Ready Steady Gasp 1

LIZZY (Team Green Pepper)
I really let my mind palace and my taste buds run with this one – somehow all of the ingredients tied in with a favourite dish of mine, so it didn’t take any research or much thought to decide on: Shkmeruli (a Georgian garlic chicken dish, which incidentally Kate and I have eaten in Georgia together), caponata (a Sicilian vegetable dish) and gnocchi all Romana (semolina or polenta rounds baked with plenty of cheese in the oven)

KATE (Team Red Tomato)
My original idea was to go for something Turkish, and replace the often used bulgur for polenta but I quickly decided an Italian meal would be more cohesive. After a little (ok a lot) of research and googling I settled on doing a take on Pollo al Ginepro (chicken with juniper) and Pizza di polenta con verdure di campagna
(polenta with wild greens). And yes… I did indeed get a free trial of Ckbk for this ready steady gasp…

LIZZY
My favourite thing about shkmeruli is that you fry the chicken until it is crispy on the outside first – this means about ten minutes of hot oil spluttering at you, but it is totally worth it for the golden, crispy skin at the end of the dish. You bake it in the oven quickly with a creamy, garlicky sauce which in my opinion is absolute heaven.

KATE
Buying the chicken was my first mistake… In Germany they sell something called a “Suppenhuhn” which is a typically leaner chicken you would use for stock or soup so this had basically no meat on it… I browned the chicken first and then added it in to my stew with the other vegetables I’d already fried in batches with some bacon (see below) along with red wine, tomatoes and the eponymous and very tricksy ingredient – juniper berries.

LIZZY
I last made caponata in lockdown, so it entertains some very strange memories for me and I was ready to try making it again and overwriting those memories. It took a while to chop everything and to wait for it to simmer down, but as you can eat it cold it is worth making a big batch to keep in the fridge to snack on whenever.

KATE
Aubergine is not usually to be found in Pollo al Ginepro, but it was a commandment from the wheels and so I popped it in! I browned it first with the pepper and bacon. I think it could have done with being added closer to the end, because it kindof disintegrated in the stew

LIZZY
I haven’t linked a recipe for the broccoli because I used a recipe of my own making (which is why I also forgot to take a photo!). I simply douse raw broccoli in soy sauce and leave it in the oven at a high temperature for 15 minutes to get crispy and salty. I added pecans into the oven 5 minutes before it was finished to tick off all of the wheels demands.

KATE
I chose to incorporate broccoli as the ‘green’ in the polenta so I boiled it (keeping the water for the polenta) and fried it with some garlic and chilli. But, because of the juniper berries, the stew was very flavourful already so I wish I had just left the broccoli plain

LIZZY
I had a bit on a panic when I came to make this recipe and realised that it is not actually traditionally made with polenta, but semolina instead. Nonetheless, I powered on and used polenta. The result was a bit wetter than I would have liked, but you can’t go far wrong with cheese and carbs.

KATE
An absolute classic of Italian cuisine, for my polenta I also decided to keep it simple, ignore the recipe and not bake the polenta. This recipe uses the water from the cooked greens to cook the polenta, but I think perhaps something like swiss chard or kale would have made that ‘stock’ much more flavourful, my substitution of broccoli water was not and didn’t make a huge amount of difference in the flavour.

LIZZY
As previously mentioned I added pecans in with my broccoli (which as I also mentioned, I forgot to take a photo of – please appreciate this bonus photo of my polenta baking). They are by far my favourite nut and are much better than walnuts – which seem to be everywhere. Toasting them in the oven with the broccoli and soy sauce gets them very nice and salty and crispy – would recommend!

KATE
I was a little stuck again for what to choose for a wildcard and let me tell you, walnut was the wrong choice… It is a very flavourful and rich nut which was in competition with basically every other flavour on my plate. I toasted them dry in a pan and sprinkled them over the polenta – see above!