Super Stock

I love making stock so much that it's probably the most enjoyable part of cooking a chicken. It's cheap, delicious, can be altered in a thousand ways so it's never dull, and is the basis of innumerable great dishes.


With the carcass of a roast chicken to use up last week it actually fell to the Dear Leader (may her detractors shrivel like salted slugs) to start the stock off, a rare foray into the kitchen other than in an advisory capacity. To the carrots, onions, ginger and bay leaves she had incorporated I added a few rather tired but usable sticks of celery, a head of our own garlic, one of the few left from a disappointing season, and a load of spices - black cardamom pods, red and black peppercorns, some coriander seed, a star anise, some allspice berries... The more flavour you put in, the more you get out.


Once the initial albumen scum has been cleared from the surface, watching it give occasional little blips is a therapeutic exercise, repeated over a good two and a half hours as the liquid simmers ever so gently to maximise the flavour without clouding up. The aroma wafting up through the house is another mood lifter. And of course the end product is life-enhancing - tasty, complex, savoury, like a good wine but without the after-effects. As soon as the cooking is over I like to strain the liquid off the veg and bones, as left to cool on them it can develop some stale undertones.


As you'd expect with an ingredients list like that, the first use I made of the finished article was in a Chinese dish, a mushroom and vegetable-rich noodle soup-cum-stew into which, inauthentically, we stirred spoonfuls of the Mexican-inspired chili sauce made by Sternest Critic to preserve our bumper chili crop remains. A good soup needs a very good stock - I recall (probably not for the first time, my apologies) Chris Johnson, then owner of The Village Restaurant in Ramsbottom, being very upset that having paid £20  (and this in the early Nineties) for a bowl of soup in an extremely famous French restaurant owned by an extremely famous French chef, the stock was watery and boring. It spoiled what should have been - if critics were to be believed - the meal of a lifetime.


No such problem with our bowl of Chinese-y goodness. It was warmly spicy, onion sweet, and deep in colour and flavour. Satisfying to the palate, soothing on the stomach, and warming for the soul - and for pennies.

It's Too Darn Hot, and Culinary Art

We actually had a frost yesterday, the first in ages here in semi-tropical Fulwood. The weird winter warmth does have its pluses, however, not least in the kitchen garden here. I wrote in a previous post about liking to pick something every day from garden, conservatory or greenhouse, and a few days back had a field day with parsley, bay, oregano and sage all to hand, Swiss chard, leeks and chilies all made good use of. I worry about climate change, and parsley surviving in the depths of our supposed winter should be enough to convince even the most sceptical - though apparently Trump, surviving on burgers and fries, would need an explanation of what parsley is. And that plants grow. And where Britain is.


On a totally separate topic, though if I wished I could do a cheesy segue by saying 'and talking of hot weather, we had a meal a week ago straight out of sunny Spain...' We did, and the main course was paella, served up to a bunch of friends at the table straight from my battle-blackened paella pan. It was so beautiful, even if I say so myself who forgot to photograph it, that it could have qualified as an ephemeral work of art. Chicken pieces red with paprika oil in which they roasted before being added to the saffron-tinted rice; fresh parsley (see above); green peas contrasting with the pink prawns. Of course as it was a thing of constructed beauty it would not be acceptable to the art establishment - though I could have let it rot for a month and then maybe it would have qualified for an Arts Council grant. A chap can dream. Then wake up screaming.


People talk glibly of 'the culinary arts', but for me that's a real thing, and something to aspire to. I cook from fresh all the time, and we live well - both in terms of nutrition and flavour. But only rarely do we get to enjoy something so visually stunning. For me that is where professional cooks - for whom nutrition is a side issue at best - stand apart from worthy amateurs. I'm not going to be making sugar baskets anytime soon, or cutesy waved drizzles of sauce, let alone pointless foams, but certainly the next time we have friends round I am definitely aiming to - on purpose this time - produce something that gives people eye orgasms. The two topics - climate and food beauty - actually do come together, strangely enough, in that we are now awaiting delivery of a load of saffron crocuses, as we've decided it's warm enough these days to give them ago in suburban Preston.

The Egg Bonanza Dilemma

Two egg bonanza dilemmas actually.

We have a somewhat deranged chicken called Steve, named after the star of The Great Escape (Donald Pleasence - she's that strange). She has no motorbike that searches of the chicken hutch have yet revealed anyway, and since we took away the pot-bellied stove that hid their tunnel entrance that route has not been a problem, but Steve escapes from their compound on an almost daily basis. They have a nice sturdy Omlet run for night-time security, and during the day roam inside another Omlet product, a great big net/fence that gives them room to wander, peck, and take time out from their hectic lifestyles. We have pegged the net carefully, so figure she launches from the roof of the hutch to get over the wire, as it were. Wasn't there an episode of Colditz about building a glider in the castle? I knew letting them have the box-set was mistaken.

Yesterday when searching for her in the garden I discovered she had made a nest of sorts under bags of wood in a little lean-to behind our shed. When I moved the bags I found nine eggs. Dillemma one: how to tell they are fresh? The old trick of putting them one by one in a glass of cold water is neat and simple: if they remain horizontal they're fresh. If they tip up a bit - not so fresh. Stand upright - downright stale. Easy peasy squeezy lemons.

Six turned out to be fresh, three stale - we have chickens so our eggs will be fresh and lovely, so very unpeasantly I threw out the three past their best.

Now comes the second dilemma: how best to use a sudden eggy glut? My immediate thought was scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow, but as the Dear Leader is taking a train before six even her most devoted underling (me) is unwilling to cook them at five. Next thought was a big Spanish omelette tonight, something that appeals for getting them used rapidly and as it's a fine dish. SC is a big fan of egg mayonnaise, rather perversely given he is not keen on boiled eggs and on other foods shuns mayo. Another Spanish dish, onions, peppers, beans and garlic with halved boiled eggs on top (or for the bold eggs broken into hollows in the top then cooked in the oven) also appeals. Other suggestions gratefully received.

ps I'm not sponsored by Omlet. Though if they'd like to I'd not say no.

How Much Garlic is Too Much?

I'm a great reader of old cookery books. Or maybe food books is a better description - I find those with a succession of neatly laid out recipes and no intellectual exploration dull in the extreme. If you read any from the 1970s and earlier you'll see garlic given as an optional ingredient 'if liked'. We like.

Yesterday I roasted a chicken (not one of our garden variety) atop a whole bulb of the stuff, each clove carefully skinned before use. It was garlic as vegetable (eventually incorporated in the whooshed sauce) rather than flavour enhancer. As I wet roasted the bird the cloves softened in the liquid, leaving them incredibly sweet without caramelising at all. The bottom floor had a nice garlicky aroma, but this morning that had gone as you'd expect, and none of us had garlic-breath, that maybe you wouldn't.

In my extremely late thirties health and food have become closely linked. A friend with whom a fortnightly pint was shared died suddenly last summer, bringing such matters into stark perspective. I often wonder about our diet - wide variety of styles and ingredients, nothing deep fried, moderate drinking (though while we're on the topic, which bastard thought up Dry January btw?), lots of home-produced veg, etc etc. Garlic is one thing I have upped since such thoughts became more focussed. As garlic is supposed to work wonders on the blood, and on blood pressure, I'd love to know the before and after BP readings for the three of us - but save me from becoming Glenn Gould - he kept a diary of his, genius and madness near neighbours there.

Don't Waste That Pumpkin

How many of the pumpkins bought for Halloween actually get used for food? Even a good percentage of the many squashes grown on the nation's allotments probably get stuck in a bowl on the table as a nice natural decoration to be thrown away when they fall to bits. I felt very virtuous yesterday using a Turk's Turban squash as part of our Sunday roast extravaganza. And it was lovely.

The fruit, for such it is pedants, had been sitting in our conservatory for a month, picked to avoid being nicked before halloween, then playing the role of something I'd get round to eventually, which turned out to be yesterday.

Thanks to Nigel Slater, as ever fab ideas, annoying writing: I got the basic idea from his Tender Part 1.

The squash was peeled, cleaned of stingy bits and seeds, and cut into one inch dice (that's 2.54cm dice for those of a modern bent), then rolled in loads of crushed garlic, thyme from outside the back door, and Maldon salt (how very Middle Class is that?). Roasted (in a solid Le Creuset dish so piling exotic bourgeois onto solid Middle Class) along with the chicken and some red onions to make use of the oven it smelled fantastic, the outside crisping and garlicky the inside soft and melting.

This was another of those dishes that not only tastes good, but looks superb, a rich sunshine gold, something to raise the spirits at this time of the year when it seems to go dark about 15 minutes after dawn.

Money for Nothing and Your Chick Peas for Free

Except we don't grow chick peas. No reason to spoil a good title for that though (it's a Dire Straits line).

This morning I started a project that will last a year, recording expenditure on growing food and the value of food grown. It seemed logical to start when I put in our annual seed order via our allotment association. We get 50 per cent discount from King's Seeds, but the food ones still cost just over £25.

Any editors out there wanting an article based on this, please get in touch!

That was done on Friday. On Sunday we spent two hours tidying up the plot, weeding and removing plants that are past it. But we still harvested a huge amount: 2 x giant parsnips; 2 turnips; 3 beetroot; a sugar-loaf chicory; about a dozen courgettes and patty pans; loads of runner and French beans; some apples; parsley; kale; a large kohl rabi. Enough for the veg for at least three days, though they'll be topped up with odd things from the garden - a few ripe tomatoes suddenly appeared this morning, and we have lots of small peppers left on one plant.

Also on Friday I did my regular run to the chicken man for a sack of layers' pellets and another of mixed seed to keep our two birds happy for five or six months, an outlay of £16.50. They provide on average 1.33 eggs per day through the year, which in Sainsbury's (medium sized organic eggs) are £1.90 for 6. So we get £150+ of eggs for £40 of feed and maybe £15 of bedding etc. A profit margin that I would have killed for in my industrial marketing days.

I was reminded of how good our eggs were when I bought a tray of 36 small ones for £1.50 from the chicken man (I wanted to do some baking and to go large on scrambled eggs at the weekend). His birds are kept in big sheds, free to run about but not as far as I can see to get out. The yolks are an insipid beigey-yellow. Our pair, frequently let out to eat grass, insect eggs, worms, dandelions, wood-lice, the occasional frog if we are not quick to intervene, and even once the decapitated body of a mouse left by the cat, give eggs with bright yellow to orange yolks. Even when we can't supervise them outside (we have foxes over the stream from us) they eat our leftover starches, veg peelings, and any fruit that has gone over. The chicken version of the good life/Good Life, as we on a small and partial scale enjoy the human equivalent.

One-flame Chicken Meal

This is a bit of a cheat in that the cooking starts over a flame then is finished in the oven, but it is one pot, and for those allergic to washing-up liquid that is important.

Sunday lunch this week was a lazy affair, as the weather was too glorious to allow for faffing in the kitchen. So while Ruth jointed a chicken I cleaned and cut up (all just picked on the allotment or garden) some spuds, thick spring onions now looking more like leeks, three small courgettes and a load of fresh herbs - bay, thyme, rosemary, sage, chives, plus a whole (tiny) head of our still greenish garlic.

The chicken was browned in olive oil in a big and solid roasting dish over a moderate gas flame, then the onions added, followed by the small chunks of spud (cut in odd shapes with no side more than an inch long), the thickly sliced courgettes and bashed garlic, and finally the herbs. As this needs liquid to cook the veg a tiny bottle of Babycham leftover from Christmas (Brandy and Babycham a secret seasonal pleasure of one member of the household) was poured in, and a bit of boiling water to top it up. Salt, pepper, bring to the simmer and put in the pre-heated 190 degree oven for an hour or so, taking the pan out twice to stir things about.

Protein, carbs, veg and flavour all in the one pot, with the juices forming a tasty gravy too.

Chicken and Memories

In about 1988 I was visiting a customer in the hills above Bourgoin Jallieu, about half an hour's drive east of Lyon. My appointment was in the afternoon, so I found the place then looked for somewhere to eat. This was in agricultural country, not blessed with choice. The one I did find has stayed in my memory though, and epitomizes what I love about basic French food.

There was no menu. The bovine waitress brought a carafe of water, another of red wine, a basket of sliced baguette, and a serving plate of charcuterie with sharp knife for me to cut a few slices of sausage and grab a couple of cornichons before she collected it for the next table. Next was the main course, a roasted chicken-joint served with gloopy beans that tasted of the chicken stock and garlic. Lots of garlic. Then a plain green salad, just fresh lettuce dressed with vinaigrette. 'Un fromage?' meant that, the choice of a piece of good cheese, eaten with the bread, or a petit suisse. And pudding was a plastic tub of supermarket creme brulee.

It cost FF50. That's 50 francs to the Euro generation, about £5 then. For five courses. They doubtless made their money on simplicity, ease (hence the tub of pudding) and volume. Not gourmet stuff, but it filled me like it filled the blue-overalled farmers at the other tables, and it was really enjoyable, though not being able to drink more than a glass of wine was a pain. The chicken indeed was more than enjoyable, it was perfect of its type: robust flavours, pleasing texture of tender meat and soft beans, the kick of garlic.

Last night I tried to recreate that chicken dish, with some success, roasting a cut-up bird (dusted with plain flour) with lots of onions, a few cloves of garlic, a bay leaf and a little dash of wine. Near the end of the cooking time two tins of flageolet beans rinsed of their canning liquid went in, plus some cheaty chicken stock. Inflation having taken its toll the bird alone was more than £5, so call it £7.50 with the beans and onions. But it fed three, the scraggy middle bit of the chicken and a wing made my lunchtime sandwich, and there is a breast that will go on a pizza tonight, so not exactly profligate. And what price re-living a pleasure of 25 years ago?

Political Leftovers

Unpalatable though it is to find myself in agreement with Britain's richest MP, but Richard Benyon was in essence correct about the wastage element of our food culture. His estimate of £50 per month per family of food thrown away is within the bounds of reason.

As I understand his statement he was not advising people to live on leftovers, but to make the most of what they have. That this should have caused an uproar says much about the ridiculous nature of our party system - if your opponents say one thing the opposite must be true, even if it is simple common sense.

The use-by-date and sell-by-date thing is another aspect of this. On Sunday I was shopping and spotted a piece of Parmesan near its SBD at a third of the original price. Parmesan, which if stored properly will last months and months. It was not what I had gone for (chicken for a paella), but in the basket it went. This is not to advocate buying dodgy food, but to point out that sometimes bureaucratic neatness is out of kilter n the kitchen.

We just cleared one of our store-cupboards out, so I am as guilty as the next cook, a pack of Quinoa that seemed like a good idea at the time never even opened, and the dregs of several bags of flour joining it. Some candied peel found at the very back was three years out of date, and though I reckon being candied it was still ok three years is a bit too much leeway to ask, so our chickens are getting it in small doses and seem quite keen.

Chickens are a wonderful way of reducing food wastage, as I have posted before. A rather manky carrot is in their box waiting to be cut into tiny bits, a treat for them that will add to the beta-carotein content of tomorrow's eggs. As our earning power inevitably gravitates ever closer to that enjoyed in the BRICS nations with which we compete I guess more of us will keep these excellent birds. Even Mr Benyon may - though given he is worth £110 million pounds, apparently, it would not be out of necessity.

The Joy of Simple Chicken Dishes

It is strange to think that a chicken in every pot (an ambition ascribed to Catherine the Great, Herbert Hoover, Francois IV and doubtless others) was once a dream. Nowadays the meat is something too easily taken for granted. The cheapo white and nasty supermarket 'bargain' stuff should not be taken at all, but a good quality butcher's bird or free-range ones from the supermarket can still be made so easily into delicious dishes. At the weekend we had two such.

The first was wings marinated (if that is the right word for something relatively dry) with a paste zapped in the  blender - cumin and fennel seed, garlic, a green chilli, pepper (slightly too much, you forget how potent quite new peppercorns can be) salt and star anise - then left in the fridge for three or four hours covered with clingfilm. Rolled in a bit of oil and baked at 190C for 30 minutes, turned regularly, they were sticky and spicy and delicious, one part of an oriental (-ish) meal. I love wings, the sweetest and cheapest chicken on the shelves. The fennel gives it a hint of the KFC, though the Colonel's changeless recipe may oxymoronically have changed since the last time I dared try it in about 1995.

Second was another dish that is simplicity itself, and a reliable way to perk up an uninteresting bird. How very Sid James. The herbs are looking healthy again in the garden, though the bay has never looked less than perfect all through the winter. I took the scissors to par-cel (leaf celery), the first decent-looking rosemary of the year, a load of sage, 8 - 10 leaves of bay, and what thyme I could cut without the operation being terminal to the plant, and rolled a jointed chicken in them once they had been snipped small. With olive oil poured on and seasoned with salt, pepper and some smoked paprika, I again baked them in a roasting tray (or roasted them in a baking tray, with meat the terms are almost synonymous, doubtless to the annoyance of terminological purists) for 50 minutes or so. Nice and moist, the herbs were very much to the fore and the golden skin was fantastic.

How much KFC would I have got for £7, the price of the chicken if memory serves? Useless factoid out of nowhere, Preston my (adopted-)hometown was the site of the first KFC in Britain, opened in 1965. Still doesn't endear the food to me.

New Year and Using Stuff Up

The usual suspect Christmas leftovers are long gone - a turkey crown means that the meat is a memory well before it becomes a recurring nightmare, and what was left of our sirloin transformed into the traditional cold cuts on Boxing Day, fabulous butties the next, and a stir fry and Chinese soup another. Others remain, or remained, yesterday's main meal a determined effort to make the best of them.

Thus a chicken carcase (am using the alternative spelling in the hope a friend keen to help me mend the error of my orthographical ways will correct it - curses, think she may spot that trap now) sitting in the fridge after a weekend festive meal with mates became stock yesterday afternoon that then made minestrone in the evening (the rest for tonight's risotto). And the dog-ends of cheese, some of it rather fine cheese, flavoured a sauce that helped stretch the tinned salmon (how very 1970s again) and kippers in a fish pie topped with mash from same weekend repast.

When the good-housekeeper stuff of using up Christmas bits before they are only fit for the bin is done I will turn to my foodie New Year's resolution, which is to have at least two vegetarian evening meals a week, and one based on fish. The inspirations behind this are several: environmental guilt about using too much meat and meat-farming using too many of the earth's resources; economy; health matters; and stretching my culinary abilities and repertoire - it is too easy to fall into the routine of planning a meal around a slab of bloody protein.

Christmas Austerity Cannon

A Christmas austerity cannon is made with the tube from a used cracker, and propellant made from three of the unused strips that go bang from same, loaded with plastic hair-slides, miniature packs of cards, and nail-clippers that break within a day. Alternatively it is a spelling error. Mea culpa, I blame it on Michael Gove because he has a face like a constipated frog.

Top leftover tip and compliments of the season to you: made some stuffing to go with chicken yesterday that used up several odds and sods. Three slices of bread past the first flush, four tiny sausages that should have been breakfast two days earlier, some walnuts (who ever finishes one of those string bags that are a legal requirement of the British Christmas?), a handful of dried-ish prunes and the one ingredient not on the to-do list, a big juicy onion. All zapped then moistened with oil and cooked in a dish alongside the bird, firstly covered with foil to keep it soft, then without to brown the top.

The oil I used was walnut, which doesn't sound like it is part of the austerity thing, but is relatively cheap and for me fits as it is one of the best bang-for-you-buck flavourings you can find. A few drops in dressings or as a flavour enhancer in cooked dishes is all that's needed.

Leftovers or Thinking Ahead?

When are leftovers not leftovers? When you cook with the deliberate intention of having something to use later on. Roast chicken always provides more than one meal (at the very least the carcass makes stock); indeed every Sunday roast should offer the basis of Monday's dinner. But it is not just meat that does the trick - think cabbage and mash making bubble and squeak; or just mash with a few strips of meat pointing the way to rissoles.

I rarely cook just enough rice for one dish, as there are so many ways to use a bowl of the stuff the next day. And even if I forget and it languishes unloved in the fridge the chickens will eventually be pleased to have it, though that is an extravagance.

Thursday's basis for the fried rice dish left plenty enough to make a simple stuffed yellow pepper each (how very Eighties), with a tin of anchovies, four cloves of garlic sliced thinly, lots of pepper and sprinkles of paprika and celery salt, plus a splash of olive oil and the juice of half a basics lemon. Stood upright in a metal cake tin, tops minus stalk back on, the filled peppers stopped one another from sagging and the filling stayed moist. They cooked for 40 minutes in the oven at 180C to a soft sweetness that contrasted beautifully with the anchovies, though Sternest Critic said I had overdone the latter.

In warmer times this with a salad would make a main meal, but yesterday they were served as a boost to our vegetable intake after the main course, and to brighten the meal with almost luminous yellow.

We still have enough rice left to make a ramekin each of cheesy rice - grated Parmesan, a dab of butter, spoon of boiling water, and some garlic, cling-filmed and cooked briefly in the microwave.

Get Stuffing

Sunday's chicken was on the small side, so to bulk the protein out and complement it I made a quick stuffing.  This used half a pack of Sainsbury's Butcher's Choice Lincolnshire sausages, skins removed (they look a bit false but I prefer them for flavour to most of their Taste the Difference range), a big handful of white breadcrumbs, and a carrot and two small leeks zapped into tiny shreds in my 1980s food processor (it plays Duran Duran while chopping  stuff up and has massive shoulder pads). Moistened with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil and seasoned the mixture cooked in a separate dish alongside the chicken.

Even with the three of us having substantial helpings there was enough left to go in a chicken and stuffing sandwich for my wife's packed lunch, and the same for me. So you could say I gave my wife a good... sandwich today, if you were a comedian from when my processor was new.

The stuffing idea brings to mind a post I did on my Northern Eco blog a year or more ago, where something similar (then made with recipe bacon as the meat component if I recall correctly) was central to an austerity Christmas meal. If I remember I'll copy and paste that piece to this blog.

Austerity Fillet Steak?

Fillet steak is far from my favourite cut - rump which has texture and flavour aplenty (and is at the cheaper edge of the scale) would get that accolade. But when I saw the fillet tails (the bit where the fillet tapers to thinness) at the excellent butchery at Tebay Services for just £12.90/kg I couldn't resist. The two pieces for £7.53 were a bargain, the slenderer and part of the fatter one made into beefburgers last night with a few breadcrumbs to bulk the meat out, an onion for flavour, and an egg to bind it all together. They were really excellent. The bulk of the fatter piece was sliced into three small but thick-as-my-thumb steaks that will form the luxurious protein component of a midweek meal. I have never seen fillet tails at a supermarket, yet another reason to favour the independent butcher using all of the carcass.

Meat counters for me can be a work of art, the meat - cuts, signs of being properly hung - and the way it is presented both requiring great care. Compare this one at Tebay with the sad stuff you find at too many supermarkets - though there are honourable exceptions like Booth's.

I went to the butcher's seeking beef short-ribs, another bargain cut. There were none this time, but I was more than pleased at my purchase. For someone who cooks from scratch the supermarket butcher is all too often disappointing - not necessarily in the quality, though it pains me to see the cheapest chicken which, pale and stringy, promises nothing for the eater. It is the variety that gets me, or lack thereof. What happens to the bony bits with so much flavour? The toughies that need slow-cooking?

To be fair to the supermarkets, who are great at reacting to demand and at regularly testing our wants, it is probably the Great British Public that is either content with a few simple choices, or incapable of dealing with  much beyond steaks, chops, and roasts. That's sad.

Simple Savoury Pies

One of my fondest childhood culinary memories is of a great aunt who every time we went to stay with the family would produce what used to be called a plate pie - a shallow pie-dish filled with something savoury, like (her version) mince, onions, and tiny diced carrots, sometimes with small pieces of spud to bulk it out. This was covered in decidedly thick shortcrust pastry, so it was a filler-upper. And a very cheap supper.

Cow Pie

I felt a bit ashamed the other day using bought puff pastry (but it was Sainsbury's own, far cheaper than the big brand one and no damn different) to make something along those lines. I had three chicken thigh fillets to use, some scraps of cooking bacon (I say again, what is the other stuff for if not for cooking?) one of our big thick leeks sliced finely, and a few mushrooms. Each element was cooked separately in oil and butter, one after the next - a question of capacity and washing up - then mixed in the oval dish and the lot cooked in the fan-oven at 180C for about 25 minutes (not the 10 claimed on the packet). Served with beans and stovies it was a one course meal that warmed, filled and satisfied. At a rough guess the pie cost £3.50, and for something that substantial bought in packets I reckon we'd have paid £6 in the shops.

With the upsurge in interest in baking chi-chi cakes and muffins recently it is time we had a revival of the great British pie on TV (producers, please employ me to work on this). The cow pie pictured above, enjoyed at a Keswick pub-restaurant, shows the way forward.