Formula 1 Foods: Bahrain round-up and the next challenge

Last weekend's Grand Prix took place in Bahrain which was a hard one for many of us in food terms. The idea of the challenge is to make something from or inspired by the host country of each Formula 1 race and I'd never eaten let alone made anything from Bahrain before. So it was funny that of the three entries I had this month, two of us made the same dish!

Suelle at Mainly Baking made this Middle Eastern date cake, which uses rose water, cardamom, saffron and sesame seeds to give a moist and fragrant cake.

I made chicken machboos, which is a type of curry using a blend of Arabic spices - which naturally I didn't have so I mixed my own. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, as I never cook rice from scratch, but it turned out pretty well!

Jane at Onions and Paper also made chicken machboos and commented on the length of the recipe and list of ingredients; she didn't take as many shortcuts as I did and I have to say I think her dish looks a lot better than mine!

The next Formula 1 Grand Prix takes place over May 8-10 in Spain so add your Spanish-inspired recipes to the link up below! You've got a bit longer this time so I hope I get plenty of entries!

Chicken Machboos

This weekend's Formula 1 Grand Prix is in Bahrain which was never going to be easy in terms of thinking of something to cook for my blog challenge Formula 1 Foods. I turned to the internet to search for recipes and one in particular kept coming up - a type of curry, usually with chicken, called machboos. Apparently it's the national dish of Bahrain and is a spiced chicken and rice dish with a blend of Arabic spices. It's similar to an Indian biriyani.

I found many recipes for this which were all slightly different and ended up choosing different elements of each; for instance my boyfriend doesn't eat chicken thighs or legs so I used breast; I didn't have any of the specific spice blend so mixed together what I had that went into it, and I have to admit making a big change that probably changed this dish quite a lot - rather than cooking the rice together with the chicken I used microwavable rice and added it afterwards. That is probably sacrilege but I didn't have much time (not getting home from work until 7pm and that's if the trains are running on time, which usually they are not) and I am hopeless at cooking rice from scratch!

So the recipe I used, pieced together from various others, was:
to serve 2:
1 onion, chopped
1 glove garlic, crushed
2 chicken breasts, diced
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp turmeric
squeeze of lemon juice
1 tbsp. oil
200ml chicken stock
200g tinned tomatoes

Fry the chopped onion and garlic in the oil in a large pan then add the spices.

Add the chicken and fry until cooked through.

Add the tomatoes, stock and lemon juice and cook until the sauce has reduced by half.

Serve with rice

I'm sending this to Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I host - you've still got a few days to add any Bahrain or Formula 1 inspired recipes!