Chicken with Green Peas and Quail Eggs in Cream Sauce

Three years in Australia and it's the first time I have seen turnips (singkamas). It was apparently in the chiller section together with the carrots, mushrooms and herbs. Only around 15 pieces. Weird.
That figures why I did not find them in large cartons all piled up.
The turnips in Marikina are abundant and inexpensive. Aside from being used in vegetable dishes, we also see them being peddled in streets, sliced and served with the unbelievably yummy sweet-ish bagoong alamang together with his brother Hilaw na Mangga.(Not recommended for the acetic).
To find them all perked up clean and pretty was like Mystika in Hollywood.

Anyway, I got two of these little beauties and decided to make Chicken with Green Peas and Quail Eggs in Cream Sauce.

We have a modest catering business in the Philippines and most of the time,  this was the vegetable dish of choice. Surprisingly, I have never cooked it myself. It was one of the very common dishes which was always readily available that I was never really interested in cooking it until we moved to Sydney. The pleasant turnip find gave me an excuse to try.


Ingredients:
1/2 Kilo Chicken Breast, boiled and cut into cubes. Reserve stock
3 cloves Garlic, crushed and minced
1 medium Onion, minced
2 rather small-ish Turnips, cubed
2 medium sized Carrots, cubed
1 large red Capsicum
1 1/2 cups of Frozen Green Peas
1 cup Cashew Nuts
Boiled Quail's Eggs
1/2 Can Carnation Evaporated Milk
2 Tbsp. Flour or Cornstarch dissolved in water, to thicken
A Dollop of Fresh Cream


What to Do:
1. Gently sauted garlic and onion in oil. Add cubed chicken breast. Season with Fish Sauce or Salt.
2. Add the turnips and carrots making sure not to overcook them. Put around half a cup of the chicken stock.
3. Add in the red capsicums and the peas followed by the  cashew nuts.
4. Let it simmer gently to cook. About 5 minutes.
5. Pour in the milk and then the dissolved flour/cornstarch to thicken the sauce.
6. Adjust the taste of the sauce, adding a little salt or fishsauce according to your taste.
7. Finish off by adding the quail eggs and a dollop of fresh cream.

First off, I usually just do with whatever is in the pantry. I don't like stressing myself out for ingredients that are not there. Second, I cook almost always by instinct. So feel free to tweak the recipe as you would like. Just don't do anything ridiculously different - everything will be fine.

I was very happy with the results of this dish. I am one of those who find it hard to cook vegetables having grown up in a kitchen where meat was the main ingredient. But this dish was definitely a star of its own.

I tasted the raw turnips and they are a little different from the local (Philippine) variety. It had a more pungent aftertaste similar to the white radish (labanos). I wondered if this will make the final product taste different - it did not.

The cupful of cashews ( I got salted and roasted because that was the only available kind) was enough to make sure that every serve had a few pieces in it. It was definitely worth the trouble of getting some as the crunch provided that needed contrast from the vegetables' and chicken's soft textures.

I would have had omitted the cream if it were not available. But since it was - I got a little lavish and used both the evaporated milk and the cream.

Now, I have to find another recipe which would need what was left of both. Waste makes - more Waste.

So there. Pastries. Maybe.