Fried chicken two ways

I promise you I don't deep-fry every week, but in the last month or so we have had two very different but delicious meals featuring fried chicken.

There was a big chunk of Stilton leftover from Christmas, and I had Mark Hix's Stilton croquette recipe but it wasn't quite enough for dinner for two people (don't look at the number he says they make, just take my word for it please!). Staring into the depths of the fridge I spied a couple of chicken breast fillets, so I decided to fry them too. I halved the amount of potato in the Stilton croquettes, which I think was the right thing - the Stilton flavour was still fairly subtle. I also added some chopped apple to the celery and walnut mayonnaise to make a classic Waldorf salad. For the chicken, I cut it into chunks, dunked it into seasoned egg white and dredged it in cornflour before frying it (which has set up a craving for old-school lemon chicken that I still haven't satisfied).

Stilton croquettes, fried chicken breast and Waldorf salad

The next fried chicken was a very different proposition. I had a whole chicken but I didn't want to roast it. I watched Paul Merrett do it a couple of times, took a deep breath and dived in. It worked very well, although I got the giggles at one point when it all got a bit gynaecological.

I soaked the chicken pieces in garlicky buttermilk for a couple of hours, then dredged it in paprika-spiked flour and cooked it according to Laurie Colwin's method. Then in the all-important resting phase for the chicken, I made some light, fluffy corn fritters and a little tomato salad.

Corn fritters

2 egg whites (divided use)
1 cup corn kernels (I used thawed frozen ones)
1/4 cup polenta
1 spring onion, finely sliced
salt & pepper

Mix the corn, polenta, spring onion and seasoning with one of the eggwhites to a thick, lumpy paste. Whisk the other eggwhite until soft peaks form and fold into the corn mixture in two batches. Fry in hot oil on both sides until puffed up and golden.
 

Fried chicken, corn fritters and tomato salad

Lasagne and a very long rant

"Grandmother, may I have another sausage?" asked Hugh Anthony.
"Certainly not," said Grandmother.
"Why?" asked Hugh Anthony.
"Because you've had two already."
"But why can't I have three?"
"Because three wouldn't be good for you."
"Why?"
"Because they are made of pork, and too much pork is not good for children."
"They aren't made of pork. Sarah says Mr King's sausages are made of horse. So may I have another?" Sister of the Angels Elizabeth Goudge, 1939.

There's horse meat in prepared meals you say? Cue the proliferation of jokes. So very many jokes. Enough that the jokes are reported almost as much as the latest developments. But it isn't very funny really. For one thing, it's not just horse meat of unknown provenance. Pork, prohibited by Muslim and Jewish dietary laws, has also been found in these "beef" products. And there have been suggestions that the horses may actually have been donkeys.

Aside from the jokes, I've seen mainly three categories of responses: serves you right for eating meat, what is wrong with eating horse anyway and what did you expect from value meals?

There's not really much I can say about the first. Some people who choose not to eat meat are very keen to proselytise. They have a point - I'm sure most people would benefit from eating less meat (particularly highly processed meat products) and more vegetables. It probably would benefit the planet, too. But I honestly don't think that many people who do eat meat will stop as a result of this, although sales of frozen beef (or "beef") burgers have fallen.

The "what is wrong with eating horse" school also gets short shrift from me, because it is just fundamentally missing the point. If you choose to eat horse, there is nothing wrong with it. If you don't choose to eat horse and you end up doing it anyway, that is the problem.

It's the "Well what did you expect from value meals" response that has me really wound up.

Where to begin?

Firstly, what I expect is that it "does what it says on the tin". I expect "made in the UK" to be made in the UK. I expect gluten-free bread to be gluten-free. I expect food labelled "suitable for vegans" to be suitable for vegans. And I expect something labelled 100% beef to contain 100% beef, whether it is from an economy range or premium. The problem with horse or pig or donkey or rat being substituted for beef is a matter of fraud. Laws are being broken by selling one foodstuff as another. The Food Labelling Regulations 1996, a bunch of EU regulations and directives, all dealing with maintaining a safe food-chain and ensuring that food is labelled accurately. There are suspicions that some of this is down to organised crime  - it isn't just a mistake or the consumer not being careful.

Secondly, this has opened up a whole nasty can o' worms regarding attitudes to the poor. The snobbery that has been on display is absolutely grotesque. From the smug "I never eat ready meals" to the more vicious pervading messages that you have to be both stupid and lazy to buy cheap meat, the horse meat scandal has led to a lot of victim-blaming. Often prefaced with "why don't they just...".

Why don't they just cook loads of lentils, shop at markets, buy from butchers, buy in bulk? My friend Miss South has eloquent things to say on the subject of food poverty, which are well worth reading as a rebuttal to those.

Cucina povera just isn't enormously suited to urban living. You can probably get chicken carcasses and secondary cuts for pennies and make lots of nourishing dishes from them. If you aren't working all the hours that the butchers are open. If you don't have family members with complex health needs and no respite care. If you have a butcher that actually breaks down whole animals and doesn't buy them in pre-packed. If you aren't reliant on a microwave because the landlord won't fix your cooker. If you can afford the fuel for long slow cooking. If you aren't spending all of your energies trying to get your benefits reinstated while undergoing chemotherapy.

I love the idea of taking my tangier to the local hammam and leaving it to cook all day in the fires underneath the bath house, but Greater London isn't really set up for that. I'd like to see the look on their faces if I rocked up to the local Wenzel's and asked them to stick my lamb boulangère in their oven for the day. I'd probably also get some funny looks if I went cutting firewood in the park in order to fuel my jambalaya-cooking.

Criticising people for buying the cheapest protein they can, when one in five mothers is missing meals so her children can eat, when the UN is investigating UK food poverty, when children are increasingly going to school hungry, is offensive and ignorant. Demonising people who are not in a position to make better choices is not going to help them.

What is the answer? Unfortunately that is where my ranting falls down. I just don't know really. Children are going to be given cooking lessons but since this has been discussed since 2008 I'm not holding my breath. Unless underlying issues of poverty are addressed, knowing how to cook ingredients that people can't afford isn't going to help. It probably won't hurt though.

For me, this lasagne was a very frugal dish. I didn't have any pasta in the cupboard but I did have eggs, flour and the equipment and know-how to make them into pasta. I have a large and well-stocked freezer, so was in the luxurious position of having organic British minced beef and pork, bought when they were on special offer. And I have time on my hands and a paid-up electricity bill so was able to give the sauce a nice long simmer. For the price of some spinach and milk, I was able to produce six hearty portions of food. In short, this is the sort of food people on a budget should be eating, if we ignore what real life can be like. But it actually didn't taste as good as Findus.

Spinach lasagne sheets made according to this recipe

Thin layers of ragu and bechamel

Warming, comforting lasagne

Clockjack Oven

"Oh why would you live in England when you can live in Australia and have that lovely weather?"
"Have you ever been to Australia?"
"No, but I watch Home and Away"

I have had that conversation many, many times over the last seven years. Strangely, the people who talk about the lovely weather are aware of the floods, droughts, bushfires, heatwaves and occasional cyclones that also beset Australia. There are definitely things I miss about Australia, but the weather isn't counted amongst them. I miss people, mostly. Some specific experiences like eating fish & chips at Balmoral Beach or having brunch in Manly on weekends or seeing movies at the Cremorne Orpheum with the organist coming out of the floor beforehand. And food. There are definitely foods I miss, that are either difficult to obtain here or just weirdly different.

Chicken shops. In Australia there are loads of shops dedicated to takeaway rotisserie chickens. They have really high turnover so the chickens are usually hot, fresh and juicy. You get a choice of "seasoned" (stuffed with sage & onion) or unseasoned. They sell trays of roast potato, pumpkin and sweet potato, or eggplant, zucchini and peppers. They have vats of potato salad, chicken and avocado salad, fruit salad and horrible gloopy pasta salad that I am sure someone likes. About five times a year since we moved, we have lamented that chicken shops here sell manky deep-fried chicken with no obvious signs of vegetables.

This is why I got really excited when I heard about Clockjack Oven. They are a rotisserie chicken restaurant, seemingly the prototype for a chain. They serve chicken and a few side dishes. What more could I ask for?

Well...

3 pieces of chicken for £6.95

Let's start with the chicken. The chicken is excellent - succulent, flavoursome skin, fall-off-the-bone tender meat. It could possibly have been a shade more bronzed perhaps, although I could easily have eaten another three pieces out of sheer enjoyment of the flavour. But I don't really know why, when Britain produces some really magnificent organic chickens, they are using their sourcing of French chickens as a selling point. I mean, yes, depending on where in the UK a chicken comes from, Brittany can actually be more local to London, but I'd still rather give money to British poultry farmers.

One of my companions at this meal was one of those - far from unusual - people who don't like to eat meat on the bone. So while she is happy to eat chicken, the boneless options were salads or sandwiches. She ordered the CLT torpedo - chicken, lettuce and tomato on a bun. And she said it had no flavour whatsoever. The mayonnaise or whatever it was binding it was distinctly bland.

House salad

Sadly, there were no steaming trays of roast vegetables on offer. We ordered a house salad - lettuce and apple slices topped with crisp stuffing balls. The lettuce and apple were fresh and crisp but the stuffing balls weren't particularly tasty and had too dry a texture and generally seemed a bit misguided. There was a dressing on the salad but it seemed to be there to prevent oxidation rather than for lubrication or flavour.

The chips, on the other hand, were perfect. Crunchy outside, soft in the middle, not too fat, not too thin.

We requested a couple of sauces - chilli and ranch. I'm not a connoisseur of ranch dressing: I don't actually know what is in it or what it is supposed to taste of, but this one tasted good to me. It was creamy and a bit tangy and just the sort of thing I like to dunk chips in. The chilli sauce wasn't fiercely hot but had a nice warm burn and a slightly smoky flavour. Not one for your competitive chilli eaters, and not nearly as good as my home made, but still very pleasant.

The tableware was an unusual choice. Rustic-looking glazed china of a type I'd normally associate with Japanese restaurants. It was pretty, but the bowl-shaped dishes were a bit awkward to cut up chicken on. Fine if you are planning to eat with your fingers but we were of course far too refined for that. I would also bet that a lot is going to get pinched.

The staff seemed really stretched, so service was patchy. One waitress was absolutely brilliant, had eyes in the back of her head and managed to dart around the room like a dragonfly. The other waiter was, shall we say, in need of more training. So while two of us were presented with water and a little dish of vegetable crisps as soon as we sat down, our later-arriving friend was asked for her order before she'd taken her coat off and didn't get water until the food arrived. The people sharing our table were asked to order before they'd been given a menu. He just didn't seem to be entirely on the ball.

We didn't try the desserts, and I just had a glass of the (perfectly acceptable) house red wine while the others were on soft-drinks. So we really didn't give the full menu a working over. But I think when I go back I will just stick to chicken and chips. They do them well and that is a beautiful thing.

Smokey Bacon & Corn Hash

This was also part of my frugal cooking week. A using-up-bits sort of brunch which ended up turning out really well and is worth commemorating.

Bacon & Corn Hash (serves 2)

1 medium potato
1/2 an onion (according to Terry Pratchett "A woman always has half an onion left over, no matter what the size of the onion, the dish, or the woman.")
6 slices bacon
1 cup frozen sweetcorn
1/2 teaspoon Luchito smoked chilli paste
2 fried eggs, to serve

Cut the bacon into chunks and fry in a large pan until the fat runs, then add the potato, cut into small cubes. When the potato chunks crisp at the edges (you may need to add a bit of vegetable oil if your bacon is on the lean side) add the diced onion. When it is translucent add the corn and smoked chilli paste (use diced chipotle in adobo if you don't have Luchito). When the corn is cooked, divide between two plates and top each with a fried egg.

Ben & Jerry's Core

On Tuesday evening I was invited to attend a sneak preview of a couple of Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavours. I don't say no to ice cream!

The Ben & Jerry's Core 500ml tubs contain a soft core of something (like a raspberry ripple sort of effect) with two flavours of ice cream around them. A few flavours were launched last year but these were new.

Woody made a fleeting visit

A masseuse was on-hand to give moo-ssages (apparently the cows have a massage machine so we were pretty much being given a taste of life as a dairy cow), a couple of nail artists were doing Ben & Jerry's themed manicures, the prosecco flowed and there were as many peanut butter and jam sandwiches and brownies as you could possibly want.

Peanut butter and jam? Yes, I'll get to that.

There was also a lot of ice cream. Lots and lots.

I started with my nails. Cow print with cow faces on the thumbs. Not my usual style at all but very cute and I had a great antipodean chat to the lovely Kiwi girl who did them.

Then on to the ice creams. The Blondie Brownie is a core of salted caramel with chocolate ice cream with chocolate brownie chunks and vanilla ice cream with blondie chunks.

The salted caramel was absolutely divine but I found the ice cream component a bit hard going. There were just too many chunks in it, which detracted from the caramel and made it all a bit too sweet (yes, the brownies are sweeter than the caramel), and not enough ice cream! Plus I am not really a fan of cookie dough or cakey sorts of inclusions in ice creams, so this one just wasn't the sort of thing I would usually order or eat. I had to have a second helping just to be sure though.

I much preferred the other flavour, Peanut Butter Me Up. An ode to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it was a core of raspberry jam with peanut butter ice cream, and vanilla ice cream studded with mini peanut butter cups. The jam was, of course, jammy but actually not too sweet, the peanut butter flavour was fairly subtle but given a boost every time I bit into one of the little peanut butter cups. I would definitely buy this one, although to be honest I think if they combined the salted caramel core from the Blondie Brownie with the ice cream and peanut butter cups from this one, it'd be much closer to my idea of ice cream heaven. Or a peanut butter caramel core in raspberry and vanilla ice creams? Now there's an idea...

Rhodri Morgan, one of the brand managers for Ben & Jerry's UK, did a very brief spiel about these new flavours, but then I got to have a bit of a chat to him about the brand, our shared love for Nigella Lawson, the wonders of twitter and so forth. Ben & Jerry's is of course a Unilever (massive global conglomerate ptooey!) brand now, but they seem to be trying to maintain their hippy roots with progressive policies and an eye on the environment. In the UK they have moved over to entirely fairtrade ingredients, their ice creams are vegetarian friendly and they are campaigning for equal marriage legislation and to improve welfare standards for dairy cows in the E.U. All of which I like. These ice creams do, of course, have a much longer ingredients list than home made but at least I recognise all the words on the labels.

And now to work on my plan for an even better peanut butter and jam inspired ice cream...

Two days before a hair cut and colour and sadly not my glorious orange handbag

By popular demand - peshwari naan

A couple of people have asked for my naan recipe, so here it is (with the usual provisos that I am not Indian, this is not authentic etc etc):

Peshwari Naan (makes 4)

250g strong white flour
pinch salt
1 sachet fast action yeast
1tbs olive oil
2tbs plain yoghurt (not thick Greek-style, just regular)
100ml-ish water
2tbs desiccated coconut
1tbs caster sugar
1/2tsp fennel seeds, crushed
Seeds from 5 cardamom pods, crushed

Put the flour in a large bowl & put the salt on one side, the yeast on the other. Add the yoghurt and olive oil and bring together with your hands, dribbling in the water gradually until you have a slightly sticky dough. Knead until smooth and elastic (the olive oil in the dough makes this less difficult than you would think) then cover and allow to rise for an hour.

Combine the coconut, sugar, fennel seeds and cardamom seeds in a small bowl.

Once the dough has risen, divide into 4. On a floured surface, pat one portion out into a disc, then pile 1/4 of the coconut mixture in the middle. Bring the sides together so you have a little sort of dough bag with the filling enclosed in the middle, and give it a bit of a twist to seal the edges together. Then gently roll it out into a oblong or teardrop sort of shape. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling ingredients.

Heat a griddle or frying pan (I use a Le Creuset for this) and cook the naan for about 3 minutes a side - I use a totally dry pan, it doesn't stick or anything. On the second side I found that they puffed up like a pita bread, but they collapsed when they came off the heat.

You could add a bit of gloss and extra luxury by rubbing each one with a little melted butter or ghee when they are cooked, but I didn't bother with these since I was serving them with a very rich curry. Serve fresh & warm.

Tamarind beef shin curry

You know how you can get really subtle curries with delicate, refined spicing? This is not one of those. This is a big, butch curry that whacks you around the head with beefy flavour and lip-smacking texture. But it's actually not that hot - it wouldn't get more than 2 chillies on any curry-house menu.

I was having a frugal cooking week, mostly using up things from the freezer and store cupboard, and decided that the whole Galloway beef shin wanted to become a curry. I was thinking vindaloo, but Paul screwed his nose up at the idea and suggested something with tamarind as a souring agent. That seemed like a good idea to me.

I thought about boning the shin and cubing the meat, but decided that the wastage from that would be, well, a waste. So I cut the meat on the bone into a check pattern (sort of like when you are cutting mango cheeks) and put it in the pot like that. A few hours later the meat just fell off the bone, leaving not a scrap behind. It does mean, of course, that you need to cook it in a bloody huge pot, but there is something very satisfying about stirring an enormous cauldron of food. Slices of beef shin like for osso bucco or even boned shin would work if you can't get a whole one. But it really does need to be shin for the way the connective tissue dissolves into gelatinous ooze.

I made some peshwari naan to go with it. I roasted wedges of butternut, then sprinkled them with spices half way through (like the baked peppered aubergine and potatoes, but I added some cinnamon as well) and served it with some yoghurt drizzled on top. And I dug a jar of aubergine pickle from the cupboard, where it has been happily mellowing for a couple of years.

Yeast-risen naan, filled with sweet coconut, cardamom and fennel seed.

Tamarind Beef Shin Curry

1 whole beef shin on the bone
1 black cardamom pod
2 dried red chillies
1 tbs tamarind concentrate
1 vegetable gel stock pot thingy (oh the shame)
Paste
1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
2 inch chunk of ginger, peeled
2 tbs vegetable oil
Spice Mix
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbs black peppercorns
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
Seeds from 10 cardamom pods
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp turmeric powder
1-2 dried red chillies, extra

Process, or finely dice or grate the onion, garlic and ginger (if processing, add the oil to help it along, otherwise, just mix the oil through after). Scrape half the onion ginger paste into a large casserole or heavy based saucepan with a lid, and allow to cook gently for a couple of minutes while you prepare the meat.

With a small sharp knife, cut around the meat 3-4 times lengthwise and 4-5 times the other way, cutting right down to the bone. Put the hedgehoggy-looking shin into the pot, then scrape the second half of the onion mixture on top, pushing it down into the cuts in the meat. Turn up the heat and brown the meat on both sides. Should be on all sides I guess but it is actually really tricky to turn a piece of meat that big so I only turned it once.

Combine the spices for the spice mix in your spice grinder or coffee grinder or mortar & pestle or whatever you use for such tasks and process to a fairly fine powder. Sprinkle it all over the meat. Tuck the whole dried chillies and the black cardamom pod down into the onion mixture at the base of the pan. Add a good tablespoonful of tamarind concentrate and a vegetable stock pot, then pour over a bit of water - probably about a teacupful (should come about 1" up the meat).

Bring to the boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Cover tightly. At this point I put it in a 140C oven for 4 hours, but you could just do it on a very low heat on the hob. I usually find that there is more evaporation and more chance of hotspots catching on the pan on the hob, so you might need to add a bit more water.

After 4 hours, take it off the heat - by this time the meat should have fallen off the bone completely, so take the bones out. We left it to cool for a couple of hours to allow the spices to completely draw through the curry (plus it freed up the oven for roasting the butternut) and then reheated it on the hob just before dinner, but you can serve it straight away. Or the next day.