Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken with a Honey Ginger Glaze

This is a lovely, silky chicken dish with a lip-smacking sweet and tangy glaze. Preparation is ridiculously easy and ingredients are readily available in most supermarkets. You can make your own teriyaki sauce if you like, but I just used the bottled sauce in this recipe.

Ingredients for 4-5 servings:

• 600 grams or so of chicken, cut into small pieces
• 1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
• Two, 1/3 cups of honey (divided)
• 300 grams of tinned pineapple*
• About a cup of fresh coriander
• Tablespoon of ground ginger

To start, whisk together the teriyaki sauce, half a cup of juice from the tin of pineapples, and the first 1/3 cup of honey. A whisk is the best way to get the honey really well incorporated; a spoon will just make honey streaks in your teriyaki sauce.

Next, add about half a cup of coriander.

And finally your chicken pieces and a pinch of salt, and mix to get the chicken coated evenly.

Cover this and refrigerate for an hour or so.

When you are ready to start putting dinner together, cut up your pineapple into small pieces (if it wasn't already in pieces).

In a hot pan, or a wok, add your mixture that has been marinating. 

Let the entire thing come to a boil, and keep turning the chicken around with a spatula. Do not reduce the heat, there is enough liquid for the chicken to cook at high heat.

When your chicken is no longer pink on the outside, add about a cup of the pineapple pieces. You can always add more or less to your liking. If you reserve some fresh pieces, you can serve them on the plate with the chicken.

Keep stirring the mixture as the liquid boils for about 5 more minutes, and then check to verify that your chicken is cooked through. I added a few chilli flakes at this stage to provide some spice. Once your chicken is cooked, take out the chicken and pineapple and set aside (a slotted spoon would work best), leaving the liquid in the pan.

Keeping the pan on high heat, add the ground ginger, or ginger powder, into the sauce and the remaining 1/3 cup of honey. Stir frequently, this mixture is going to caramelise and become syrupy very quickly. In fact, it would help if someone was plating the chicken while you finish the sauce.

Finally, serve the chicken with some plain rice, and fresh pineapples. Pour about two tablespoons of sauce over the chicken and garnish with the coriander.

*Tip: Don't throw away your unused pineapple pieces, refer to our "Let's not waste anything!" page, and check out few ideas on how to use them.

As with all the other recipes we put on this site, this is meant to be easy to follow. We are hobby chefs who love to cook, and we are always up for learning new techniques. If you know of anything in this recipe which can be done a different way, whether for increased ease of preparation or better taste, please add a comment below!

Whipped up by Shyamal Addanki

Salmon and Goat Cheese Tartlet

This easy to make tartlet is a great way to use up any leftover pastry crust from making quiche, or just because its summer. Its especially good on a Sunday.

As promised, its easy too. For two people, I made eight lil' ones. You can make as many as you like, but this recipe is for eight.

You probably want some Salmon to make Salmon tartlets, one filet (100g) is more than enough. Oh, and some goat cheese, when you read the rest of this recipe you will get an idea of how much you need. I come from a school of thought which believes one can never have too much goat cheese, so just get a bunch and use whatever you need on these tarts, and then reward yourself by eating the rest with a drizzle of honey.

I like to top them off with some chives, if you get fresh ones then good for you. I just used chives from a spice bottle. I also like to drizzle the whole thing with a bit of honey, so have some honey laying around the house. No, not THAT way! The kind from bees, silly.

Right! To the Salmon!

We are first going to cook the salmon fillet, preheat your oven to 175 C ( 350 F). On a piece of aluminum foil, place your salmon fillet and gently poke it a bit with a fork, then drizzle some honey over it and rub that honey in. Don't worry about too much or too little, I promise you it won't mess it up as long as you don't drench the salmon in honey.

Now wrap the salmon in that foil so it is all covered up and pop it in the oven, it will take hardly any time to cook and we can prepare the crust meanwhile.

If you're using ready made pie crust, then you just need to unroll it, perhaps consider thinning it just a bit. Its really not a big deal if you don't want to thin it out. If you're making your own pie crust, then, well, you clearly know what you're doing.

Now, take a drinking glass or something to cut out the circle shapes and cut out your crusts. You can just ball up the remaining dough, roll it flat, and cut some more. If you bought the pre-made crust, it probably came on a baking sheet, I keep my dough circles back on this sheet.

By about now, the salmon ought to be done, take it out of the oven and check that it is nicely pink. If it isn't, put it back for a bit, but take it out within a minute and check again; don't let it dry out.

Go ahead, take a fork and take a bite of your honey glazed salmon ... good isn't it? Well, make honey glazed salmon another time, now its time for salmon tartlets! What we are going to do now is to use a fork and pick on the salmon until is is in flakes, your salmon should flake up pretty easily.

At this stage, if you have a cat, best to lock him/her out of the kitchen.

Now it is time to assemble; place a few flakes of salmon on each circle of dough, top of off with a bit of goat cheese and then some bits of chives. You can drizzle some honey around the salmon if you like, or save it for later. If you want to make this into a "purse" type tart, you just pick up the edges and pinch them together as in the one on the left in this picture.

Now carefully put them in the oven.

And after 10 minutes or so; they should be nicely browned. As you can see, my tarts opened up. This is fine, if my dough had been a bit thinner, they might have stayed closed.

Now transfer them to a plate, and if you didn't already add honey earlier, this is a good time to drizzle some honey over them.

As with all the other recipes we put on this site, this is meant to be easy to follow. We are hobby chefs who love to cook, and we are always up for learning new techniques. If you know of anything in this recipe which can be done a different way, whether for increased ease of preparation or better taste, please add a comment below!

Whipped up by Shyamal Addanki