaller and full of bones, so I never bought them again. I defrosted the salmon and placed three portions in the slow cooker on Saturday morning; the pieces were so large that they covered the entire base. I made a sauce of water, lemon juice, butter (!), salt and diced onions and poured this on the salmon; I cooked for three hours on low. The results were sublime! The salmon was cooked just right - not too hard and not too soft - and barely had any bones. Fortunately the packet held six steaks (I thought that there were only four) so there are enough pieces left over for a repeat performance.

The exclamation mark by the butter is because we very rarely ever have butter in the house. Kosher cooking means that butter cannot be used with any meat dishes, which almost completely rules out its use. But it's OK to cook fish with butter.