Top chef shares delicious Coconut Chicken Cottage Pie recipe
For this week’s edition of Baking with Berea Mail, local chef Jesse Felthuis provides a Coconut Chicken Cottage Pie recipe, which he describes as delicious, trendy, and hipsterfriendly. He says the dish freezes well and tastes better the next day!
WITH so many recipes to choose from and a range of flavours to create, it can be hard to decide which recipe to try out in your own kitchen when the opportunity presents itself to start whipping up a meal. It can also be a task to fi nd a recipe that is easy to follow and one that produces effective and delicious results. If you are looking to test out some new, reliable recipes in your kitchen, watch out for the bi-monthly edition of Baking with Berea Mail. This feature will include recipes from bakers, chefs and professionals in the food-business industry who will share their baking and cooking secrets and their prized recipes for you to test out at home! So bust out your aprons and look out for this exciting new bi-monthly feature in the next edition of the Berea Mail newspaper.
This week, we spoke to Jesse Felthuis, a chef for Eatfresh – a catering company that provides quality food accessibility, with clients ranging from corporate restaurants to industrial canteens. He is also the general manager at My Chef – an online shop where you can buy delicious, homemade fresh meals. Felthuis says he has been in the culinary industry for 22 years, starting his career at 16 years old with an international food franchise. The Overport resident is now primarily based at the Sharks Stadium in the Shark’s Kitchen, providing meals for national and international clients. For this week’s edition of Baking with Berea Mail, Felthuis provided a Coconut Chicken Cottage Pie recipe, which he describes as delicious, trendy, and hipsterfriendly. He says the dish freezes well and tastes better the next day!
ALSO READ: Sunday spoil: Coconut Macaroons
Coconut Chicken Cottage Pie Recipe
Ingredients:
– 1 cup diced baby marrows
– 2 cups or 4 chicken breasts – diced
– 1 cup diced carrots
– 1 cup broccoli
– 1 sliced onion
– 1 minced garlic clove or 1 tsp crushed garlic
– ½ tsp cumin
– ½ tsp paprika
– ½ cup chicken stock
– 1 small sachet of tomato paste
– ¾ can of coconut cream
Cooking Method:
In a medium to hot pan, sauté the onions with a dash of olive oil. Once they have browned, add the garlic and the chicken, stir-fry until mostly brown, then add the carrot, marrow and the broccoli. Stir-fry it gently for about 3 minutes. Then add the coconut cream along with the paprika, cumin, stock and tomato paste. Give it a good mix, and allow it to simmer gently for about 15 minutes to reduce the liquid. Season with salt and pepper. Then add to an ovenproof dish.
ALSO READ: Baking with Berea Mail: Decadent Chocolate Cake Recipe
For the topping:
– 2 large potatoes
– 1 cup diced butternut
– ¼ can coconut cream
– ¼ cup milk
– 1 egg yolk
– 1 tbsp butter
– Desiccated coconut to sprinkle
– Salt and pepper to taste
Cooking Method:
Boil the potato and butternut until it is ready to be mashed. Strain off the liquid and add the butter. Mash while gradually adding the coconut cream. If you think it’s still too thick, add some milk. Lastly, add the egg yolk and mix it through quickly with the salt and pepper to season. Plop the mash on top of the chicken dish and scrape it f l at with a fork so it looks nice and even. (The reason you do this is so it cooks evenly and looks nice.) Sprinkle on some desiccated coconut and bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees.
A Twist:
Add the butternut and coconut to the chicken, then add the garlic to the mash instead, but sprinkle parmesan cheese on top.
Another Twist:
Take the baby marrows out of the chicken mix and add a cup of corn and 3 chopped chillies, and also double the quantity of paprika and cumin. Then use mashed sweet potato as the topping!
