Simply nature goat cheese mac and cheese

You want it just about covered.Д«ring to a bubble, clamp on the lid, turn the heat to very low and leave to cook for 1ВЅвЂ“2 hours. The chicken should be almost completely submerged by now and if not, do add some more cold water. Pour in enough cold water to cover the chicken, though the very top of it may poke out, then pop in the bouquet garni or your herbs of choice, and the parsley stalks (if I have a bunch, I cut the stalks off to use here, but leave them tied in the rubber band) or parsley sprigs along with the salt and red peppercorns (I just love these beautiful red berries) or a good grinding of regular pepper. Still over a vigorous heat add the wine or vermouth to the pan and let it bubble down a little before adding the leeks, carrots and celery. Put the oil in the pan to heat, then brown the chicken for a few minutes breast-side down, and turn up the heat and turn over the chicken, tossing in the feet as you do so. Now cut off the ankle joints below the drumstick (but keep them) I find kitchen scissors up to the task. (As you may imagine, I like this.) Then press down again, so that the chicken is flattened slightly. On a washable board, un-truss the chicken, put it breast-side down and press down until you hear the breastbone crack.

Get out a large, flame-safe cooking pot (with a lid) in which the chicken can fit snugly: mine is about 28cm wide x 10cm deep. Red peppercorns 2 tsp, or good grinding pepper Sea salt flakes 2 tsp, or 1 tsp pouring salt Leeks 2-3, cleaned, trimmed and cut into approx 7cm logsДЇresh parsley stalks or few sprigs, tied or banded together Serves 4-8 (cooked this way it seems to go much further than roast chicken, so you can feed more first time or have plenty for the rest of the week) And, as I am presenting this in its role as a family favourite, my kitchen perennial, in fact, I feel I can allow myself to be bossier than normal, even telling you how you should eat it: by this I mean the Lawsonian familial practice of adding fresh fronds of dill and some English mustard вЂ“ just a pinprick or great, sinus-clearing teaspoonfuls вЂ“ as we greedily, gratefully eat. And if you can steam them above the chicken, so much the better. Obviously, if you want, you can ditch the rice and think of serving steamed potatoes, instead.

On the whole, I tend to go for the higher rather than lower number вЂ“ no huge surprise, IвЂ™m sure вЂ“ not because I think itвЂ™s all needed, but because one of my favourite uses of leftover meat is a variation of a salad I make with leftover turkey at Christmas: chunks or shreds of cold chicken stirred into cold brown basmati rice, with pomegranate seeds, sunflower seeds or any mixture of similar seeds, fresh dill, lemon juice, salt and 1-2 drops of gorgeously flavoured oil (a rich, mustardy yellow cold-pressed rapeseed being my favourite). I like brown basmati here, and work on 75-100g per head before cooking, depending on the ages and appetites of the eaters. So, let me reassure you that really all you need to know is that you simply brown the chicken before adding vegetables and just enough liquid to cover, and cook them slowly before eating on top of rice.

Д«y its very nature, this symbolises the very free-style form of cooking that a recipe seems to argue against. And very often, when all is heaped into the pan at the beginning, just before it is left to cook itself into aromatic succulence, I grate in the zest of 1 lemon, then squeeze in the juice and maybe add a sprinkling of dried mint, too. At all times, you can play with the vegetables. For example, you could toss in some pancetta cubes before you add the chicken and maybe use cider as your flavour-giving alcoholic beverage of choice or you could add some ginger, freshly grated or sliced, along with the oil and use Chinese cooking wine or sake in place of the white wine or vermouth and put coriander stalks in, along with the parsley or instead, and add fresh, de-seeded red chilli, cut into fine almost-rings, as well as chopped coriander, at the end. Relax: obviously, itвЂ™s not the reliability from a practical perspective thatвЂ™s in question rather, I cook this so often I know that one written-down version of it canвЂ™t take into account or begin to convey all its possible permutations.

Simply nature goat cheese mac and cheese