The New Year has arrived and here comes the first recipe! Jan got a sous vide device by Anova as a present, so he just couldn’t wait to give it a try. He had a really great time, so you can look forward to a whole series of sous vide recipes this year.
This recipe surprised me a lot and I have to admit that orange chickpeas with fennel works very well. If you like, you can always use fish instead of chicken: it works great, too.
For 2 portions
2 chicken breasts
100 g dried chickpeas (soaked in water for at least 2 hours or overnight)
½ fennel
½ onion
2 cloves of garlic
skin of one orange
200 ml orange juice
20 ml red wine vinegar
1 tsp cumin
500 ml chicken stock
50 g butter
20 ml olive oil
lemon salt
pepper
First, let’s prepare the chickpeas. Dice the fennel and put the green part aside, you’ll need it later. Cut the onion the same way and sauté together with fennel and chopped garlic in olive oil until soft. Add the chickpeas and stock. Add finely grated orange skin and bring to boil. Cook for about 1-2 hours, depends how hard the chickpeas is.
When it’s ready, add the orange juice, roasted cumin and vinegar. Cook for another 20 minutes. At the end just add 30 g of butter, mix it in and season with salt and pepper. You can also strain the chickpeas, reduce the stock and pour it back in.
Season the chicken and sear it skin side down until golden. Vacuum seal the meat (or you can put it in a thicken Ziplock bag). If you want to cook sous vide more often, it’s ideal to have a vacuum sealer, it’s not that expensive and it saves you a lot of trouble. Add the rest of the butter and cook at 63,5 °C for 30 minutes. Of course, it depends on the meat: for two 200 g breasts 30 minutes is enough, if it’s a larger chicken it can take up to 90 minutes. Once it’s finished, just give it a quick sear on the pan and you are ready to serve.
Cut the chicken and season with lemon salt (or any salt you prefer). Cut the green top parts of the fennel into slices and decorate the plate with the leaves (they look a bit like dill). Drizzle with olive oil and you are ready to go! Enjoy!