Rice - yet another way

I got this method (for Basmati) from the back of a packet. It's my new favourite. The advantage over this one is that the rice doesn't clump together if you hold it in the covered pan.

1. Measure the volume of rice. (In weight, about 75g is a good single portion.)
2. Put twice that volume of water in a pan, with a little salt.
3. Wash the rice, and add it to the pan.
4. Bring to a simmer.
5. On a medium heat, simmer the rice until the water level drops below the surface, which shows bubbles.
6. Turn down the flame to the minimum, put a heat disperser under the pan, and cover the pan.
7. Cook for a further five minutes.

It's probably ready now: I usually leave it, covered, for a few minutes longer.

Grilled (and baked) lamb cutlets

It's certainly not worth firing up the barbecue for just a few lamb cutlets. So how otherwise to get that summery, grilled flavour? A ridged grill pan over a high heat will do it - the risk being that you will burn the surfaces of the meat before cooking the interiors. A mix of grill pan and the oven is the answer.

Crush a couple of garlic cloves to a paste with a little salt, and smear the paste on the meat. Turn the meat in a tbsp or two of olive oil, and squirt over the juice of half a lemon. Leave to marinate for an hour or more.

Put a grill pan over a high heat for at least five minutes. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 8/230C. Scrape the marinade off the cutlets, and grill for about a minute each side - that should be enough to get them well browned. Transfer to an oven dish, pour over the marinade, throw in the lemon husk if you like, and put into the oven for five to 10 minutes, according to taste.

Tortilla in the oven

The thickness of tortilla or frittatas presents a challenge to the cook, because it necessitates a long cooking time, which can produce eggs with the consistency of Styrofoam. If, like me, you don't fancy tipping the half-cooked tortilla on to a plate and returning it to the pan the other way up, you may have to set the top under the fierce heat of the grill, further increasing the risk of toughening the eggs.

An alternative is to use the oven. It worked pretty well for me.

Serves 3 to 4.

6 medium-sized new potatoes
1 large, Spanish onion, sliced
Olive oil
6 eggs
Large knob of butter
80g hard cheese, such as Manchego or Pecorino (but the cheese on the omelette above is Cheddar), grated

Scrape the potatoes, cut them into slices roughly the thickness of 2 £1 coins, put them in a saucepan of lightly salted water, bring to a simmer, and cook until tender. Drain.

In a heavy pan - the one above is 20cms, and has, as you can see, a detachable handle - and in a tbsp or two of oil, gently fry the onions, lightly salted, until golden. It will take 10 to 20 minutes.

Lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Lift the onions from the pan with a slotted spoon, and stir them into the eggs, along with the potatoes. Add a little more salt, if you like.

Over a low heat, melt the butter in the pan. Tip in the egg mixture. My inauthentic addition - a regular theme of this blog - is the grated cheese on top.

Put the pan into a gas mark 4/180C oven for about 20 minutes, or until the egg is set.

Inauthentic moussaka

Elements of this recipe (for 4) repeat my earlier recipe for moussaka. But this one is even less authentic. Moussaka should contain lamb, I believe; and I don't suppose that Greek cooks add Worcester sauce to it, or use Cheddar in their bechamels. I included potatoes - waxy ones would have worked better than the maincrop ones I used - because I didn't have enough aubergine. 

Since writing the earlier entry, I've discovered a new favourite method of stewing mince.

2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Olive oil
200g pork mince
200g beef mince
1 bay leaf
Chicken stock
1/2 chicken stock cube
1tbsp tomato puree
Few splashes Worcester sauce
Salt
1 large aubergine, cut into rounds the thickness of 2 £1 coins
3 medium potatoes, cut into rounds the thickness of 2 £1 coins
3dstsp plain flour
35g butter, or enough to make a roux with the flour
300ml milk
1 egg, beaten
3 tbsp Cheddar
A few scrapings of nutmeg

Over a gentle heat and in a heavy-bottomed pan, soften the onions and garlic with a little salt in a tbsp or two of olive oil. After about five minutes, add the mince, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it starts to cook. Continue to cook the contents of the pan gently, stirring from time to time. After about 25 minutes, and once the liquid from the meat has evaporated, the mince will start to brown. (I used to worry that the onions would burn before the mince browned - but for some reason they do not.) When it is browned, add about 100ml of chicken stock, or just enough to produce a stew that is moist but not runny. Stir in the stock cube (which is not necessary, but does add extra savouriness), puree, and the Worcester sauce if you like, and add the bay leaf. Allow to bubble for a few minutes. Test the seasoning - the cube and the Worcester sauce are salty, and you may not need more salt.

Meanwhile, pour some olive oil into a saucer. Dip in a fork, and brush the aubergine rounds with the back of it. Place them in a roasting tin or on a baking sheet. Season with salt, and with pepper if you like. Bake at gas mark 6/200C for 20 to 30 minutes, until soft. (This is a far easier method of cooking aubergines than frying.)

Put the potatoes into lightly salted cold water, bring to the boil, and simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain.

Make a thick bechamel. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a gentle heat. Add the flour, and stir it in. The roux should have the consistency of wet sand. Cook it for a minute. Pour in the milk gradually, stirring to incorporate each portion before adding the next. Let the sauce bubble for a minute or two, stirring constantly, then turn off the heat. You want a thick, almost pasty consistency. When the sauce has cooled a little, stir in the egg. (After baking, the sauce should puff up.) You could season the bechamel with nutmeg as well as salt.

Assemble the "moussaka". I spread a little of the bechamel on the bottom and sides of the oven dish. Then I built up the layers: potato; stew; potatoes and aubergines; stew; aubergines; bechamel.

Bake in a gas mark 6/200C oven for 30 minutes, or until the top is brown and everything is bubbling.

Moussaka is particularly delicious warm, rather than piping hot. We ate ours after it had been sitting in the turned-off oven for 45 minutes.

Cheese souffle

Some dishes are bogey dishes, while others seem to come right every time. My mother, a very good cook, was hopeless at making chips. I, as I've recorded on this blog, have a hit-and-miss record with crackling. But my record with souffle - a dish with a scary reputation - is good.

Yesterday, I pushed my luck by cooking a souffle without referring to any recipes, and guessing on the quantities. It worked.

For 2

About 30g butter
2dstsp plain flour
About 175ml milk
100g Cheddar (or Gruyere, or similar), grated
A few scrapings of nutmeg
Ground black pepper, or cayenne (optional)
3 eggs, separated

Melt the butter above a low heat in a small saucepan. Stir in the flour. Adjust the butter/flour ratio if necessary to get a roux of the consistency of wet sand. Allow the roux to cook for a minute, without browning. Turn up the heat, and add the milk in stages, beating it into the mixture before pouring in more. Keep adding milk until you have a very thick, pasty sauce. Allow the sauce to bubble for a minute, stirring all the while. Turn off the heat. Stir in the cheese, and add your preferred seasonings. (Remember, if adding salt, that the cheese is salty.)

Beat the egg yolks. When you're sure the sauce is cool enough not to curdle them, stir them in.

A drop or two of vinegar or lemon juice in the egg whites will help them to set. Whisk them (I always do it by hand) until, when you lift the whisk from the egg, it forms soft peaks.

Pour the cheese mixture into the egg white, and fold it in without beating (which would drive out the air). I use a turning and lifting motion, until the mixture is amalgamated.

Tip the mixture into an oven dish. In my experience, the shape of the dish does not matter. Bake at gas mark 5/190C for about 30 minutes, until set. (The dish in the photo is not particular efficient at conducting heat. After 25 minutes, my souffle was not making much progress, so I turned up the dial to 7/220C for a further 10 minutes.)

Fried chicken with rosemary

I did not make a very neat or thorough job of coating my chicken pieces. The mystery is that the chicken emerged from the frying pan with what appeared to be a complete, crispy covering.

Plateful of plain flour
1tbs rosemary leaves, chopped (I used an old coffee grinder)
Salt
Pepper (black, cayenne, or both)
1 egg, beaten
6 chicken drumsticks
Sunflower oil

Mix the flour with the rosemary and seasonings. Dip the chicken pieces in the egg, and roll them in the flour. Lay them on a rack (as above) until you're ready to fry them.

Half fill a large frying pan with the oil, and place on a low to medium heat. After about five minutes, drop in a tiny piece of bread. If it sizzles readily, place the chicken pieces in the oil. Once they're frying, you can turn down the heat almost to the minimum.

Cook for 30 minutes, turning once. Remove to paper towels before serving.

Aubergine cheesecake

An adaptation of this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe from the Guardian. Serves 2, as a main course.

2 small to medium aubergines
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tin tomatoes
100g feta
100g cream cheese
2 eggs, beaten
Nutmeg

Cut the aubergines into discs, brush them with olive oil, season them, and lay them on foil or greaseproof paper on a large baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes at gas mark 6/200C, until tender.

In a heavy saucepan, gently heat the garlic in a tbsp of olive oil. Tip in the tomatoes, bring to a simmer, and mash them with a potato masher. (You can add a little sugar, if you like.) Simmer until thick.

Beat the feta and cream cheese with the eggs, until smooth. Add a few scrapings of nutmeg, and grind in some black pepper. (The feta, and to a lesser extent the cream cheese, are salty.)

Spread the tomato sauce in a 20cm baking dish. Arrange the aubergines on top. Pour over the cheese custard.

Bake in a gas mark 2/150C oven for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the custard is set.

Haddock fishcakes

 As you can see, these fishcakes broke up a little in the pan. It's hard to avoid. Perhaps an extra egg in the mix would have helped. The ingredients for what you see above were:

3 large potatoes
300g haddock fillet
300ml milk
Bay leaf
Six peppercorns
1 egg (but perhaps 2 would be better), beaten
Salt
Butter
Sunflower oil

Peel the potatoes, cut into chunks, cover with cold water, add a little salt, bring to a simmer, and cook until soft. Drain and mash.

Put the fish in an oven dish. In a small saucepan, gently heat the milk with the bay leaf and peppercorns until simmering, pour it over the fish, cover with foil, and bake at gas mark 6/200C for 10 to 15 minutes, until tender. Lift the fish from the liquid, and flake it into the mash.

You may well want to add, as well as some salt, ingredients such as chopped spring onions, toasted and ground cumin, saffron, and cayenne pepper.

Mix the potato, fish and any other ingredients with the beaten egg. Form the mixture into six patties.

On a medium heat, melt the knob of butter and a tbsp of sunflower oil in a heavy frying pan. Carefully add the fishcakes, and fry for a few minutes until browned on the undersides. Again carefully, turn them, adding another knob of butter.

When both sides are browned, transfer the fishcakes to a piece of foil on a baking sheet, and warm them through for 10 minutes in the oven (at the same heat as above).

I used the milk, strained, to make a bechamel, into which I stirred chopped leeks, which I had steamed for five minutes.

Sausage and lentil stew

This is an adaptation of an Allegra McEvedy recipe in the Guardian. Stewed sausages have a different texture, obviously, from fried or grilled ones; I can find them offputtingly flabby. But I didn't this time. For 2.

4 sausages, cut into fork-sized discs (you can't do this neatly - no matter)
80g smoked pancetta, cubed
2tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
150g lentils, Puy or Puy-type, rinsed
250ml (or more) chicken stock (I used half a cube, and water)
1 bay leaf
1 dried chilli
A few splashes of Worcester sauce

In a heavy pan or casserole, fry the sausage chunks and pancetta in the oil, over a low to medium heat. Don't turn up the heat too high: the oil will burn, and bits of sausage will stick to the pan and burn too. Be patient until the meat starts to brown - about 10 to 15 minutes.

I don't think you need to remove the sausage from the pan now, as McEvedy advises. Throw in the onion and garlic, and keep everything moving until the onions have softened - five to 10 minutes.

Tip in the lentils with the stock, bay leaf, chilli, and sauce (optional). You want enough liquid just to keep the lentils submerged. Bring the contents of the pan to a simmer, cover it, and continue cooking on a very low heat. Check from time to time, because the lentils will absorb some of the liquid, which you may need to top up.

The trick is to maintain the liquid at a level that will cook the lentils but that will not leave you with a very sloppy stew. They may take 45 minutes to an hour to tenderise - about twice as long as normal. When they're soft enough, remove the pan lid to allow some liquid to evaporate.

Test the seasoning. You can add salt now: if you had done so earlier, it might have toughened the lentils. If you have parsley, chop it and stir it in.

Gluten-free crespolini, with spinach and cheese

Six days after Shrove Tuesday, a pancake recipe.

Gluten-free flour makes a passable bechamel, but is no substitute for wheat flour in pastry, in my view - even with the addition of the recommended xanthum gum. It has a dry, powdery quality. That quality affected these gluten-free pancakes as well. But it was less noticeable, partly because of the rich filling; and gluten-free pancakes are better than no pancakes.

After I had rested the batter, I discovered that flour had settled on the bottom of the bowl, and needed to be stirred into the liquid again.

Pancake batter: see recipe for Toad in the Hole; but use an extra egg.

Bechamel and spinach: recipe in this Eggs Florentine entry.

Once you've cooked the sauce, allow it to cool and thicken. Drain the spinach, and squeeze out the liquid, without being absolutely thorough. Stir the spinach into the sauce.

Heat a 20cm, non-stick pan above a medium flame. I don't have a proper pancake pan, but use a cast-iron one (a bit heavy for flipping). Swirl a little sunflower oil in it, then tip out any excess. Pour in half a ladleful of batter, spread it out, and cook for 30 to 45 seconds. Flip the pancake using your preferred method (I do it, gracelessly, with a spatula). Repeat, adding a little more oil when necessary.

I added spinach filling to each pancake, rolled it up and put it in an oven dish while the next pancake was cooking.

Cover the dish with foil, and bake the crespolini in a gas mark 6/200C oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until hot.

Roasting in paper or foil

I have discovered the advantages, first mentioned in this post, of roasting meat alongside potatoes in a tin lined with kitchen paper or non-stick foil. (It is a good idea to use two layers.) You sacrifice the crispiness of potatoes that have been parboiled first and then roasted; but you get instead a sweet earthiness in the potato flesh that would otherwise be lost. The potatoes stick even to paper, but not as thoroughly as they do to my roasting tin.

Another advantage of this method, particular when roasting chicken, is that you get a lot more juice. Yesterday, I rubbed a chicken (2.2kg) with a little butter, salted it, and stuffed it with a quartered lemon and with the cloves from a head of garlic. I pre-heated the oven at its highest setting, then turned it down to gas mark 6/200C, and put in the chicken, with the neck part of the giblets next to it. After 30 minutes, I turned down the dial to gas mark 3/160C. After another 30 minutes, I surrounded the chicken with peeled, sliced, washed and drained potatoes.

The chicken was ready after two hours in total. I removed it to a hot plate, which I kept on the grill shelf above the oven. It left behind plenty of juice, which I spooned off into a saucepan, with the neck.

I tossed the potatoes in the tin with some olive oil, and returned them to the oven (with the shelf raised a level) at its highest setting. After 20 minutes, I tossed them again. They were browned in half an hour. The chicken was still warm.

There was enough buttery, lemony sauce, which I warmed in the pan, for four.

The lamb above is studded with slivers of garlic and rosemary, rubbed with oil, salted, and roasted with a foil covering for three hours at gas mark 2/150C. (It browns in spite of the covering.) The procedure with the potatoes was the same as above.

Aubergine with tahini and lemon

1 large aubergine
1 clove garlic, crushed with a little salt
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2tbsp tahini paste
2tbsp olive oil
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Salt

Heat the oven to gas mark 8/230C. Prick the aubergine in various places with the point of a knife (otherwise, it might explode), put it on a baking sheet, and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until tender. Allow to cool.

Peel the aubergine. With your hands, squeeze the liquid from the flesh - up to a point. You can squeeze and squeeze, and still more liquid will come out, until you are left with a fraction of the vegetable you had before. I stop before then.

Mash the aubergine flesh with a potato masher. After each push of the masher, you'll have to scrape off the aubergine that sticks to it; when you've broken down the larger chunks of vegetable, you can switch to mashing with a fork. Stir in the garlic, lemon juice, tahini and olive oil, and season with the peppers and salt to taste.

Serve with pitta or flatbread, and alongside other salads.

Cheese on toast

I have long been ambitious to make a Welsh rarebit-type cheese on toast without seeing the mixture ooze over the sides of the bread and congeal at the bottom of the grill pan. The answer, as it is with potato cakes, seems to be an egg.

80g Cheddar or Gruyere
1/2tsp Dijon mustard
A few splashes of Worcester sauce
Scraping of nutmeg
Pepper
1 egg, beaten
Pepper (you shouldn't need salt, because of the salty cheese and sauce)
4 slices bread

Mash together the ingredients (except for the bread).

You don't want the toast to burn before the cheese softens and bubbles, so set the grill to medium/low. Lightly toast one side of the bread. Turn over the slices, and toast just long enough to begin crisping the bread. Remove, and spread with butter and then the cheese mixture. Return to the grill until the cheese has browned on top.

Spiced eggs

There are various recipes for spiced, scrambled eggs in Anglo-Indian cuisine. This is a very simple version (for 1), which might have benefited from some cardamom. Fresh chillis are essential, I think, because the zing nicely offsets the creaminess of the eggs. I used one red and one green torpedo-shaped chilli, and included the seeds and the pith. (The pith, not the seeds, is the hottest part.) No pic today: the browny yellow image does not do justice to the deliciousness of the dish.

1/2 onion, chopped
1tsp cumin seeds
2 chillis, finely sliced
1tbsp sunflower oil/butter
Salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten

In a small, non-stick saucepan, cook the onion, cumin and chillis, with a little salt, in a mix of sunflower oil and butter. Use a low heat, and add a little more oil - which helps to prevent the butter from catching - if necessary. Cook until the onions are golden and have shed all their moisture.

Add the eggs, and stir rapidly - they will scramble immediately. Cook until curdled and creamy.

Belly pork and bean stew

One of my favourite things. A lot of garlic is important.

225g cannellini or other dried white beans
5 cloves garlic - 1 chopped, 4 unpeeled
3 slices belly pork
A little sunflower oil
1tbsp olive oil
1 small pack (80g) smoked pancetta
100ml chicken stock
2 bay leaves
Salt

Soak the beans in filtered water, preferably, for five hours or longer. (This process is not essential, but speeds the cooking of the beans and ensures that they soften more consistently.) Drain and rinse. Cover with fresh water (again filtered, if possible) by about 3cms, throw in the garlic cloves, bring to the boil, and simmer, with the pan partly covered, until soft. Times vary; my cannellini beans took 75 minutes. (Top up the water if necessary.) Drain, reserving the liquid in a clear jug. (Cooking dried beans)

Rub a little sunflower oil over the pork slices, and brown them quickly on a hot griddle or frying pan. (Browning meat for a stew)

In a heavy casserole, soften the chopped garlic in the olive oil for a minute or so. Pour in the chicken stock. Sludgy bean liquid will have settled at the bottom of the jug; pour off (but keep for some other purpose) the thinner stuff on top, leaving about 100ml, and pour it into the casserole. Add the pork slices.

Squeeze the softened garlic from the cloves you drained with the beans. Throw away the skins. Tip the beans and the garlic into the casserole. Add bay leaves, and salt to taste. Compress the stew slightly to submerge everything in liquid, but do not worry if the beans are not covered.

I started the stew in a gas mark 4/180C oven, turning it down after 30 minutes (when it was bubbling) to gas mark S/130C.

However, after an hour I wanted to use the oven for some roast potatoes, so I moved the casserole to the hob. There was more liquid by this time, and I simmered the stew gently, uncovered, until thick. Then I replaced the lid, and put a heat disperser under the casserole, so that it carried on cooking very gently. I cooked the stew for two and a quarter hours in total.

Pork and bean stew
Pork and bean stew 2

Beetroot, lentil, feta salad

Serves 2

3 medium beetroot
100g green lentils, such as Puy
1 garlic clove, unpeeled
1tbsp balsamic vinegar
1tsp Dijon mustard
2tbsp olive oil
Salt, pepper
110g feta, goat's, or cream cheese

Clean the beetroot, and cut off any stalks. Put them in a bath of boiling water about 2cm deep in an oven dish, cover with foil, and bake for 60 to 90 minutes in a gas mark 4/180C oven, or until tender to the point of a knife. Remove to a board, and allow to cool.

Rinse the lentils, put them in a pan with the garlic clove, cover with cold water by about 2cm, bring to the boil and simmer, covered. They may take from 20 to 40 minutes to soften, so taste from time to time, and top up the water if necessary.

Meanwhile, make a dressing by dissolving the mustard in the vinegar with some salt and lots of black pepper, and whisking in the oil.

Drain the lentils, shaking the sieve to get rid of as much liquid as possible. Squeeze the softened garlic from the clove. Stir the lentils and garlic flesh into the dressing.

Peel the beetroot by scraping the skin with a knife. Slice, and mix with the lentils.

Distribute between two plates. Scatter portions of the cheese on top. 

Beetroot - braising is best
Similar salad - rocket, beetroot, goats' cheese
Lentils

Chicken, potatoes, lemon, garlic, and fennel

The standard method of roasting potatoes, discussed previously here (and in previous entries), is to parboil them, rough them up a bit while draining, and tip them into a roasting tin with hot fat. You get crunchy surfaces and fluffy interiors. But most of the flavour is in the crunchy bits. If you want to retain, or even enhance, the sweet earthiness of the potatoes themselves, don't parboil them first.

There are two disadvantages to roasting potatoes from raw. First, the surfaces can become leathery. Second, the surface starch, even after you give the potatoes a thorough rinsing, can cause them to stick to the roasting pan. You can see in the picture above that I've broken up the potatoes as I've tried to turn them. A good portion of them refused to come loose at the end of cooking, and had to be left behind.

The problem of the leathery surfaces in lessened if you slice the potatoes rather than cutting them into chunks. To avoid sticking, get a roasting pan with a better non-stick surface than mine possesses, or use non-stick foil or greaseproof paper.

6 chicken drumsticks (an ungenerous portion for three)
3 large potatoes, peeled, sliced (I cut them in half, and sliced the halves lengthwise), rinsed and drained
1 head of garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
1 lemon, quartered
Olive oil
Salt
2 fennel bulbs, stalks and tough outer leaves removed, sliced, tossed with a tbsp of olive oil and a little salt

Arrange the chicken, potatoes, and garlic cloves in a roasting tin, lined with foil or paper if necessary (see above). Toss with a generous portion of olive oil, and salt. Add the lemon slices. (Don't toss the lemon with the potatoes yet - the acidity might hinder their softening.)

Roast for 30 minutes at gas mark 6/200C. Now toss everything together again; the lemon juice will flavour the potatoes. Check that you've turned any potatoes that threaten to burn on their undersides. Make room for the fennel, and add it to the pan. Roast for a further 30 minutes.

Sweet potato, carrot and chick pea curry

2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Sunflower oil, for frying
2tsp cumin seeds
1tsp coriander seeds
6 black peppercorns
8 cardamom pods
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into fork-size pieces
2 carrots, peeled and cut into fork-size pieces
1 tin chick peas
Chicken stock
1tsp turmeric
Cayenne pepper to taste
Salt to taste
Sachet of creamed coconut
Chillis, chopped

Serves 2

Fry the onions and garlic, salted, in the sunflower oil (enough to prevent their catching) over a low heat, stirring, until golden.

Meanwhile, in a dry saucepan and over a gentle heat, cook the cumin, coriander, and peppercorns until they give off a toasted aroma. Grind, with the cardamom (to release the seeds), with a pestle and mortar. Fry these spices with the onions and garlic for a couple of minutes.

Tip in the sweet potato, carrots and chick peas. Pour in a couple of ladlefuls of stock (eccentrically, I used the bacon stock that also went into my potato and cabbage soup), with the turmeric, cayenne, salt if you need it, and coconut cream. Simmer, covered, stirring from time to time, until the vegetables are soft. You'll find that they absorb and thicken the stock - I needed to add another ladleful.

As you may be able to see above, I eat mine with a generous garnish of chillis.

Potato and cabbage soup

Bacon stock
Pinch of cayenne pepper
2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into cubes
Quarter of Savoy cabbage, finely shredded, chopped, and washed

At the weekend, I boiled a knuckle of bacon. I covered it in water, brought it to a simmer, and skimmed the froth. I threw in 2 onions, 10 peppercorns, and 10 juniper berries, covered the pot, put it on a heat disperser, and simmered for two hours. The beautifully tender bacon, costing £1.50, served three. The strained liquid, chilled, became a jellied stock.

To make the soup (for 2): cover the potatoes with stock, peppered if you like, and simmer until the potatoes are very soft. Mash with a potato masher. Do not boil the soup again: it will turn starchy. Tip in the cabbage, stir in, cover, and leave for three minutes. Serve.

Poule-au-pot

The breast meat of chicken cooks much more rapidly than does the leg meat. When overcooked, it - like any foodstuff consisting of protein - dries and toughens. Keeping it tender presents a bigger challenge when you cook it in liquid than when you roast it, because the liquid is a more efficient cooking medium than oven heat.

This is the first flaw, it seems to me, of poule-au-pot recipes, which instruct you to boil the bird whole. The second is that they also tell you to cook your vegetables to the pot, adding them at intervals, according to how long you think they need. The chances are that some will emerge overcooked.

1 chicken, or hen (poule)
Water
1/2 chicken stock cube
2 onions
2 bay leaves
12 peppercorns

Leeks
Carrots

Joint the chicken, or get the butcher to do it for you. I cut mine into eight pieces: I separated the thighs and the drumsticks, and cut the breasts in half.

Put the thighs, drumsticks, backbone and giblets (if you have them - but minus the liver) into the bottom of a stockpot or deep casserole. Pour in water just to cover, and bring to a simmer. Skim the froth (though it is harmless - chefs get rid of it in order to avoid producing murky stock). Throw in the half stock cube, onions, bay leaves, and peppercorns. Cover (for thoughts on covering stock, see here), and simmer for 60 minutes. (I, liking very tender leg meat, allowed 90 minutes.) Add the breast portions. There is no need to turn up the heat to bring the liquid back to a simmer - it is hot enough. Cover, and allow another 30 minutes.

Chop off the tough leaves of the leeks, cut them down the middle, and slice. Soak them in water, to get rid of the grit. Transfer them (without their soaking water) to a saucepan, pour over a serving spoonful of stock from the chicken pot, add a knob of butter and some salt, cover and cook on a low to medium heat for five minutes. Uncover the pan and continue to cook, stirring, until the liquid has evaporated.

Peel the carrots and cut them into thick batons. Cook them in the same way as the leeks, but allowing them 10 to 12 minutes in the covered pan before removing the lid and evaporating the liquid.

We had our chicken with rice as well. Plain, boiled potatoes (new or maincrop) would also have been fine.

Serve the chicken with a spoonful or two of its stock. Keep the rest of the stock to use in other recipes. A salsa verde, or a garlic mayonnaise, would be a good accompaniment.