Orange Broccoli Special

Yesterday I needed some serious wind down time after what had been a hectic and exciting summer that also had featured a painful low personal point in July (when things in my life seemed shot to pieces) which eventually was more than evened out by getting my own house at last, an unforgettable birthday party at the house and being made president of my local Rotary Club.

In the week and a bit preceding yesterday there had been no let up to the excitement with a trip to a wonderful Indian Restaurant (that used to be a dodgy drug-ridden pub in a previous life) for a colleague's leaving do, a fun evening watching old episodes of Shooting Stars at the house of two of my friends, a night out in our local town's new German Bar for an enjoyable Birthday Party, a seventeen mile walk in the driving rain through wonderful scenery with two old school friends and a Lakeland Terrier, a meal out in a country pub and a charity golf tournament in aid of Breast Cancer Research. I somehow managed to fit a working week in the city into all this and there was no wonder therefore I felt a little shattered.

I spent yesterday buying food for a fraternal buffet I am holding later today at my house, doing some gardening, cleaning and washing and generally being very domesticated while taking it super easy. Sometimes you need days like this to re-charge your batteries.

I had time for some cooking and today's piece, which is designed to ease me back into the world of food blogging, was a quite basic one but effective nonetheless. I grilled three chicken breasts that were flavoured with peppers and spices and a left-over lingering in my deep freeze from my birthday Barbecue (more of which in future blog posts). I also boiled some carrots, potatoes and broccoli up as a side dish.

I realised  that I wanted a sauce to go with the dish and I was reminded of a recipe in one of my parents' aged vegetarian cookbooks. Thinking back to this recipe I was inspired to make an orange white sauce to mix with the Broccoli.

The album on the media player for this project was the Electric Light Orchestra's excellent and underrated 1983 offering "Secret Messages" which includes the fifties throwback single "Rock & Roll is King" as well as first rate album tracks "Take me on and on" and the title track.

The secret to a good sauce is to make thick and creamy with the consistency of buttercream used in cakes. I melted around three ounces of margarine into a saucepan and once the margarine was almost melted I added a heaped wooden spoon's worth of corn flour. I turned off the heat on the hob and mixed all the melted butter into the margarine until it formed several golden coloured lumps. I then grated the zest of one whole Tangerine into the mixture and stirred the zest in thoroughly. I find that sauces, like sponge mixes and pastries, benefit from having all the dry ingredients including the spices mixed together before you add the wet ingredients.

I next added around 300 millilitres of semi-skimmed milk to the mixture and stirred it on the hob quickly over a medium heat until it was like a thick paste and there were no lumps. This took about two minutes. It is a tricky skill to master as if you use too much milk you end with a runny and lumpy sauce but if you do not use enough milk you end up with a very dry mixture  that's burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan. If you avoid this however you get a sweet sauce that is surprisingly good at complimenting the rather soggy taste of the broccoli when the sauce is poured over the broccoli and served with it.

The Broccoli is shown here smothered in the sauce to enhance its taste. The orange sauce also set off the flavours in the grilled chicken well.