Pollo Alla Cacciatora (or Hunters Chicken - with apologies to the hunter, the chicken, and Nigella Lawson)

Cooking to the clock - not for me. I can rarely put a meal on the table at the time I've estimated to allow everyone else to get on with other things. All these challenges - Masterchef, BakeOff - where you have to produce your finest in a set amount of time? Putting aside the fact that I don't generally watch them and don't really approve of them, I could NEVER do that. I'd be completely rubbish. May be that's why I don't approve. But I digress. 

You'll remember, perhaps, my fling with Jamie Oliver and his 30 Minute Meals? Definitely stressful, even if the dinner that resulted was rather delicious - and (here's the crux of it) NOT AN ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE AT ALL. Flinging stuff around, feeling up against it. Cooking is something I genuinely use to relax. It sounds so trite, but all that chopping, stirring, tasting - I love it. But the more time pressure there is on me to get food on the table, the less I enjoy it.

I have, in fact, been feeling very much up against it recently in various elements of life. Combine that with my ridiculous need to cook proper food for the kids (and the Husband, although he's away this week) every night, relaxation or not, and it's not a happy picture. In my last menu planning session, I turned, for inspiration, to Nigella Express. I haven't paid that much attention to Express apart from a rather fabulous cheesecake offering that's graced a number of our smarter occasions in the last few years. Pollo Alla Cacciatora caught my eye (it's on page 296 of my version), and onto the meal plan it went. When you're feeling under pressure, and Nigella says you can have "tea on the table from scratch in comfortably under half an hour" well - it's almost irresistible.

Of course, I had failed to have on hand some of the ingredients that meant the meal could in fact achieve that golden 30 minutes, and I added in some extras, but, as Nigella says, the fact that this is an old recipe "grants a certain amount of licence". Anyway, it was delicious. I'm sure the hunter would have approved. I hope Nigella would too. And it did only take a smidge longer than 30 mins...

Pollo Alla Cacciatora

Serves 4

Olive oil
1 fat clove of garlic, peeled & finely chopped
1 medium onion, peeled and quite finely chopped
100g pancetta cubes
1 sprig of rosemary, leaves only, finely chopped
500g chicken thigh fillets, cut into 3-4 pieces
salt & pepper
125ml red wine
1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp sugar
6 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 x 400g cannellini beans

Add a slug of olive oil (about a tablespoon's worth) to a large frying pan, and add the chopped onions and garlic. 

Sweat the onions gently for 5 mins or so then add the pancetta and rosemary and cook for another 5 minutes.

Add the chicken and sprinkle a couple of pinches of salt and grinds of pepper, then tip in the wine and bring it up to a bubble. Bubble for a couple of minutes then add the tomatoes, bay leaves and sugar.

Add the sliced mushrooms to the pan.

Turn down the heat and simmer for a good 20 minutes or so till the chicken is cooked. 

Drain the cannellini beans and stir into the sauce. Leave for a couple of minutes to heat up

Serve.

Chicken & Chorizo Couscous

Yes, I know, I know, another chorizo recipe. But I was talking about this recipe on a Facebook group I'm part of and was looking to see if I'd posted it on this blog as an easy way of passing the recipe on, and I realised that I hadn't - or if I had, I couldn't find it. So here it is. Chicken & Chorizo Couscous.

I'm not a great fan of leftovers of cold meat, but for reasons of economy and saving the planet, it is better to buy a whole chicken and use it up scrupulously, down to the boiling of bones to make stock, rather than buying portions (although I do admit to buying chicken thighs occasionally). This dish has almost become a reason to have a roast chicken at the weekend in itself. It's a ridiculously easy and tasty midweek dish and if you are roasting a chicken this weekend, I suggest you keep back enough cooked meat, and boil up your bones, to knock this up early next week.

This is of course open to various adaptations depending on what you have in the cupboards, and I freely fiddle with quantities and ingredients. I have used tamarind paste in place of harissa, and made it veggie too. You definitely need spice of some sort, though, A bit of a kick, otherwise it's just a bit bland, especially if you're leaving out the chorizo (although why would you?). I also recommend serving with your favourite chilli sauce. Tabasco is good, as is Hot Smoky Bastard.

 And finally, seeing as how we're bring scrupulous, I believe this once came from a Good Food magazine. I can't find it on the Good Food website any more, but the index card I meticulously copied it on to (obviously when I was going through an organised phase) has the initials 'GF' by the recipe title. Anyway, I'm sure they won't mind me repeating it here.

Chicken & Chorizo Couscous

serves 6 (allegedly - but don't bank on it if folks are hungry)

350g couscous
350g cold cooked chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces
150g cooking chorizo, skinned if necessary and diced
3 medium tomatoes or equivalent cherry tomatoes, chopped up
a couple of handfuls of frozen peas
900ml hot chicken stock 
2 tsp harissa paste
generous pinch of saffron (if you have)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp olive oil
chopped fresh coriander to serve (optional - more often than not I don't have it but parsley works, or just go without).

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160 fan.

Combine the couscous, chicken, chorizo, tomatoes and frozen peas in a large dish.

Stir the harissa paste spices and olive oil into the stock, then pour the spicy stock mix over the couscous mixture and stir together.

Cover the dish with foil - or, if it has one, a lid - and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Fluff up with a fork before serving.

It really is that simple, and believe me when I tell you it's utterly delicious. If there are leftovers, they are great cold, the next day for lunch.

Pot Roast Chicken

"What is your favourite food, Mummy?"

Well now, there's a thing. What actually IS my favourite food?

Blue particularly seems to be troubled by my inability to answer this question - or to give him a the same answer when he asks me again...

You see my favourite thing to eat depends on so many things: the weather, the time of day, who I'm with, where I am. My favourite thing to eat in Venice on a bright March afternoon is fritto misto washed down with a glass or two of chilled prosecco. My favourite thing to eat immediately after a long walk along the North Pembrokeshire coastal path is a toasted teacake with lots of Welsh butter, washed down with a cup of builders' tea (and then some Lamb Saag Balti). My favourite thing to eat after a day body boarding in North Devon is curry. You get where I'm coming from...

The other week, Sunday afternoon, the end of a busy weekend and a late night on the Saturday, my favourite thing to eat was this pot roast chicken. It's a recipe my mum passed on to me in typically vague form, but the combination of the juicy free-range chicken, lemon-scented sausage-meat stuffing, smoky bacon, meltingly soft caramelised onions, the potatoes luxurious, essentially 'confit'-style, cooked in the fat of the chicken - it's just got comfort written all over it. It's definitely not a meal for the calorie counters amongst you, but I make no apology for that. This dish is all about comfort food. And if you were wondering about what could possibly follow this pudding-wise, I recommend some butterscotch apple pudding. With cream. Waistlines are for wimps...

Pot Roast Chicken

Feeds around 6 (although if you feed 4 with it and have some bacon & potatoes left over, it makes great soup if you chuck in a leek or 2 and some chicken stock...)

Ingredients

1.5kg free range chicken

freshly ground salt & pepper

100-120g sausagemeat (or around 4 decent size, good quality sausages)

1.5 tbsp breadcrumbs
small bunch of thyme stalks, leaves only
grated rind of a lemon
50g unsalted butter
1 tbsp vegetable oil
300g shallots
200g bacon lardons/pancetta
1kg waxy potatoes
large bunch of parsley

Method

Season the chicken and set aside.

Mix together the sausagemeat, breadcrumbs, thyme leaves and lemon rind, stuff into the chicken and pull down the neck skin over the opening of the cavity.

Pre-heat the oven to 160C.

Melt the butter and oil together in a large casserole with a tight fitting lid.

Brown the chicken all over in the hot fat then reduce the heat under the casserole to low.

Peel the shallots and place in a small pan with the bacon. Cover with water, bring to the boil, then remove from the heat and drain. 

Add the shallots and bacon to the casserole with the chicken, cover the casserole with the lid and cook gently for 15 minutes.

While the chicken, shallots and bacon is cooking, dice the potatoes. Once the initial 15 minutes cooking time is up, add the potatoes to the casserole and turn in the fat. Pop the lid back on the casserole and put the whole thing in the oven for around an hour till the chicken is cooked.

Chop up the parsley. Remove the chicken from the casserole dish, toss the parsely into the potatoes, shallots and bacon, then serve.

And don't forget the butterscotch apple pudding.

Tarragon Chicken

I have a confession.

Last night we had a guest for dinner, a senior colleague of the Husband's, and I didn't make dessert. But it gets worse. Not only did I not MAKE dessert, I bought it from the supermarket I hate the most, And it was delicious. So credit where credit's due, although it sticks in my throat. Tescos, your 'Finest' Sicilian Lemon Tart is pretty good.

Sob.

The confession extends. Not only did I buy dessert but I threw seasonality, awareness of food miles and supporting the local economy to the wind, and bought tenderstem brocoli, asparagus and sugar snap peas all of which had been imported from the far ends of the earth, to go into a 'Spring' chicken casserole. Believe me, I feel badly about this - and my purse does too, because it was expensive compared to shopping in the market gardens and farm shops round here where unbelieveable amounts of veg can be picked up for less than a tenner. The problem as always is time. I was supposed to have more time once we'd moved, but what do you know? A new client, the geography and logistics of where we live, the unavoidable attraction of the beach, and all that extra time has been swallowed up just like that. And yesterday, having already established that I would have no time to make a dessert so would need to, gulp, buy one, factoring in everything else, the opportunity to visit either of my favourite veg shops was not going to materialise. It had to be the supermarket. 

Don't get me wrong, I've never said that I don't use the supermarkets - I do and am coming to see it as an inevitability of the life that we lead - but I really try to buy meat and veg, fish, cheese etc from local producers, and leave the supermarket for the boring stuff like cling film and dishwasher tablets.

So I'll beat myself with birch twigs a little longer and try harder next time, but in the meantime, the resulting chicken casserole (an amalgamation of a Leon recipe and one I found on the Good Food website) was pretty tasty, so I'll share it with you and you can make it with more ethically sourced and environmentally friendly veg...

Tarragon chicken

Serves 4 adults

1 tbsp rapeseed (or other) oil
2 rashers back bacon (or you could use the equivalent of pancetta etc)
500g skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 large clove of garlic, crushed
400g baby potatoes
2 tsp dried tarragon (no fresh to be had)
450ml veg stock
freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp dijon mustard
120g sugar snap peas (trimmed if necessary)
200g long stemmed brocoli and asparagus spears (trimmed if necessary)
2 tbsp half fat creme fraiche

Heat the oil in a large heavy bottomed casserole or saucepan, add the bacon, fry for a couple of minutes, then add the chicken and brown all over before removing from the pan with a slotted spoon.

Add the onion. Fry gently for 5 minutes or so till its starting to soften then add the garlic and fry for a couple of minutes more. Concentrate. I got distracted and burnt the onions first time round so had to pretend all was fine, chop up another onion and carry on as if nothing was the matter - all while the senior colleague was asking me how we were settling in to our new home - cue fixed grin and breezy comments while inwardly swearing...

Once you've cooked the garlic for a couple of minutes, slosh in a little of the stock and scrape any bits up off the bottom of the pan. 

Return the chicken and bacon, to the pan, along with the potatoes. Sprinkle over the tarragon and a good grind of black pepper, pour in the rest of the stock, bring to the boil then simmer, lid on, for 25 minutes, until chicken and potatoes are cooked.

After 25 minutes, stir in the dijon mustard a teaspoon at a time checking the flavour as you go, then add the green veg and put the lid on the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes when the veg should be cooked but retain the necessary 'crunch' factor.

Stir in the creme fraiche, make sure it's all hot, and serve. Nothing more needed, although some good bread to mop up the juices is an idea.

Random Recipes #36 - a Hairy Dieters' delight

The Random Recipe challenge for January over on Belleau Kitchen is all about new recipe books. Excellent, thinks I - I have India by Rick Stein to drool over. It is a gorgeous book - page after page in homage to the food of India, with beautiful photography. You can almost smell the spices, the ovens, the finished food. It's mouthwatering. And then, a late gift - The Hairy Dieters Eat for Life. What to do? Hairy Dieters is much less of a visual, or actual feast (the clue is in the 'diet' part) but I don't want to cheat.

And what do you know? 'Dieters' wins in my random selection between the two, but it's not so bad after all because the winning recipe was a 'quick chicken cordon bleu' which looked quite tasty, even if it is 'diet'.

It's pretty straightforward - you split chicken breasts out and bash them thin in between a piece of clingfilm, fill each with a slice of ham and a slice of emmenthal cheese, and fold back over, then pan fry on both sides and finish in the oven.

It was OK. The recipe says to season the filled and refolded breasts well, but actually, with the ham and cheese, it probably doesn't need any more salt and as I'd followed the recipe faithfully, they turned out a bit salty. My version also suffered from having to sit around in the pan under some foil while the kids finished watching the film they had started. Normally, we wouldn't pander to that, but we'd taken them off for a very long and, as it turned out, wet walk, that afternoon, and they'd done very well, and the film was Back to the Future, so we indulged them...

  

Looking forward to the next challenge - which I may have to enter from my new Welsh kitchen...

The chicken continued - 'paella' of sorts

So where was I before I so rudely interrupted the ramblings of my kitchen - and our life - with the big news? Oh yes. The chicken.

After the chicken pie on Tuesday last week, we had meat-free Wednesday - not as catchy as meat free Monday, granted, but I'm not going to be tied to the alliterative benefits of a particular day of the week (despite my penchant for linguistic trickery) for reducing the amount of meat in our diet. Twice baked potatoes it was - a brilliant addition to our regular meals thanks to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (in Veg Everyday, I think). So easy it doesn't need a recipe - bake your tatties, scoop out the insides and mash them up with butter, or cream cheese (Philadelphia with garlic & herbs is good), plus extras - chopped up spring onions, tinned sweetcorn, that sort of thing. While you're doing this, pop the skins back in the oven to crisp up, then whip them out, pile the skins back up with the enriched potato and pop back in the oven for 10 mins. Easy peasy and very delicious.

Thursday, though, we were back with the chicken that I cooked for the pie on Tuesday, plus the joys of the veg box, which included 3 small green peppers and some small red onions. Paella - of sorts - beckoned. Plenty of smoked paprika and some chorizo to spice things up, and unfortunately no seafood - which probably means its not paella at all, but hey, I used paella rice, so I'm going to call it paella.

A couple of other notes - if I'd had a choice, I would probably have used red pepper rather than green, and I forgot to include any garlic. It's not fatal as the chorizo is quite garlicky, but it would have been nice. I think a bit of chilli would also have been good - we got some lovely looking ones in the veg box, but I suspect they are of the firey variety, and as I was feeding the kids, I had to make do with the tabasco bottle to spice up my portion.

Easy Paella - for 4

125g cooking chorizo, cut into bite size pieces
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 small red onions, or 1 large one, finely chopped
3 small green peppers - substitute for red if you have the choice, to be honest, but the veg box yielded small green ones...
300g paella rice
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 litre of stock (if you poached a chicken to make the pie, you'll have some lovely stock to use for this)
170g cold cooked chicken cut into bite size pieces.

Heat your stock up in a pan (or, if you're me, defrost the stock over a gentle heat because you forgot to get it out of the freezer earlier...).

Heat a large frying pan and chuck in the chorizo. Cook gently til lthe oils start to run then add in the garlic, onion and pepper and cook till softening, then stir in the rice and the coriander and paprika. 

Cook for a couple of minutes, then tip in the stock, bring to a simmer and leave to bubble away till the rice is cooked. 

Stir in the chicken and garnish with chopped parsely if you have it to hand.

Serve with a bottle of tabasco on the side for those that need a little more heat. 

The rest of the chicken meat went in sandwiches, and I still have 2 litres of stock left from poaching the original chicken too. So I reckon that's pretty good value. What do you think?

101 uses for a dead chicken - #1 Chicken, leek and parsley pie

One of the books I remember from my childhood was "101 uses for a Dead Cat". Not very good taste, but quite funny, especially when you are 9 or 10. My favourite cartoon was the one where you used the cat's bum as a pencil sharpener. 

I know. 

Sorry about that.

But it sort of popped into my head the other day when I was looking at the chicken before me, trying to decide how best to cook it. Before you start to worry, I wasn't contemplating turning it into any kind of desk top toy, or anything else other than a meal, but I reckon there are at least 101 ways to cook a chicken, and maximise the meal potential from a bird.

And if you maximise your bird, you reduce waste.

Food waste is a terrible thing.

We all know it. 

And I'm not just talking about the terrible irritation that rises up when the kids turn their nose up at whatever you've put in front of them.

Food is expensive. People put lots of time and effort into growing, cultivating, preparing it and we spend our hard-earned money on it. We are extremely fortunate to live in a country where we have a huge variety of food available to us.

On the other hand, we live in a society where children still go hungry; where there is an increasing need for the food banks. It seems to me that we owe it to everyone, not least ourselves, to do better at wasting less food.

According to Love Food Hate Waste, "...We throw away 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink from our homes every year, the majority of which could have been eaten. It's costing us £12bn a year and is bad for the environment too"

This costs an average (if there is such a thing) family £50 a month. And apparently "If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the benefit to the planet would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off the road."

Staggering.

So, back to my chicken. It's true that buying a whole chicken usually represents better value for money than buying jointed pieces. You can get so much more out of it. If you get the opportunity, it's worth reading Rose Prince's book "The New English Kitchen" which is a great book, crammed with ideas for making meat (especially) go further. If not, you can work on the basic principle that for a family of 4, a whole chicken will give you at least 2 main meals, plus stock for soup and bits for sandwiches. 

If you don't like 'boiling bones' as one of my friends delightfully calls it, the other way to get delicious chicken stock is to poach your chicken whole first. You can then eat it as you would roast chicken for your first meal, or turn some of the meat into a pie.

I got the idea for this pie from The Claire Macdonald Cookbook. I'm in awe of Claire Macdonald. She's a favourite of my mum's, and her recipes are really great. As a hotelier on Skye, cooking everyday, she produced 'homely dinner party' food which she hoped would be a treat for her guests to eat. I can't imagine anything nicer than spending a day out in the majestic Skye mountains or on the beaches, then coming back for the sort of food she was serving up. When I was flicking through the book, this pie seemed like just the sort of thing to serve up to the kids and the Husband after our first day back at school and work since the Italian escape. There's a good load of meat left for another meal and for some sarnies, and as a result of poaching the chicken I've got about 3 litres waiting to be used for other things. Marvellous. And don't balk at the addition of curry powder. It really works!

Chicken Leek & Parsley Pie
 for 4

1 chicken - mine was 1.7 kg
1 carrot, cut into chunks
2 small red onions (or equivalent - I used what came in the veg box) peeled and halved for the poaching, plus 2 more peeled and finely diced for the filling
2 sticks of celery
2 bay leaves
A good sprig each of thyme and rosemary
A good handful of parsley, leaves & stalks, plus another good handful, thick stalks removed, finely chopped
40g butter
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced reasonably thinly
25g plain flour
1/2 tsp mild curry powder
250 ml milk
100-150 ml stock reserved from cooking the chicken
salt & freshly ground black pepper
300g puff pastry
milk for glazing

First, cook the chicken. Put it into a large pan with the carrot chunks, the halved red onions, the bay, thyme, rosemary and the first handful of parsley, a few grinds of salt and pepper, then cover with water. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for an hour or so till the chicken is cooked. Allow to cool in the water.

Remove the chicken from the stock, and then strain it through a seive. Reserve what you need for the pie (100-150 ml) and put the rest aside for soup, risotto, or whatever you have planned for it.

Strip the meat off the carcass, and put a layer of chicken pieces in the bottom of your pie dish. I used the meat from the 2 legs (thighs and drumsticks) and some more of the 'brown' meat. The rest of the meat can be used in another meal. Watch this space.

Pre heat the oven to 220C

Melt the butter in a pan, and add the leeks and finely chopped onion. Cook gently till soft and transparent then stir in the flour and curry powder, cook for a minute or so, then stir in the milk and stock, and bring to the boil and cook till thickened. Add salt and pepper and the chopped parsley. Cook the sauce out for a few minutes, then pour over the meat and stir it all together to combine.

Cover the pie with the pastry, decorate as you see fit (pastry leaves are always a winner in my book, I don't care if anyone says they are naff), brush the pastry with milk, then bake for 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 180 for another 20 minutes.

Serve the pie to your family. They will love you even more.

Chicken, Chorizo and Courgette 'Chilli'

Sometimes, when I'm writing about something I've cooked, the angle I'll take with it is obvious. Sometimes, it's not so obvious, and sometimes I actually have a choice.

This, then, could be about cooking with the seasonal fruits (well, the veg, actually) from the garden - red onions, elephant garlic, bulbous yellow courgette - all of which I am currently blessed with.







It could have been a debate about what consitutes 'chilli'' given that I seem to apply it to pretty much anything I add kidney beans too, and yet equally, bandy the word around to cover meals that don't even include a sniff of even the mildest chilli or chilli powder in them. 

Chilli for 45 - but no kidney beans. Does that make it tomatoey mince?

Happy 'official' 40th to the Husband 

 

Indeed, I ended up with 8 cans of value red kidney beans and 3 tubs of guacamole, having cooked chilli for 45 for the Husband's 'official' 40th birthday camping & sailing weekend (it's not till December, but no one else wanted to camp/sail then), forgot to add the kidney beans in, and bought too much guacamole. Chilli without kidney beans - and then plenty of kidney beans to use up.


It could have been about how I am progressing with sharing the kitchen with the children, and how Blue chopped up a courgette, worked out how to use the tin opener and threw most of a tin of chopped tomatoes all over his school uniform, and I didn't get cross once (well, may be a little irritated, but, you know, little steps and all that).


Finally,  it could have been about those moments when you look in the cupboards, the fridge and the freezer when you haven't planned anything, wonder what on earth you are going to eat that night, and do it all on the fly with disproportionately pleasing results (always a winner!)

All are equally applicable, and I suppose intertwined, to this, so I leave it to you to decide which angle - or angles -  you'd prefer, and I'll just add that it's probably one of the best received meals I've cooked for a long time.

Chicken, chorizo & courgette 'chilli'

(serves 4)
 
1 large red onion
1 large clove of garlic
olive oil
125g cooking chorizo
2 chicken breasts
1/2 tsp each paprika, ground cumin & ground coriander (I would have used my favourite smoked paprika, but I had - gasp - run out!!)
1/3 large yellow courgette (frankly, how ever much you think you can get away with)
1 400g  can chopped tomatoes
1 400g can red kidney beans
2 tsp veg stock
salt & freshly ground pepper 
guacamole & sour cream to serve

Finely chop the red onion and the clove of garlic. The Husband's elephant garlic is massive, but not as strong in flavour, so a lot goes a little way.

Heat a splosh of olive oil in a large pan and add the onions and garlic. 

Cut the chorizo into chunks and add it to the onions. cooking for 5 minutes or so till it releases its juices. Cut the chicken and the courgette into chunks. Put the kettle on.

Stir in the ground paprika, cumin and coriander into the onions and chorizo, cook for a minute then add the chicken and stir it in, browning the pieces on all sides.

Add the courgette, stir, add the chopped tomatoes, then put the 2 tsp veg stock into the empty tin and top up with hot water. Stir, then add to the pan along with some salt & pepper.

Bring everything to the boil then simmer for 20 mins or so till the chicken is cooked.

Serve with sour cream and guacamole, on rice, and watch with satisfaction as every last bit is licked up off the plate.

Grab & Run - oh yes - it's Chicken Paprika for Random Recipes

Ok - you have 10 seconds to save 1 - just 1 cook book. You're leaving (for somewhere - a new pad in London, in Dom - of Belleau Kitchen -'s case) and you have time to dash in, grab and run. Which one do you choose?

Now, from previous participation in Random Recipes, it seems that my collection of cookery books is fairly pitiful compared to some, but even so, it was an almost impossible challenge.

I tried several times. Well, mentally, at least. I dashed in, stopped, and missed the train/bus/boat. I even pretended the house was burning down - but I stood there and burned alive a couple of times, paralysed with indecision.

The trouble is, I may not have THAT many books (well, relatively speaking - the Husband would disagree) but I love them all for different reasons. Hugh, Nigella, Jamie. Thomasina, Claudia, Yottam, Rose, Harry, Ruth & Rose, Alain, Sophie, Rick, Delia. They are my friends. Well, perhaps not Delia, but I tolerate her, for I see her worth, but how to choose?

  
In the end I had to go back to first principles, and rescued my battered copy of Leith's Cookery Bible by Prue Leith and Caroline Waldegrave. First published in 1991, my mum must have given it to me when I first moved south to London.

It has come with me everywhere, has lost its back cover, and in fact during the making of this Random Recipe, it actually split in half :-( .

It is an intensely practical book - with hardly any glossy photos, no suggestion of silky dressing gowns, a Vespa or a football club. What it does have, though, is page after page of classic recipes. It has pages of things to do with chicken, pork, beef. First courses, sauces, puddings. It's where I go if I want to remind myself how many eggs to how much milk a sensible person would put in a quiche; cooking times for meat, fruit to sugar for a summer pudding. 

I don't tend to get inspiration from this book, but when I have an idea, or a longing for something that I know I've had before, but can't quite remember, this is usually the first place I'll look for an idea of how I might go about it.However, it's not a book that I pore over, drooling, and I don't think it has ever made it to my bedside for night time reading.



I decided to choose the recipe where the book fell open, which gave me 2 options Jambonneaux de poulet or Chicken Paprika.Chicken paprika won on the grounds that I really didn't want to bone out chicken thighs, and we needed something for Sunday dinner.

Basically a pot roast chicken in a tomato and paprika sauce, the chicken was lovely and moist, and I thought the sauce was lovely, if a slightly alarming shade of orange.

"...a slightly alarming shade of orange..."

For reasons far to complicated to go into here, I didn't take any pictures of the finished dish, only of the left over sauce - of which there was a lot, but then, we only ate about half the chicken. 

Guess what we're having for supper this evening? Chicken Paprika Pasta.

Chicken Paprika

Serves 4 with plenty leftover depending on age and appetite of the '4'

10g butter plus a tablespoon
10g flour
pinch mustard powder 
145ml milk
salt & pepper

1 tablespoon of oil
1 chicken (mine was 1.9 kg)
1 onion, finely sliced
2 tbsp smoked paprika
200g can chopped tomatoes
100ml white wine
500ml chicken stock
1 bay leaf
2 slices lemon
handful of parsley stalks

First make a white sauce: melt 10g butter, then stir in the 10g flour & mustard powder and cook out for a minute.

Off the heat, carefully stir in all the milk a little at a time, then return to the heat and bring to the boil. Simmer for 2-3 minutes, season with salt and pepper, then set aside. You can put a piece of greaseproof paper onto the surface to stop a skin forming if you like.

Pre-heat your oven to 200C.

In a frying pan, heat the oil and remaining butter, and brown the chicken all over, then put into a casserole which has a good fitting lid.

Add the onion to the frying pan and cook till it's beginning to brown, then reduce the heat and add in the paprika. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the tomatoes, wine and stock, followed by the bay leaf, lemon slices and parsley. Season.

Bring the sauce to the boil then carefully pour over the chicken. Put the lid on the casserole and put the whole lot in the oven for about an hour, or when the chicken is cooked. Mine did take just over an hour.

Remove the chicken and set it aside. Take out the lemon slices and bay out, and remove as much of the fat from the surface of the sauce as you can. Liquidise the tomato paprika sauce, then beat in the white sauce you made earlier until the sauce is smooth.

Serve with the chicken. We had it with new potatoes and a medley of beans from the garden but it would be good with rice too, I think.

Tarragon chicken and a hankering for France

I may have mentioned before once or twice how much I love France.

Indeed there was a time as a post-grad law student when, unsure of my destiny and only certain that I had failed the land law component of the C.P.E. conversion course that non-law graduates had to sit, the only thing I could think of doing was to decamp to France and see what happened.

Fate intervened, I met the Husband and passed land law by the skin of my teeth (events related only by the fact that the Husband was in the same pub that I was celebrating the end - but not the results - of said exams), so my other life as an English woman in France never happened. May be, Sliding Doors-esque, my other self is currently sitting on the terrasse of a sprawling proprietee somewhere in the Midi, a herd of goats and some chickens milling around, while the Husband, assuming a slightly more unreliable "Kevin-Kline-in-French-Kiss" air about him than he currently sports, grows grapes and olives and the children run about tanned and bilingual...

I still have friends in France and we go back occasionally - we haven't been to my preferred corner of Languedoc for a few years, although we had a great holiday in Normandy last summer. I love French towns and cities as much as the countryside: Paris for sure, but also Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes, Aix en Provence, Carcassonne and my favourite of them all, Perpignan. I would gladly go back at any opportunity. May be next summer.

For now, I am compensating by cooking French. Tarragon is one of those classic tastes of France. My mother and I both have tarragon plants parented by a plant belonging to my French exchange's grandpere . Combine that with chicken and creme fraiche, a splash of white wine and some peas, and I could be sitting in a little bistro somewhere, the best memories I have of eating fabulous meals in France washing over me. The feel of the heat that hits you getting off the plane, the wonderful, clear light you get in the mountains, the sunsets over ancient fishing villages, the markets, the pains au chocolat, le Grand Bleu, Jean Reno, the cafe culture - all of it.

Sigh.

Tarragon Chicken
serves 4

8 chicken thighs (bone removed)
salt & pepper
olive oil
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
100ml dry white wine
300ml chicken stock
2 tsp cornflour
fresh peas - a good couple of handfuls
3 tbsp creme fraiche
2 tbsp tarragon leaves, ripped

Season the chicken with salt and pepper and set aside.

Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a large  frying pan and fry the shallots gently until soft - about 5 minutes. Add the garlic at the end of the cooking time for a minute or so.

Add the chicken pieces to the pan and brown for 2-3 minutes, turning once. Increase teh heat, pour in the wine and let it bubble up then add the chicken stock and let everything simmer for 10 minutes.

While the chicken is simmering, mix the cornflour to a paste with 2 tsp water, then stir into the cookking liquid when the 10 minutes is up. Throw in the peas and keep simmering until the sauce thickens at which point stir in the creme fraiche and tarragon and serve with new potatoes.

Best eaten outside as the sun goes down with a glass of crisp white wine...

_____________________________________________________________________________
This is a sponsored post on behalf of Superbreak