Happy New Year! Hope
you've had a fantastic Christmas/New year. I thoroughly enjoyed my
Christmas, which contained lots of food, booze, a backing track of
Peppa Pig (thanks to my two year old nephew) and a lot of trips up
and down the M62. My Hogmanay was spent on a night shift at work but
never mind. We celebrated in the office with cheese and party
snacks.
After all the
excitement of the festive season, I am now in the process of using up
a load of leave. That means some time at home, cooking, cleaning,
relaxing, and recovering from all the excesses of the last month. I
should probably do some exercise too.
I didn't get as much
cooking related stuff for Christmas this year as my tiny kitchen is
already full to overflowing. I did get Nigel Slater's book Real Food,
so in a rare break from tradition I'm going to follow a recipe. I
think Nigel Slater's style of cooking is amazing, and I love his food
writing. One of my greatest charity shop finds of last year was a
very very old copy of Real Fast Food for about two quid, which I
proceeded to read from cover to cover without actually cooking
anything from it. Anyway, this time I toyed with the idea of coq au
Riesling but decided it was a bit excessive for a Thursday night and
made Roast Chicken with Basil and Lemon instead. I'm not one for
typing out someone else's recipes – buy his book if you want it.
But it was very good! It looked like this:
So what's the point of
this post? Well yesterday I inadvertently opened a tin of cannellini
beans when I thought they were chickpeas (middle-class woes). I had
to think of something to do with them today, and I thought I'd try
out a cannellini bean mash to go with this chicken and a massive pile
of green stuff. Plus, when I was writing it, I found a recipe on my
hard drive for chicken soup which I'd never posted... so I'm putting
it up as a bonus recipe. (Yes, I have random recipes kicking around
on my hard drive. What of it? I even had a picture of it on my
phone. I know, I should get out more)
Cannellini Bean Mash
Ingredients:
a leek, rinsed and
finely chopped
a clove of garlic,
finely chopped
a tin of cannellini
beans, drained and rinsed
a load of olive oil
a dollop of crème
fraiche
salt and pepper
lemon juice (optional –
I didn't bother this time because of the lemon-y chicken)
On a medium/low heat
fry the leek and garlic in about three tablespoons of olive oil with
a pinch of salt. Stir it regularly until it all gets very soft –
probably about ten minutes. You don't want it to take on any colour.
Add the cannellini
beans and heat through for five – ten minutes.
Add a big dollop of
half fat crème fraiche and stir through, then season with some
pepper. Start mashing.
Add more extra virgin
olive oil to get the consistency you want. Because of the leek it
won't go completely smooth anyway, I added another three or four
tablespoons. Taste it, and add more salt and pepper if required.
Serve with whatever you like.
I really enjoyed this
as an alternative to potatoes. We've had a LOT of potatoes over the
last few weeks...
Now the bonus recipe:
Chicken soup
This is my rough recipe
for chicken soup which I made up after three days of coughing,
sneezing and generally being very dopey. It's not authentic
Jewish-penicillin-chicken-soup, not least because I'm not Jewish.
Maybe lapsed Catholic penicillin?
It's in two stages -
first the stock then the soup itself. This probably made enough for
three/four portions? You can add whatever veg you have to hand.
Ingredients:
one chicken carcass (or
some chicken pieces, three to four bits? wings/drumsticks or
whatever)
an onion, peeled and
quartered
two carrots, one
roughly chopped and one peeled and finely chopped
a leek, take the top
leafy bit off and roughly chop then rinse it, finely chop and rinse
the rest
3 or 4 garlic cloves,
peeled and smashed a wee bit
a quarter of a head of
celery, take the spindly middle bits out and roughly chop, then
finely chop a couple of substantial sticks of celery
a couple of big
handfuls of pearly barley, rinsed (could use a couple of peeled,
diced potatoes or some pasta. Some sort of starch anyway)
about a centimetre of
ginger, roughly chopped into chunks
seasoning - a sprig or
two of thyme, two or three bay leaves, 6/7 peppercorns, two cloves
and a good pinch of sea salt
For the stock put all
the reject bits of the vegetables (onion, roughly chopped carrot,
leafy bit of leek, the garlic, spindly bits of celery and the ginger)
and the chicken carcass in a pan with a lid, along with the all the
seasoning. Cover with cold water, then bring up to the boil. Skim
away any scum, turn the heat right down, cover it and leave it to
simmer for about two hours.
Then it's done. Eat
whilst under a duvet, then go back to bed.
Karen, I love this. Post more. Perhaps immediately? I was very proud of myself today, as I made curried parsnip soup which actually tasted of the main ingredient, and not just a generic 'soup' taste of a different colour to before. I am full of admiration for you, and when can I come for tea?! ENjoy your time off , Polly x
ReplyDeleteNext time you're in town?? Let's make it happen! x
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