Chicken with Grapefruit Sauce - a throwback to the 1970s

As a child growing up in the 1970s I was exposed to all kinds of weird, wonderful and, dare I say, exciting food...Angel Delight, Dream Topping, Vesta Chow Mein, Arctic Roll and Smash instant mashed potato to name a few. I've come to the conclusion that being fed these instant foods explains why I now crave good, home cooked food that doesn't contain a whole lot of additives and E numbers. I probably overdosed on them as a child!

Despite my memories of all these dehydrated foods (just add water) I do think that the 1970s was the decade where good, interesting food began to emerge and started to capture the imagination of the masses.  Although I don't remember any of these dishes making it to our dinner table until the '80s at least, I wanted to share just a few of the foods that were really popular at the time and that, for me, define 1970s cuisine:

Duck a l'orange

Trout with Almonds

Prawn Cocktail

Beef stroganoff

Chicken Kiev

Scampi (with chips in a basket)

Coq au Vin

Baked Alaska

Black Forest Gateau

Vol au Vents

Lobster Thermidor (but only if you were particularly well-heeled)

And who could forget... cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks stuck into a potato or an orange covered in aluminium foil!

This recipe has something about it that takes me back to the days when pairings of meat and fruit were seen as the height of sophistication. It isn't from a 1970s cookbook - I have adapted it from one that appears in one of my favourite cookbooks 'Cooking Outside the Box' by Keith Abel (of Abel & Cole fame) from 2006. The original recipe uses blood oranges to flavour the sauce but I've made it with grapefruit instead. The sauce is sharp and fruity and goes really well with pan-fried chicken - delicious! 

If you would like to try this, make sure to get the full experience by putting on some music from c1976 to listen to while you eat it!

Chicken with Grapefruit Sauce

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 tbsp butter
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 tsp flour
50ml white wine
Juice of 2 grapefruit
Salt and pepper
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp olive oil

Method:
1. Make the sauce first by melting the butter in a frying pan and gently fry the onion until it is translucent. Stir in the flour and cook for a further minute then add the wine and the grapefruit juice.

2. Season with salt and pepper and allow to simmer for approximately 10 minutes until it thickens. Remove from the heat and keep warm.

3. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and fry them in the olive oil for 6-8 minutes per side, or until they are thoroughly cooked through. This will depend upon the size of the breasts. 

4. Once cooked, transfer to serving plates, carve and serve with the grapefruit sauce poured over.

Delicious with spinach, sauteed potatoes or buttered cabbage.

Pesto made with foraged wild garlic

To say that I'm not a great forager is an understatement! Of course I've picked the odd blackberry in my time and, when I was little, I used to collect winkles from rock pools at the beach to take home to cook but I've always felt a bit nervous about helping myself to anything from a field, forest or hedgerow when I am not one thousand percent sure that what I'm picking is what I think it is. So I usually do my 'foraging' in the safety of a Pick your Own farm shop!

While my hubby and I were out and about over the Easter weekend, though, we came across a lovely crop of wild garlic and, having recently seen some fabulous recipes involving this ingredient, I decided to throw caution to the wind and pick some. Wild garlic grows everywhere in Northumberland at this time of year - it flourishes in damp, forested areas and we've got just the right conditions for it so it's really common. I was certain that what I was harvesting was wild garlic as the foliage had a characteristic garlicky smell so I felt confident that wouldn't do me any harm if I ate it. 

After a half hour of scrambling and picking that included a scary encounter with a couple of spiders, my hubby and I arrived home with a few good handfuls of pungent smelling leaves. I hadn't cooked with wild garlic before but felt like I needed to make something delicious to repay our efforts. After a bit of research I found that I could make pesto with it which sounded great - I make pesto regularly with basil so I decided to follow my normal pesto recipe but substitute the basil for wild garlic instead. 

The result was pesto that tasted very like that made with basil but with a stronger garlicky edge to it. I served mine stirred into pasta but it could be used just like any other pesto - spread on crostini (or toast) or as a flavouring for soup or vegetables, for example.

We managed to collect quite a bit of wild garlic so have made enough pesto to last us a few weeks but, for me, the best bit is that the wild garlic didn't cost us a penny! How good is that? Also, the experience of foraging then preparing it to eat was really fun and has given my confidence a slight boost. I think I'll take myself off now to buy a book and research other foraging possibilities!

Wild Garlic Pesto

Notes: We picked 150g of wild garlic so have listed the quantities of the other ingredients to fit with this. As you can see from the picture above, this makes quite a lot of pesto so the ingredients can be scaled down according to the amount of wild garlic being used. I used rapeseed oil but olive oil would be good too.

The pesto will keep in the fridge for up to 3 weeks, but if storing, ensure it is in an airtight jar and that the pesto is completely covered with oil to keep it fresh.

Ingredients:
75g pine nuts
150g wild garlic leaves
2 cloves of bulb garlic
200ml rapeseed oil (plus extra if storing - see above)
75g finely grated parmesan cheese
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Method:
1. Heat a frying pan and toast the pine nuts until golden brown. Remove from the pan and set aside to cool. 

2. Put the wild garlic leaves, garlic cloves, pine nuts and 100ml of the oil into a food processor with a chopping blade and blitz to a paste.

3. Transfer the paste to a bowl and stir in the remainder of the oil, the parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.

4. Store in an airtight jar and pour in additional oil to ensure the pesto is covered with oil to retain its freshness.