Mediterranean Sunday with Chicken and Fish

Today’s healthy recipes on our new Mediterranean food journey – 22nd October 2023

Do you own a “George Foreman”? I do and have done for many years. We brought our ancient George Foreman grill over from England to Hungary and found it incredibly useful in the kitchen.

The grill was invented in 1994. George Foreman was not the inventor of the famous lean mean grilling machine but Michael Boehm of Batavia, Illinois. George Foreman (the boxer) invested in the new invention and put his name to it. The grill produced great tasting food while removing excess fat by drawing it away from the cooking surface.

At first, we only made the standard cheese and ham toasties but soon discovered that all sorts of foods could be cooked in the grill.

The Mediterranean lifestyle suggests limiting red meat to once a week but white meat such as chicken is acceptable. Fish and seafood are suggested two or three times a week.

We eat lots of chicken in our house, so I am always looking for different ways to cook it. This was the first time I had cooked Cilantro Lime Chicken, it was so simple and easy to prepare and tasted absolutely divine.

Once it was prepared, marinaded and grilled in the “George Foreman”, I served it with roasted vegetables, sweet potato, carrots and red onions.

Cilantro Lime Chicken

Ingredients

• 4 chicken fillets washed and dried with kitchen towel
• 2 squeezed limes
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 3 crushed garlic
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 large handfuls of fresh coriander/cilantro leaves chopped

Method

• Put the fillets to one side in a dish ready for marinading.
• Mix all the marinade ingredients together very well.
• Pour over the mixture coating every side evenly.
• Cover and marinade for at least 3 hours in the fridge.
• Cook for 8 minutes in “George Foreman”. Stick a knife into the side of the fillet to check for tenderness. Cook for longer if necessary.
• Serve with a variety of roasted veggies or a mixed colourful salad.

We have just returned from a Croatian fish market with several kilo’s of different sorts of fish and shellfish. Chef Eric was about to prepare us a fishy banquet!

These prawns were selling for 17 Euro a kilo about £15.00.

Chef Eric does not follow recipes like I would do. He is a “taste, smell and look” sort of chef. He never uses scales, just scans the spice shelves and adds a variety of herbs and spices to enhance his dishes. When enquiring what was actually in any of these fish dishes?, he replied “I don’t have a set recipe so I hope you are not going to ask for the ingredients list”! I don’t know how he can cook like that but I have to say he always produces delicious platefuls of food.

The prawns we bought were all cleaned individually, Eric removed the heads and poop, a labour intensive task taking forever to prepare.

Once nicely cleaned Eric tossed the prawns in a variety of herbs and spices together with olive oil, salt and pepper. He fried the prawns for about 7 – 8 minutes stirring occasionally until they got that distinct pink colour, a sign they were cooked.

Just plain and simple fried prawns, you need to be able to taste the prawn to fully appreciate this dish.

Next, the octopus was prepared for boiling. Sadly I was not quick enough to capture a photo but did manage to snap the end result.

The octopus was served with a zingy lemon dressed salad and irresistible garlic toast (my friend nibbled her toast before I had taken the photo!!)…a hazard when photographing food!

This was the favourite amongst our guests, the mixed seafood stir fry with noodles. As before, Chef Eric, cleaned and prepared calamari, more prawns and more octopus, marinaded in various herbs and spices and cooked until tender in the wok

After boiling a pan of noodles he combined them with the mixed seafood ready to serve.

Another side dish, this time calamari.

Later on in the afternoon, we got the barbecue going to cook and eat the juicy looking seabass.

Barbecuing the fish created huge amounts of smoke……

But once cooked created a mouth watering fish.

The younger guests had their fish filleted and cleaned ready for eating.

Do you like fish? We have fish as often as we can on the menu but it is not easy as Hungary is landlocked with no sea. This means all the seafood is imported and there is not much choice. However there is no shortage of freshwater fish, the Hungarians love their fish dishes. Which fish dishes do you like? Let me know in the comments. Have a lovely day/night and thanks for reading my blog. 😍