Rosemary and Brown Sugar Chicken...and Poached Fruit with Cinnamon & Brown Sugar

Ever smelt fresh rosemary, mmm, doesn’t it smell amazing – think of flavour enhancing lamb, chicken, beef with this herb…and…every time you make dessert …like sticky date pudding, and you have to retrieve the brown sugar – can you smell the aroma of caramel as you start to measure it out?  Well I have an idea…but before I tell you, let me introduce Louise.

The lovely Louise who I should converse more about work related topics rather than food, told me that I needed to buy a bamboo steamer.  A steamer I said???  Really?  Why?  Louise then told me that I must buy one and it is a life change experience – well cooking changing experience…

When we should have been conversing about Tenders and Contracts, I was telling her about this idea about steaming chicken and infusing the flavours of Rosemary and Brown sugar.  However Louise gave me the brilliant idea of infusing these flavours with a bamboo steamer rather than my idea of using some metal frame (Lou, what will I do without you when I finish my contract at work...).  So last weekend I decided to try this.

It tastes amazing and everyone will say – wow what are you cooking???

Here is my recipe, but feel free to change up the measurements to suit your cooking party:

2 tiered bamboo steamer

500g chicken breast – I like tenderloin myself

2 stalks of rosemary – but add as much or as little as you like

¼ cup of brown sugar – again this can be as much or as little as your taste buds require

½ cup of water

Vegetables I used:

Broccoli

Carrot

French Shallots

Spinach

(but any veges could be used)

Chop vegetables and add to the bamboo steamer – its good to have these prepared so they are ready to go when you want to cook them.

Cut chicken in desired size, I kept mine in tenderloin strips.

In a wok, add water, brown sugar and rosemary over low heat and stir until combined.  You want a gentle simmer here, if there is too much heat, the brown sugar will burn and you lose that yummy caramel flavour and it will be replaced with an unpleasant taste of burnt chicken even though it doesn’t look burnt (invisible burn)

Immediately place bamboo steamer in the wok, and keep lid on, it’s important to keep the aroma and flavour trapped inside.  Add chicken.  This will be touch and go, and it really depends on how you like chicken cooked.  If you leave it too long, it can be quite tough and invisibly burnt.

When chicken has 2 mins left, add veges. 

You will need to give an occasional stir to vegetables and turn the chicken over, but try not to remove the lid as much as possible.

This tastes delicious over a bed of rice.  As this is extremely healthy, you can indulge a little and make a more sophisticated bed including chicken stock, butter, pine nuts, slivered almond etc.  But I opted for brown rice so I could have a chock mint rocky road super sundae – but that’s another blog.

Enjoy!

And what's for dessert??????

How about Poached Fruit with Cinnamon & Brown - goes with the whole brown sugar food theme and its healthy! - ok its not steaming them and its not as bad as tucking into a rich moist chocolate fudge brownie with white and dark chocolate chips, oh and maybe some pecans as well...where was I?

You make an intoxicating reduction of cinnamon sticks, brown sugar and water and peeled pears and apples and let it simmer why you are cooking dinner.  The longer it reduces the richer and more delicious it becomes.  It should sit for a minimum of half an hour, but I've let mine simmer for 1.5 hours in the past.  Place fruit in bowl and top with cinnamon syrup.  Of course, I had to top with cream and then cinnamon sugar over it, but that's optional :-)