Not a very exciting day here at the top of the house, at least the wind had died down, for a while, but the pigeons are still around.  Himself finished his decorating, some work on the mammoth jig saw and some bridge ( playing with robots! Guess who won )!!

During my usual glance of all things food, I came across a recipe, which on paper, sounded really good, but as with many things that sound good, they do not always fit the bill, or live up to the hype.

Grilled Coconut Chicken with Coconut Rice. The chicken was mean to be marinated for 12-24 hours ( that is a lot of heads up time), but as I have a Sous Vide machine I could easily skip that bit, they do it all the time on Master Chef. I used the marinade and honestly do not think it would have made any difference if it had been marinated for hours. Secondly, I do not have a BBQ, would that have given the chicken more flavour, yes possibly, that of BBQ chicken, but no more than that.

Then the rice, it also had coconut, but again, even though I added more chillies than asked for , I found the whole thing a bit insipid.

Anyway, if you would like to give it a try, tweek it a bit, then here you go.:-

• Chicken pieces, I used 2 breasts
• 1 chopped onion
• 1/4 cup good vinegar ( I used rice vinegar)
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 6 cloves of garlic smushed
• 1/2 a can of coconut milk,
• a couple of chopped red chillies

Blend these together,  ( not the chicken) either with a hand held blender or in a machine. Put the Chicken into a bag along with this mixture and refrigerate for 12-24 hours, but as I said, I used a sous vide machine, 140  for 1 hour.

After this, heat a grill or grill pan ( I use an in-built Teppen Yaki Grill, for which my family gives me no end of stick), and cook as you would normally do on any grill.

Meanwhile cook the rice, but add  another chopped onion and some chopped chillies and the other half of the coconut milk, and water enough to cover, cook as normal and add salt and pepper to taste.( I added some peas for colour).

I think it looked OK and I had my chicken on a bed of salad greens rather than the rice. However I did taste the rice and for me the bottom line, was, “A Waste of Time”, but more importantly for me was the waste of a can of coconut milk.

Never Mind, I guess we win some and we lose some. But next up will be Cinco de Mayo,  celebrated in Mexico for Celebration of the Mexican victory over French forces at the Battle of Peubla on May 5th 1862.

Sounds good enough reason for me to go and grab my books and come up with something special ( or I could just ask young Sam, who has a Mexican Passport, but last summer he told me his favourite food was fish fingers followed by Shabu Shabu, already an eclectic taste !)

Oh and I have left Ignacio ( my Robot, cleaning, I just love the name Ignacio). I hope he doesn’t get stuck !