Chicken & Peppers

A dish of beauty

Faster faster faster! When did speed become the defining criteria for dinner happening or not?. Simple I get, tasty I need, beautiful I can be seduced by - but fast? Not so much. Fast food as a term was recoginised by Websters Dictionary in the early 1950's but I'm guessing that what  would be recognised then as fast food would never be sold in the mutli national giants today.

Thought I might reclaim the term just a smidgen, and categorise food that takes less than 15 minutes to prep as fast food. Fifteen minutes is no time, I waited longer than that for a bus yesterday and still got home in time for tea.

So here, without further ado, is possibly the simplest dish this blog has ever posted. It is exactly what it says in the title, just chicken and peppers. What gets served up an hour later with rice is a vibrantly beautiful plate of food that tastes rich and complex. Magic.

Chicken & Peppers

The peppers cook down and mix with the juice released by the chicken to make a lovely sauce that needs some rice or perhaps just lots of crusty bread to soak it all up

For 2

4-5  chicken thighs and/or drumsticks, on the bone, skin on
6-8 bell peppers, a mix of red and yellow (but not green as you are looking for sweet), chopped into large dice
2 tablespoons olive oil

In a large lidded saute pan warm the olive oil and cook the chicken pieces skin side down for a couple of minutes till the skin is crisply golden. Take the chicken out of the pan onto a plate and leave to one side for a couple of minutes while you fry the peppers, stirring occasionally until they start to soften. Return the chicken to the pan, skin side up, and season generously. Once the peppers start to give up their juice, turn the heat right down, cover the pan and leave to cook for 45 - 50 minutes.

Serve over plain boiled rice.

Seriously, that is all  you do.

A Tale of Two Chicken Dinners

Sometimes it is necessary to have dinner on the table sooner rather than later. Sometimes if the day has been a busy one that seems like an inordinate challenge. Wanting to eat NOW sometimes gets in the way of good food, from scratch looks way too slow/difficult/ridiculous when you can stick something in the microwave for however long. No chopping for that. Not much pleasure either. Definitely no certainty about what exactly it was you just ate.

Not really talking horsemeat here - though the extent to which no one has been - or apparently ever will be - accountable for that is really depressing. I'm talking about the 5,000 plus additives that go into processed food. The front of the package for a Tesco Classic Chicken dinner offers Succulent chicken in a savoury gravy with roast potatoes, baby carrots, peas and a pork stuffing ball - and really, who wouldn't be tempted?

Flip the box over though and I had to wonder what precisely is being stabilised with disodium diphosphate? Indeed what is - precisely or even vaguely - disodium diphosphate? The list in full reads  Cooked Chicken Breast (25%),Roast Potatoes (24%) ,Water ,Carrot ,Peas ,Pork Stuffing Ball ,Cornflour ,Chicken Stock ,Butter ,Yeast Extract ,Wheat Flour ,Sugar ,Salt ,Caramelised Sugar ,Sage ,Thyme ,White Pepper ,Cooked Chicken Breast contains: Chicken Breast ,Corn Starch ,Roast Potatoes contains: Potato ,Sunflower Oil ,Dextrose ,Pork Stuffing Ball contains: Pork ,Wheat Flour ,Onion ,Pork Fat ,Vegetable Oil ,Potato Starch ,Herbs ,Salt ,Pork Bouillon ,Pork Rind ,Onion Powder ,White Pepper ,Black Pepper ,Stabiliser (Disodium Diphosphate) ,Yeast ,Chicken Stock contains: Water ,Natural (Flavouring) ,Chicken Fat ,Salt ,Cornflour ,Sugar ,Pork Bouillon contains: Salt ,Milk Sugar ,Maltodextrin ,Vegetable Oil ,Yeast Extract ,Sugar ,Onion Powder ,Celery Extract ,Sage Extract ,Pepper Extract ,Turmeric Extract - for one chicken dinner? Cheap though.

My favourite bit though is the cooking instructions - For best results cook from frozen. Remove outer packaging and pierce film lid several times. Remove stuffing ball and potatoes. Then it's 12 minutes in the microwave - returning halfway through to replace the previously removed stuffing ball and potatoes or 50 minutes in the oven. So even with a frozen ready meal you're looking at 50 minutes for conventional cooking. Imagine what the peas are like...

So, the other night I wanted fast and fabulous and definitely not much faff. I had some nice little pieces of chicken - thighs and drumsticks, bone in, skin on - thinking a salad would be good. But this spring is not yet sprung and it was bloody freezing out. Didn't have enough veg in to make a proper roast dinner but I did have some main crop potatoes and plenty of garlic, as always. I warmed a little olive oil in a roasting pan and crisped the chicken skin over a high heat till it was lovely and golden then added the peeled diced potatoes and some whole crushed cloves of garlic and put the pan into the oven at about 200C.

Thirty minutes later, after simply basting a couple of times, the chicken and potatoes were cooked through and wafting lovely smells into the kitchen.

While it cooked I simply washed some lettuce and made a simple salad with chopped red pepper and sliced cucumber. Didn't need dressing. I served the hot chicken and potatoes alongside and sat down to a very fine supper indeed - 35 minutes after I started. Only used the one pan, too, so cleaning up was very quick.

The whole experience was just so conducive to feeling better - well fed and cared for, rather than harrassed and guilty. Would recommend...

DISCLAIMER I didn't buy or eat the tesco one

Duck with Asian flavouring

We had a house in south west France for a while, old old old thing made of stone and horse dung that looked out over miles and miles of sunflowers and fields of cattle known locally as Blonde Aquitaine. We went down for long weekends and the odd week here and fortnight there for a few years, doing up the house, adding showers and toilets and removing plaster to reveal solid stone walls and ancient beams. I learnt a lot in those few years - a smattering of  French, how to restore oak floors till they gleamed like glass and a myriad of ways to cook duck. We were in the Gers, the region that is famed for poultry, foie gras, garlic and Armagnac. I liked it a lot!

But until we stumbled upon Montreal du Gers I had never cooked duck, and indeed had barely eaten it beyond crispy duck with pancakes and hoi sin sauce at many and various Chinese restaurants. It is a lovely rich meat, particularly if you can crisp the skin, whilst maintaining a fairly rare interior. You don't need a lot but a small portion will bring you great cheer when it's perfectly rendered. We ate it all over the region, simply grilled with frites and salad, confited (of course!) again with frites and salad, slow cooked in casseroles with garlic, with wild mushroom sauces, flamed with Armagnac and once as a particularly fine carpaccio. My first couple of attempts to cook it myself were sadly inadequate till I bought Jeanne Strang's Goose Fat and Garlic and understood fully just how many mistakes I was making! I perfected the duck but have abandoned hope of making frites that fabulous...

We sold the house a little while ago and I began to hanker for duck dinners again, not so much the sauté but definitely that lovely rich meat and the divine crunch of skin. There really is nothing quite like crisp duck skin! I started buying an occasional duck breast (English) from Lizzie At Wild Beef at Borough, big and meaty though with a little less fat than their Gersois cousins. Good, though, especially with citrus and noodles and greens.

A few weeks ago Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had some duck recipes in the Guardian and one in particular caught my eye. It involved marinating in a mix of juice, soy and ginger amongst other things then serving it up with hot chunks of pineapple. I love hot chunks of pineapple, they are the very essence of sweet sticky sunshine, seemed a perfect antidote to a cold bleak February Tuesday. How right I was....

Duck breasts with pineapple, chilli and soy 

A favourite quick duck recipe says Mr HF-W

Serves two.

½ large fresh pineapple
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp soft brown sugar (or honey)
3 garlic cloves, chopped
A golfball-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely sliced
½-1 fresh red chilli (according to heat), deseeded and finely chopped
A few twists of black pepper
2 boneless duck breasts - or 1 large one
A little sunflower oil
2 spring onions, finely sliced

Peel the pineapple and cut off two 2cm-thick slices. 

Cut these into quarters and trim off the core. Roughly chop the rest of the pineapple and, with your hands, squeeze out the juice into a bowl.

Mix three or four tablespoons of the juice with the soy, sugar (or honey), garlic, ginger, chilli and black pepper. Make three or four slashes in the skin of each duck breast, cutting deep into the fat but not as far as the flesh. Put the breasts in the marinade and turn to coat. Marinate for a couple of hours, if possible, but even 10 minutes will do.

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Grease a frying pan with sunflower oil and put it on a high heat. Wipe the marinade off the duck and sear quickly all over, being sure to sear the skin. 

Put the breasts skin side up in an ovenproof dish into which they'll fit snugly. Tuck the spring onions underneath and pour over the marinade. Roast for eight to 10 minutes, until the skin is browned and crisp – at this point, the meat should still be pink.

Remove the breasts and leave to rest on a warmed plate. 

In a small, lightly oiled pan, fry the reserved pineapple slices, dusting them with a little salt and turning occasionally, so they brown. Strain the meat juices into the pan and reduce to a syrupy sauce, tossing the pineapple pieces to coat them. Put the duck in the pan and turn a few times to coat.

Slice the duck and arrange on plates. Spoon the sauce and pineapple over and around the meat. Serve with rice and steamed greens.

I know it's been some time since I posted - apologies!

Pot Roast Guinea Fowl with Onion Sauce

Recently I was invited to a French guinea fowl masterclass and what a fabulous evening it was.  Andy Stephenson, chef/propritor of Hallidays in West Sussex, gave a brilliant demonstration of the versatility of this wonder of the poultry world. It's been a while since I've eaten guinea fowl and it was good to be reminded of just how tasty it is.

Andy talked the group of assembled bloggers through the highlights of the bird - the simplicity with which it can be treated due to the richer than chicken flavour, low in fat it is a good source of protein particularly as the birds are raised to a high welfare standard. At the same time, with enormous skill, he demonstrated boning out and stuffing the legs with a truffled mousse, gently hot smoking the breast to be the star element of a sublimely French salad with black pudding, fried apple and toasted hazelnuts and then completed this fabulous hat trick with the balantine served atop a platter of spring vegetables with a gorgeous light cream sauce.

The following week I noticed the Ginger Pig was selling guinea fowl, not just French but label rouge from the Gers, where once we had a house, and a region well known for its fabulous poultry. Gotta be a sign! I bought one, vaguely wondering about my ability to bone and stuff the legs with mousse, but once home I set on another course. I found an English recipe of Frances Bissell's that pot roasted the bird with herbs and garlic lifted with citrus peel under the skin and finished with a cream sauce. I couldn't resist.

 Pot Roast Guinea Fowl, stuffed with herbs and garlic, with onion sauce

I do indeed mean a whole head of garlic here, but don't be afraid. The long wet cooking softens it down till it is just a deep flavour to the finished sauce.

1 free range guinea fowl
fresh herbs such as tarragon, chervl, parsley and thyme
1/2 lemon
1 head of garlic, new season if possible
55g butter
1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tbspn brandy
75ml dry white wine 
2 tbspns cream


Gently ease the skin away from the breasts and thighs of the guinea fowl, inserting your fingers between skin and flesh at the end of the bird to make a pocket between the two. Push the soft herbs under the skin as well as small tender sprigs of thyme. Pare off thin strips of lemon zest and put them into the bird's cavity, together with any extra herbs. Squeeze the lemon juice and rub it over the outside then lightly season the whole both inside and out.


Peel all the garlic and, in a deep flameproof casserole, fry them in the butter with the onion slices for a few minutes without letting them brown. Turn the guinea fowl in the hot butter till the skin is well coated then add the brandy and wine. Cover with a lid and cook in a pre-heated oven at 175C/325F/Gas 3 for about 90 minutes.


Transfer the bird, whole, to a warm serving dish and cover with foil. Pour the cooking juices through a fine sieve, crushing the remaining juice from the garlic, into a small pan and bring to the boil. Add more seasoning if necessary, cream if you like, and perhaps sharpen with a drop of lemon.


Serve with the bird.

It made a wonderful dinner that night just with mashed potatoes and rocket garnish to soak up the gravy, and cold it was the star of salad the following night. I pulled the last of the flesh from the carcass and boiled the bones for stock, then froze the lot for a final future feast from my birdy of risotto with wild mushrooms.

Chicken Chasseur

I made chicken chasseur to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day. I know, I know it's a French bistro classic, redolent of the seventies and sleek dinner parties but my recipe comes from Cookery School - the cook book from the Channel 4 series of that name currently running most afternoons. The chef is none other than Richard Corrigan, a proud Irishman and extraordinarily talented chef. The show is great - and fast becoming a secret guilty pleasure.

There is a varied bunch of people who cook with different degrees of talent/competence and he takes them through three recipes each day, basic, intermediate and advanced, focussing on one ingredient. Food writer Gizzi Erskine oversees the process, highlighting techniques and explaining processes while wearing the most fabulous collection of sixties inspired frocks. The contestants watch Corrigan's demonstration, make notes and, after tasting his perfect version, must replicate the dish within a very specific time. As they struggle and panic he visits their cook stations, offering advice, demonstrating techniques and being at times really harsh about the food being produced. This is no mythically cuddly Oirish man but someone intent on raising the skill and realising the talent of his pupils. The whole point of the show is that they must demonstrably learn. Showing off is pointless. And it's that which I find fascinating.

Last night I made my first attempt at one of the recipes from this comprehensive book. Chicken Chasseur was from the advanced section and I suspect chef would be less than pleased with the slight modifications I made which would more realistically place it in the simpler categories. I had chicken in the freezer that the butcher had already jointed for me, but then their skill is so much greater than mine and it would be a shame not to utilise it.

The next alteration was to buy dried tagliatelle rather than make my own. Thing is, I used to own a pasta machine, and it did indeed make spectacularly wonderful pasta. But I was very very very slow, so while dinner is usually lateish round ours, if it was fresh pasta on the menu it was past bedtime before dinner was served. I got better, it's true, but never fast!

The final difference was unintentional and, it turned out, not too serious. I was convinced I had a bottle of Madeira, so sure in fact I didn't bother checking till I was actually cooking. Turned out it was Marsala. Oops. The final dish tasted divine so not a disaster. So good in fact that I have a sneaking suspicion Chef Corrigan would approve.

Chicken Chasseur

Not making my own pasta meant this was ready in less than an hour, so definitely one for the midweek repertoire

Serves 4

30g plain flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
20g unsalted butter
2 shallots, peeled and cut into quarters
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
175g chestnut msuhrooms, cut into quarters
3 tablespoons thyme leaves
100ml Madeira
200ml fresh chicken stock
100ml passata
100ml double cream
4 tablespoons finely chopped tarragon

Place the flour on a plate and season with salt and pepper, then roll the chicken pieces in the flour.

Heat a large casserole pot and add half the butter and half the olive oil. Once hot, put in the floured chicken pieces. Cook over a medium to high heat for 4-5 minutes, until golden brown. Remove the chicken and leave to rest.

Put the other tablespoon of olive oil into the pot and add the shallots. Cook for 3 minutes until they begin to go soft. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes, then add the mushrooms and thyme. Cook for a further 2 minutes.

Pour in the Madeira to deglaze the pan. Return the chicken pieces and add the chicken stock and passata. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

Just before serving add the cream and simmer for a further 5 minutes. Serve with tagliatelle, spooning on lots of delicious sauce, and garnish with the chopped tarragon.

Recipe extracted from 'Cookery School', brought to you by Channel 4 with recipes by Richard Corrigan. Published on the 3rd March (Penguin HB, £20)



The show is back next week if you fancy learning a thing or two!

Thai Chicken Biryani

Spicy mint sauce accompaniment

I know, I know biryani is quintessentially Indian, a magnificently spiced dish of rice and meat, or fish or vegetables, often the centrepiece of a feast. It is a generous offering, usually made in quantities that require sharing, what's not to love? This version though is distinctively thai, and just to muddy the cultural waters further is an adaptation of (Australian) David Thompson's recipe in Thai Street Food by Andrea Nguyen on her lovely site Viet World Kitchen, the yoghurt is Greek and my kitchen is in London. How fabulously multicultural can you get?

The thing is, the last time I made biryani, a lamb one, I was disappointed. It was 'nice' I decided and that, from me, is faint praise indeed! It lacked interest, had insufficient depth of flavour and spicing, a bit ordinary, really. I wanted so much more. When I came across this recipe I was delighted - though not authentic it really ticked my boxes, seemingly offering the complexity I'd missed last time. It coincided with the offer to try some yoghurt by Total - had to be tried.

It worked brilliantly, I'm pleased to say. I made a couple of small changes to the original but it is pretty much as I found it.

Thai Chicken Biryani

Serves 6-8 very well indeed

It is slow to make but not difficult, so don't be put off by the long list of instructions. It was a pleasant way to spend Sunday afternoon with great results.

Marinated chicken

3 tablespoons coarse chopped coriander stems
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped ginger
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/4 cup plain yoghurt, low-fat or full-fat
8 to 10 chicken thighs - I used 1 1/2 whole chickens cut into eighths

Spicy mint sauce

1 or 2 green Thai chiles
2 slices peeled fresh ginger, chopped
2 slices peeled galangal, chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
A pinch of salt
2 cups coarsely chopped mint leaves
2 generous cup coarsely chopped cilantro leaves and stems
3 to 4 tablespoons rice vinegar
Water

2 1/2 cups basmati rice
3 1/3 cups chicken stock
3 tablespoons canola oil or chicken fat
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallot
3-inch piece cassia bark, or 1 1/2-inch stick cinnamon
3 Thai cardamom pods, or 1 green cardamom pod, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 large tomato, coarsely chopped
1 cup chopped cilantro leaves and stems
1 cup chopped thai basil leaves
2 pandan leaves, tied in a knot (optional)
1/4 cup plain yoghurt

Garnishes

1/4 to 1/3 cup Crispy Fried Shallots
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro leaves
1 small cucumber, seeded and sliced
1/3 cup Thai Sweet Chile Sauce (optional)

1. For the seasoning paste, use a mini food processor to grind the coriander stems, ginger, garlic, turmeric, salt, and sugar to a coarse texture. (Or use a mortar and pestle.) Transfer half of the paste to a bowl to marinate the chicken.

Set aside the remaining paste for the rice.

To the paste for the chicken, add the fish sauce and 1/4 cup yoghurt. Stir to blend well. Set aside.

2. Remove the skin from the chicken. (Save it for rendering instant schmaltz for the rice, if you like!) Add to the seasoning paste containing the yogurt. Stir to coat well. Set aside for 1 hour to marinate. Or cover and refrigerate for up to 4 hours, setting it out at room temperature to remove some of the chill.

3. Meanwhile, make the mint sauce. Use a mini food processor to grind the chiles, ginger, galangal, sugar, and salt to a fine texture. Add the coriander, mint, and vinegar. Grind to a fine texture. Add water by the tablespoon to create a spoonable texture. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

4. Rinse the rice in a mesh strainer and set aside to dry and drain. Put the stock in a pot and heat to a simmer. Meanwhile, heat the oil (or chicken fat) in a large wide pot over medium-high heat. Fry the shallot for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring, until golden. Add the remaining seasoning paste, cassia, cardamom, and bay leaf tied into a piece of muslin for easy retrieval.. Fry until aromatic, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the tomato, cilantro, and mint. Cook, stirring until the tomato breaks down. Add the chicken, and stir to combine. Cook, stirring, for 3 to 5 minutes, until the chicken no longer looks raw. Lower the heat, if necessary.

5. Add the rice and pandan leaves, stirring to combine well. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes, until the rice turns opaque. Add the hot stock (expect sizzling) and 1/4 cup yoghurt.Lower the heat slightly, cook for 3 to 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid has been absorbed and there is a glossy layer of orange-yellow liquid at the top. The stock will bubble up through little craters dotting the surface.

Cover, lower the heat to low, and cook for 25 to 30 minutes. Lift the lid to make sure the rice is cooked. Turn off the heat and let the rice rest for 10 minutes. Use a spatula or large spoon to gently fluff the rice and turn the chicken. There will be delicious browned bits at the bottom. Let the rice sit for another 10 minutes before serving.

Transfer to a platter or shallow bowl, sprinkle with the crisp shallots and coriander.

Serve with a plate of cucumbers slices and the sauces.

I served it in the middle of the table, straight from the pan - but it was with friends! The final dish was better even than I was expecting with fabulous spicing, a delicate hint of creaminess from the yoghurt, good chicken and particularly tasty rice. So good I didn't get round to taking a photo.

Leftovers cold for lunches worked a treat.

Grouse

Saturday night I finally cooked my very first grouse. It was also my very first taste of this lovely bird. The man collected them from Charlie at the Ginger Pig Friday. Resisiting the temptation to cook immediately I lay the little beauties on a plate.

And tucked them into the fridge overnight.

I went through lots of suggestions and recipes and initially led astray by the idea of red wine sauce. Finally settled on simple is best. I unbaconed them, removed their hearts and livers, and dusted with flour. Sprig of thyme and a knob of butter in the cavity.



The innards I poached briefly in a small amount of chicken stock. The bacon I chopped and put into a roasting pan with a serious knob of butter. Pan into hot oven - Gas 7 - till bubbling. Add birds, drench with hot fat, roast for 10 minutes.

Baste again with hot fat, roast another ten minutes. Remove birds to a warm plate and let rest, covered with foil, for another ten minutes. Make toast. Drain most of the fat from the roasting pan and add the hearts and livers, mashing them into the bacony juices.

Dance the birdies onto plates. Spread toast with the livers and juices mash. Insert bunch of fresh washed watercress into fundament. Add side of creamed cabbage with (more) bacon. Because you can never have too much bacon.


My first ever grouse dinner is served. Brilliant thing - and a worthy meal to match my excitement at the prospect.

No idea why I waited so long.

Chicken & Leek Pie

Made this the week before last as an experiment. It's still so bloody cold in London - I planted seeds out a month ago which, after a momentary sprouting, are now dormant. Soon to be dead I fear if the sun does not return. Yesterday there was a massive hail storm, night time temperatures are all in single figures and day time feels the same most days. Grrrrr.

Even if it's not as cold as it was in February bbq weather it ain't. So I wanted the comfort and pleasure of a pie but one that was not as dense and rich as a beef pie would be. I'd been thinking about poaching chicken and the simple method that I learned from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail, where the poultry is brought to a simmer with leeks and carrots and things then immediately taken off the heat, covered and left to cool completely. Result - deeply flavoured succulent flesh. Using this as a starting point meant that, though a pie would take two days to make, neither day would be particularly time consuming, and pie could be had mid week. Joy.

Though the market is not yet full of the bounties of spring - no mountains of courgettes or sweet fleshy tomatoes - there are fine leeks and carrots and celery and the first of the new potatoes, all of which promised a certain delicacy if added to my pie and a variety of fine flavours. It was possibly a little more work than I had at first anticipated, but served up, it has everything you could wish for on a chill spring night.

Chicken & Leek Pie

Day One

1 free range chicken cut into six, about 1.5kg in weight
2 carrots, unpeeled and chopped
2 leeks, chopped
1 onion, unpeeled and halved
1 whole head of garlic, cut through widthways
2 sticks celery, chopped
2 bay leaves
a bundle of thyme, parsley and rosemary
20 or so whole peppercorns
sea salt

Place the chicken and all the ingredients down to the sea salt in a large pot, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. As soon as it boils cover it with a lid, take it off the heat and leave it to cool, which takes about 6 hours.

I then left the chicken in the broth in the fridge for the day before making

dinner next night.

1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 tbspn olive oil
2tbspns plain flour

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp salt
4 carrots, peeled and cut into rings
2 sticks celery, chopped – save the leaves to chop and add at the end
About 1 litre of chicken stock from the stock the chicken was poached in
30 leeks, washed and sliced
200g peas, frozen is fine

Meat from the poached chicken

Small bunch chopped parsley + chopped celery leaves
1kg new potatoes, thinly sliced, but don’t rinse
olive oil

Take the cold chicken from the stock, strip all the meat from the bones and put it to one side. Over a high heat, reduce the stock that the chicken was cooked in by about a quarter.

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onions and garlic till translucent – about 10 minutes. Add the chopped carrots and celery and stir for a couple of minutes to coat in the oil.

Mix the flour, cayenne and salt together and stir into the cooked onion mixture over a low heat. Cook gently for five minutes or so till the flour has lost its rawness.

Add about two thirds of the hot stock and stir the veg through it. Simmer, stirring, until the stock is smooth and has thickened.

Add the leeks and peas. Cook till the stock comes back to a simmer. Add the reserved chicken and more stock till you have a good consistency for a pie filling. Check the seasoning and add more if needed.

Stir through the chopped parsley and celery leaves then turn off the heat.

Pour the chicken and vegetables into a pie dish,then top with overlapping slices of potato. Brush with olive oil and season with a little salt and pepper.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes till the potatoes are a little crispy on top but soft underneath.

Let it sit for a few minutes then serve onto large plates, with some crusty bread perhaps to mop up the juices.

.

You could gussy it up with a little cream or white wine in the sauce or perhaps some asparagus when the price comes down a little, but just like this it is a fine pie.

Chicken & Courgette Risotto

Made risotto for dinner and it turned out smooth, delicate and soothing. Lovely flavours, great textures, seriously good. Got me thinking about cheffy tricks, the little things chefs have up their collective sleeve that makes a dish work really well or takes it from one level to the next with a piece of magic generally unknown and unrecorded. But if you trawl as much as I do for good food an occasional nugget will fall into your cooking pot that adds that extra something to the dish du jour.

The reason risotto ended up on the menu at all was that I'd bought and roasted a chicken on the weekend for a fine Sunday dinner, and then had it cold for the next few days in lunchboxes with salad. Having paid £14 for the bird it had already translated into £1.75 per meal and there was still the strong boned carcass and a reasonable amount of meat to be picked from the bones and a fair amount of skin from the underside. I had stock in the freezer, carnaroli rice in the cupboard and courgettes and celery in the fridge. Had risotto written all over it!

It is true that the rice needs lots of stirring for a creamy finish but that is generally well known and the only decision to be made is just how long you will stand stirring smoothly - for ages if you find it relaxing or no time at all if you mostly find it irritating. But the things that took this one from nice to amazing was the stirring in of butter and Parmesan at the very end, off the heat, then covering the pan and leaving it to 'fluff' for about five minutes. Marvellous the difference that makes.

My other trick was crispy chicken skin. It really is something I saw a sleb chef - sorry can't remember which one - do on the tv. Chicken skin, particularly the skin on the back and the thighs can be transformed by simply shredding into thickish strips then warmed through in a dry pan over a low heat. The fat rends, the skin turns a rich gold, and the flavour is essence of chicken. Serious wow. Scattered over the top of the risotto it adds a brilliant finish.

Chicken & Courgette Risotto

2 tbspns olive oil

1 tbspn butter

1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

2 stalks celery, washed and finely sliced

200g carnaroli or other risotto rice

1 litre of stock, warmed to simmering

1 medium courgette, quartered lengthways, then diced

About a cup of cooked chicken flesh

As much skin as you can strip from the carcass

2 tbspns butter

3 tablespoons Parmesan, freshly grated

2 tablespoons flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

Heat the olive oil with one tablespoon of butter in a large heavy based pan, add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally over a medium heat till the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and celery and stir for a minute till the garlic changes colour. Add the rice and stir to coat with the onion/butter mix.

Pour one ladle of stock over the rice and stir continuously till it is absorbed by the rice, which will be fairly quick. Keep adding the stock, one ladle at a time, stirring a lot, adding a new one each time the previous one has been absorbed.

After about 15 minutes of ladling and stirring add the chicken and courgettes and stir through. Taste and season. Continue adding the stock gradually till all the stock is used. Taste the rice - it should be creamy, not chalky, but still with a tiny resistance to your bite. If it has not reached this point and all the stock is gone add boiling water till it is perfect.

Leave the pan on the hob but turn off the heat. Stir through the butter, cheese and parsley, cover the pan and leave to sit for a few minutes.

Meanwhile put a small fry pan over a low heat and add the shredded chicken skin. Warm through, stirring, until the fat rends and the skin crisps.

Take the lid off the risotto, check the seasoning, then scatter the crisp skin over the rice and serve.

Thoroughly delightful. Good next day for lunch.

And I still have a carcass for more stock...

Boiled Chicken with leeks and aioli

Fergus Henderson is rightly famous for his long followed creed of nose to tail eating and the pared down aesthetic of St John. His guiding principle seems to be that it’s only polite if you knock an animal on the head to eat it all: tripe, heart, feet, ears, head, tail. It’s what he's renowned for, his signature dish is roasted bone marrow with parsley caper sauce, which is utterly sublime. It seems his infamy is based on the notion that he only cooks the offal bits but really he cooks the whole animal - and lots of vegetables - sublimely.

I'm lucky enough to work near enough to St John at Smithfields to have an occasional lunch in the bar but one of the stand out treats for my birthday this year was eating again in the restaurant, a much expanded experience to the small plates in the bar. Everything was simply outstandingly good from langoustines with the best mayonnaise I have ever eaten - so good I had to fight the rest of the party off 'sharing' it to a plate of madeline hot from the oven that were indeed intended for sharing.

For my main course I opted for poached chicken with leeks, juicy, tender and deeply flavoured, just wonderful. Simple, elegant and as close to perfect as poached chicken can be. So I checked my copy of Nose to Tail and found the recipe for it, which also suggested serving the finished dish with aioli. Though it needs to be done over two days, logically, so the meat can cool completely it is a very simple dish to make, good as I remembered it and quite unlike most of the food I make. British and ethereal at the same time.

Boiled Chicken and Leeks

1 free range chicken (slit the skin between the leg and breast) or I used 6 chicken legs, about 1.5kg in weight

2 carrots, unpeeled and chopped

2 leeks, chopped

1 onion, unpeeled and halved

1 whole head of garlic

2 sticks celery, chopped

2 bay leaves

a bundle of thyme, parsley and rosemary

20 or so whole peppercorns

sea salt

6 leeks, trimmed

Place the chicken and all the ingredients down to the sea salt in a large pot, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. As soon as it boils cover it with a lid, take it off the heat and leave it to cool, which takes about 6 hours.

I then left the chicken in the broth in the fridge for the day before making dinner next night.

Remove the chicken from the stock and put it into a clean pot. Strain the stock and put some of it in with the chicken, retaining enough of the broth for another pot to cook the leeks. Bring the stock to a gentle simmer and cook for 30 minutes. You will now have a moist bird - or bits - without it being toughened or falling apart from hard boiling.

In a separate pan put the trimmed leeks and the remaining stock. Bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 7 minutes till tender.

Serve the chicken and leeks with a splash of the chicken broth, a bowl of the aioli and coarse sea salt. As with any boiled unbrined meat, coarse sea salt applied just before eating is very good.

Save the rest of the stock for future cooking.

Aioli

10 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

sea salt and pepper

2 free range egg yolks

about 300ml of extra virgin olive oil

juice of 2 lemons - you may not need it all.

Put the garlic into a processer chopping bowl with a pinch of salt (to help break it up) and a good grinding of pepper. Whizz until finely pulped, this is important as you do not want garlic chippings in the aioli. Add the egg yolks, let them meet the garlic for a moment, then carefully and slowly add the oil in a gently stream, whisking all the while. The emulsion should safely hold 300ml, perhaps a little more. Now add the lemon juice, tasting as you go. Adjust the seasoning, then refrigerate.

The aioli is delicate and pungent simultaneously and really brings the finished dish together. I served it with hot boiled new potatoes to make a delicately pale plate. I mixed the leftover potatoes and leeks into some aioli as a salad to go with the remaining chicken next day for lunch.

This was one of the nicest meals I've cooked in a while amidst pretty stiff competition. As Fergus Henderson says, making this dish is emphatically worth it.

Jerk Chicken

Scotch bonnets. One of the world's hottest chillies they strike fear into my heart. At Brixton Market - a fabulous place that couldn't be more different to Borough - they sell them for £1 a scoop to their largely African and Caribbean clientele. I'm terrified to touch them and people around me are buying them 30 or 40 at a time. They are very pretty things ranging in colour from a pale orangey pink to vivid startling reds. They have a sort of crumpled flesh and tend to be as long as they are wide - usually about 3cm. They twinkle brightly in big multicoloured heaps all round the market, the sight of them always somehow cheering, particularly in winter. Until this weekend I have never bought any, not once in the twenty five years I have been going to Brixton. Whenever they are mentioned it is always in the context of how hot they are, always garlanded too in exhortations to be careful when handling them, wash hands thoroughly, don't touch your eyes or any other sensitive bits for a long time, indeed wear gloves when handling to be sure you'll survive!

The hottest pepper grown commercially they are simply talked of in terms of 'intense' and 'extreme' - for the fiery flavor and their famed heat. The heat comes from capsaicin, among the most pungent naturally-occurring substances in the entire plant kingdom, and can be detected by humans in minute quantities. In the USA, police sometimes use a solution of capsaicin, as an alternative to "CS" spray, for subduing criminal suspects. Cruel, if you think about it, but bound to be effective.

Obviously not as adventurous as I'd like to believe I am, all the above put me off as if even touching them would break me out in blisters. But this weekend I wanted to try a new recipe for jerk chicken from the Levy Roots series on the beeb and if there is one common factor in all of the gazillion recipes for jerk it is scotch bonnet. I'd planned to make this dish in the week last week but somehow it didn't happen though the chicken was in the freezer. Then I found a nice sounding recipe for tarragon chicken and nearly cooked that instead - chickening out of the challenge as it were. But I really did like the sound of the hot sticky jerk marinade, so I girded my loins and bravely went to my local veg shop where I bought some onions and a single crinkly scotch bonnet. Just one. The woman serving weighed the onions, looked at the pepper shrugged and threw it in with the onions. At least if it burnt me to death I hadn't paid for it!

So braver than a brave thing I cut my little orange beauty in half. I was surprised at how good it smelled - a delicate floral aroma. Lovely. Reassured, I discarded the seeds and chopped it roughly meaning to use it all, then scraped half of it into the blender with the other ingredients. Figured better to start slow! I left the chicken in the fridge overnight and roasted it Sunday for lunch with rice and peas. The heat was definitely there but so was an amazing flavour - hot, sticky, sweet. Intense even.

Jerk Chicken

4 spring onions, green part only, chopped

1 Scotch bonnet chilli, chopped

3cm/1¼in piece root ginger, chopped

2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

100ml/3½fl oz cider vinegar

3 tbsp clear honey

2 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tbsp olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 pieces chicken

Blend all of the jerk marinade ingredients in a food processor until they form a smooth paste.

Place the chicken pieces into an ovenproof dish and pour over the jerk marinade, turning them to coat thoroughly in the marinade. Cover the dish and chill in the fridge for at least four hours, or ideally overnight, turning the pieces over every 2-3 hours.

Heat the oven to Gas 5/190C/375F. Put the chicken into a baking tray and bake for about 40 minutes, basting occasionally with the remaining marinade, till the chicken is blackening and decidedly fragrant.

This was really tender and juicy and fab with rice and peas. Hot? Yes but not as hot as many things I have eaten and the falvour was brillliant. I think the only thing that would seriously improve it is to cook it over fire - this would be one of the great barbecue marinades, great with pork too.

It's good when bravery pays off! Next time I will use a whole chilli.

Chicken Casserole with Butter Bean Mash

This well flavoured casserole is reminiscent of the kind of delicious comfort food my mother used to make when I was a child. It has a lovely flavour that really makes the chicken shine but you do need good quality chicken on the bone. Lots of butchers have special deals on thighs and drumsticks and this is a great way to make use of such a bargain. Sweet smoked paprika is available from speciality food shops and Brindisa at Borough.

Chicken & spinach casserole with creamy butter bean mash

Serves 4

Preparation time less than 30 minutes
Cooking time less than one hour

Ingredients

8 chicken pieces (thighs and/or drumsticks)

2 tbsp plain flour mixed in a plastic bag with 1 tspn of smoked sweet paprika and salt and pepper for dredging the chicken

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter

100g/4oz unsmoked bacon, sliced

2 carrots, peeled and cut into small batons
2 ribs celery, washed and thinly sliced

1 onion, roughly chopped

600ml/1 pint chicken stock or water

450g/1lb spinach, washed, stalks removed and discarded

1 tbsp potato flour dissolved with 1 tsp cold water

For the butter bean mash

500g/ 1lb dried butter beans, soaked overnight
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp ground cumin

Method

1. Dredge the chicken pieces in the seasoned flour until well coated. Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large, heavy saucepan over a moderate heat. Cook the chicken pieces, in batches if necessary, in the hot oil for 3 or 4 minutes, until the skin is crisp and golden. Remove the chicken to a plate.

2. Discard any remaining oil from the pan. Over a low heat, cook the bacon till the fat starts to rend, about 4 minutes. Add the carrots, celery and onions, stirring to coat them in the bacon fat, and cook until the onion is translucent.

3. Add 2-3 tbsp of the stock or water to the pan and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom with a wooden spoon. Add the remaining stock/water to the pan.

4. Return the chicken to the pan along with any juices that have accumulated on the plate. Cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 20-25 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the juices run clear when the flesh is pierced with a knife.


5. Wilt the spinach in a separate hot pan with just the water that remains from washing it, then drain and chop roughly.

6. When the chicken is cooked and the juices run clear when pierced with a skewer, stir in the chopped spinach and simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Check the seasoning.

7. Meanwhile, for the butter bean mash, drain the soaking butter beans and put them into a clean pan with unsalted water. Bring it to the boil, skim any scum from the surface then simmer for 15 minutes. Now add about a tablespoon of salt - salt added any earlier will toughen the beans and they will never soften. Continue to cook for another 15 minutes until the beans are tender.

8. Drain the butter beans, return them to the saucepan, add the olive oil and cumin and whizz with a stick blender till smooth.

9. Gradually add the potato flour/water mix to the casserole over a medium heat, stirring until the sauce thickens slightly and becomes glossy.

10. To serve, divide the butter bean mash equally among four deep bowls and ladle the chicken and sauce generously over the top.

This is easy enough to prepare for a midweek supper and you could cook it and then reheat next day, just adding the spinach at the end for a quick dinner. It's really good at this time of year when the days are a little warmer but there's no guarantee the nights will be the same.


It works out to a very reasonable £2 per serving.

Chicken & Broccoli Stir Fry

Chicken & Broccoli Stir Fry

That which doesn't kill you makes you stranger. Sometimes I love grafitti.

This week's bite club has a new set of rules - a process still in the making - but what I gathered is one ingredient of the week is broccoli. I'd planned to make some kind of stirfry -serendipity. Only my initial idea was making two dishes (never knowlingly make it simple), one chicken and one veg. Bought both. Then I was struck by a brainwave - chicken and broccoli stirfry. Quick, easy, less washing up!

This is an adaptation of a recipe from Charmaine Solomon that I have been making for years and years. It is a very subtle dish that makes brilliant use of both the stalks and the florets for their flavour and, especially, the contrast in textures between the smooth crunch of the stalks and the tiny flower heads catching the sauce. The meat, firm and juicy, is sliced thinly and then marinated in a little five spice which provides the encompassing flavour of the dish. The spice is rounded out and given depth with garlic and ginger and a hint of sweet from the shiaoxing wine.


Chicken & Broccoli Stir Fry

1 chicken breast
1/2 tspn five spice powder
1/2 tspn salt
500g broccoli
2 tbspns peanut oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 tbspn ginger, finely chopped
2 tspns light soy sauce
1 tbspn shiaoxing wine
2 tbspns chicken stock or water
1 tspn potato flour
2 tspns cold water

Bone and skin the chicken breast. Slice the flesh thinly and mix with five spice powder and salt.
Bring a little lightly salted water to the boil. Cut the broccoli into florets and the stalks into sticks about 3cm long and 1/2cm thick. Drop the stalks into the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes. Add the florets and, when the water comes back to the boil, cook for another minute. Drain the broccoli and refresh under cold water. It will be crisp bright green.

Heat the oil in a wok and add the garlic and ginger. Stir fry for 30 seconds, then add the chicken and toss over a high heat until the meat turns white.

Add soy, wine, stock or water and allow to simmer for 2 minutes.

Mix potato flour smoothly with the cold water, add to the wok and stir till it is thick and glossy.

Add the drained broccoli and toss gently to mix and heat through.

Serve hot over rice.

And cold next day for lunch.

Simple and fabulous.

And yours for less than a fiver.

Chicken Noodles with Holy Basil

I bought a chicken last week at Ginger Pig - a hefty thing costing about £14. I stuffed it with barley and bacon and roasted it to perfect golden perfection with potatoes and steamed carrots and peas and lashings of gravy for Sunday dinner. Just fabulous.

Lots left over and so we had cold chicken and stuffing and salads all week for our lunchboxes, undoubtedly the highlight of my working day. Friday night the carcass remained, with a few skerricks here and there of remaining flesh. I had a couple more chicken carcasses in the freezer from before so I defrosted those. I cleaned all the remaining chicken from my bird then put all the bones into a big pot with various bits of veg and made a couple of litres of fine stock, which now occupies the space vacated by the frozen carcasses.

I had quite a reasonable amount of shards and shreds of flesh, had been thinking of making chicken and tarragon soup but we went out for dinner instead. So Saturday night I defrosted some egg noodles and stir fried them with the remaining chicken, lots of chilli and a handful of the rest of the holy basil, also from last week. A frugal meal that was full of flavour and colour, and quick and easy to boot. Feeling smugly satisfied and decidely well fed!

Chilli Noodles with Holy Basil

1/2 tspn fennel seeds

50ml shaoxing rice wine

50ml fish sauce

50 ml oyster sauce

400g fresh egg noodles

2 banana shallots, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 red bird's-eye chillies, finely chopped

1 red pepper, finely sliced into long thin strips

100g mangetout, finely sliced into long strips

1 cup holy basil leaves

1 cup cooked chicken, or raw thinly sliced

1 tbspn chilli oil

1 tbspn sambal oeleck - a chilli sauce available from any asian grocers

Mix the rice wine, fish sauce and oyster sauce in a little bowl.

Heat a wok till smoking then add the chili oil and fry the fennel seeds, chopped shallots, garlic and chilli until fragrant - a couple of minutes. Add the sambal oelek, red pepper and mangetout and toss with the mixed liquids. When it starts to bubble add the chicken and toss for a minute then add the noodles and half a cup of water. When it boils you turn the heat right down, cover with a lid and let it simmer for a couple of minutes till the noodles cook.

Toss through the basil leaves and voila!

Dinner is ready.

Eating Chicken

Over on A Merrier World Kate has organised a campaign to highlight the importance of knowing the way in which your chickens are raised. She has written a fascinating piece about the last 50 years or so of commercial poultry production, which is frightening in its detail about intensively reared birds. It is well worth reading and pondering before you buy another chicken from the supermarket - or indeed from anywhere.

In an earlier piece she challenged food bloggers in general to join together to raise the awareness of the ramifications of factory production of these birds. I think it is hugely important and so this post is simply devoted to adding my voice to this campaign.

I wrote a piece a little while ago paying £17 for a chicken and how that made me panic slightly at spending so much. Then I cooked that lovely chicken and we ate various meals for a week and by the end it turned into an economical purchase. The last thing I made from it was a very fine Chicken and Tarragon Soup.

I firmly believe that it is worth paying more for better quality and using it all, thereby being frugal at the same time as being extremely well fed. Well worth aspiring to.

Caribbean Chicken and Rice - Pelau

One of the many good things about volunteering to cook for Food Chain is learning to make things I've never heard of before. We have a fair proportion of service users who are of African or Caribbean descent who look, like all the rest, to find food they know when they open their lunch on Sundays. Given that part of the ethos of the charity is to feed people well to add a little joy to their week we need to send out food that is familiar to them. I am fine on regular dinners, the hardest thing with them is deciding on which particular meal to cook. Vegetarian and Indian food I have a lot of experience making, eating and enjoying.

But African and Caribbean? No.

I have bought food at Notting Hill Carnival from street vendors and had an occasional meal from African kitchens and tiny Brixton restaurants but, despite the fact that London has a quite sizeable population from these countries the food has a very low public profile. There has been no parallel spreading of these ethnic foods into mainstream life to match the reach of, traditionally, Indian and Chinese or the more recent proliferation of Thai and Japanese - albeit bastardised versions of such. There are probably more shops selling Polish food now than African. There is the magnificence of Brixton market - and I do shop there a lot - but it hasn't spread more generally. Tesco sells no ready meal version of groundnut stew in the way they shift billions of chicken tikkas. The information and recipes are out there but you have to search. Cooking for food chain has led me to look.

What I found recently was a one pot meal called Pelau that sounded very tasty with the added advantage that we could make it on a Sunday morning and have it out on time. Pelau is one of Trindad’s signature national dishes. Chicken is seared in caramelized sugar after being steeped in a garlicky marinade then cooked in coconut milk until it is falling off the bone soft and subtly sweet. Sounded good.

I found the initial recipe on Aidan Brooks blogsite - in his favourite recipes section. Then I googled it and came up with many subtle variations on the original - the one thing they had in common was all of them extolling the pleasure in the eating. The other ting needed for the making of this was the need for green seasoning. Never heard of it. Apparently it is essential to the final dish. So I took myself to Brixton to one of the big Afro-Caribbean shops and checked the shelves. Sure enough there were rows and rows of bottles of different sizes.

Looked interesting.

Bought some.

After all I did want this to work.

The following recipe is my version that I made at home for the man and me - it is so good there is now a bottle of green seasoning in the pantry waiting for the next time.

Rice, Chicken and Pigeon Peas - Pelau

For the marinade
2 chicken quarters
1 tbsp mixed green seasoning
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp tomato purée
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

For the rice and peas:
1/2 cup rice
1 large onion
1 green bell pepper
1 tin cooked pigeon peas (or gungo peas)
1 hot chilli pepper
1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 cups chicken stock or water
1 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tbsp vegetable oil

In a bowl, mix together the green seasoning, crushed garlic, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, tomato purée, salt and pepper.

Cut the chicken pieces through the joint to make two legs and two thighs. Remove the skin from the chicken pieces and rub in the marinade. Cover and leave for an hour.

Prepare the vegetables by finely chopping the onion and hot chilli pepper. Dice the pepper into 1cm pieces.

Heat the vegetable oil in a lidded pan big enough to hold the finished meal and add the brown sugar. Keep it moving, as the sugar will dissolve after a few minutes and turn toffeeish. Add the seasoned chicken pieces - be careful they will spit - and cook for about 5 minutes all over until they have a golden brown surface colour.

Now add in the chopped onion and pepper and the pigeon peas and continue to cook, stirring for a few minutes. Stir in the rice. Mix thoroughly. Add in the chilli pepper and then pour in the coconut milk and the chicken stock. Stir all of the ingredients together well, bring to the boil then reduce the heat so the mixture is just simmering. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes until all liquid has been absorbed.

Add more liquid if needed until the rice is cooked. The final dish should be nicely dry, but not dried out.

Served in big bowls it was a great summer supper - and with very little washing up at the end!