UMAMI ORZO

Each month we select one of our favourite ingredients to create a new recipe.  Thought I would crank up the flavour this month and play around with ingredients known to be rich in umami, to really add a deep savouriness to orzo, which is simply rice-shaped pasta.  This is a very rich and comforting dish that doesn't hold back on flavour.

It's not very often that I would spend more than 24 hours preparing and cooking chicken thighs, but thought I would see how the kombu would add the chicken's savouriness.  I started with the classic confit preparation and added a large sheet of dried kombu, marinating it for 24 hours in the fridge.

I have previously used kombu in a similar manner re-creating the Basque salt fish dish, with red snapper and bass (that reminds me to write that up!).  Kombu is usually found when making dashi, a Japanese stock, but the principle in using it for a confit marinade is very similar here.

Other umami-rich ingredients are bonito stock, shiitake mushroom, aged parmesan cheese and smoked, sured bacon.

Ingredients:

• 1 sheet kombu
• 4 chicken thighs
• Garlic
• Bay leaf
• Peppercorns
• Fresh thyme
• Sea salt
• 500ml vegetable oil
• 300g Orzo
• 300ml bonito dashi
• 1 Shallot, sliced
• 15g Dried Shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated in white wine & boiling water
• 10g grated parmesan cheese
• Pinch turmeric
• 2 rashers smoked bacon
• Pea shoots, to serve