25 Apr avocado brunch + chicken stew

We are really pleased to share the news that forkful has joined the team at INSIDER magazine, a new lifestyle supplement with The Irish Independent on Thursdays.

In our new weekly column, the forkful team will be bringing you our current squeeze on the recipe front and share with you the food that’s currently inspiring us. We’ll be talking about our triumphs and failures in the kitchen, and the Irish ingredients that makes us love rolling up our sleeves and get cooking.

INSIDER’s first issue appeared yesterday in The Irish Independent and we were tickled pink to be in the same pages as opinionated funny folk Colm Tobin and Carole Tobin, sassy style gurus such as Corina Gaffney and, of course, our forkful collaborator Nialler9. Pick up the magazine every Thursday in The Irish Independent.

For our first column, we picked an easy Friday night dinner and a simple brunch to start us off. We’re really looking forward to sharing more with you over the coming weeks.

These recipes were first published in INSIDER magazine as part of the new GET COOKING column in The Irish Independent on Thursday 24th of April 2014.

Avocado Brunch for 2

We started off with Fumbally Café inspired eggs. We live around the corner from this Dublin 8 beacon of deliciousness. When we can get a table on a Saturday, it’s always the Green Eggs we order. Their mushy avocado covered in their famous Fumbally messy scrambled eggs topped with Gubeen chorizo is one of the finest things you can eat on a morning in Dublin.

Ingredients

1 ripe avocado

1/2 lime

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

Salt

Pepper

50g of good quality chorizo, cut into small chunks (we love Gubeen)

2 free-range eggs

Sourdough bread (we love Dublin’s Arun Bakery)

Method

Remove the flesh from the avocado into a bowl. Add the juice of half a lime (you can use lemon juice if you don’t have a lime to hand) before using a fork to mash the avocado until soft but chunky. Mix in the red chilli and season generously with salt and pepper before setting aside.

Cook the chorizo in a small frying pan over a medium heat until crisped and browned.

Meanwhile, poach your eggs by bringing a saucepan of water to a bubbling simmer. Add a dash of white wine vinegar and gently break your eggs into the bubbling water. Cook for 4 minutes for a soft yolk before using a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked egg from the water to kitchen towel. We find using really fresh eggs helps us achieve perfectly poached eggs.

Slather your sourdough with your avocado before topping with poached egg and chorizo. Finish with a crack of black pepper.

Black Olive Chicken Stew for 4

If you know us, you’ll know that we are very fond of simple stews. We love that chorizo and tomato based stews can work in winter and in summer. Just like our sausage stew and this chicken stew. Yum.

Ingredients

Olive Oil

100g of chorizo, chopped into chunks

4 free-range Irish chicken legs

1 onion, finely sliced

1 red chilli, finely sliced

3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon of dark brown sugar

Salt

Pepper

Handful of good quality black olives

Handful of freshly chopped parsley

Method

Pre-heat your oven to 200c/180c fan/Gas Mark 6.

Heat a small drizzle of olive oil in an oven-proof pan or pot on the hob over a medium heat. Fry the chorizo for 5 minutes until its lovely oils have been released. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Now cook the chicken legs in the leftover chorizo oil (yum) for 5 minutes until browned. Remove from the pan and set aside.

Now cook the onions, chilli and garlic in the same pan for about 3 minutes.

Pour in the tinned tomatoes to the pan, squeeze in the lemon juice, add the sugar and season generously with salt and pepper before mixing well.

Stir the chorizo back into the tomato sauce before adding the chicken legs back to the pan.

Transfer to the oven and roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the sauce has thickened and the chicken has cooked through.

When the chicken is cooked through, remove from the oven and add your black olives. Finish by sprinkling with freshly chopped parsley and serve with roast potatoes or some crusty bread on the side.

If you don’t have a hob-friendly ovenproof dish, you can start this stew in a pan and then transfer the stew to an oven-proof baking dish for the oven bit. It will be just as delicious. We’re just trying to save you some washing up. We’re nice like that.