I saw somewhere this morning that today is meant to be the first day of Spring. That could be right. The garden is about to burst into colour. A few daffodils are out already if they have been able to get some sun and a half dozen bluebells are giving colour in the woody shade under the orange lobelia. Rather to my surprise there are a few tulips that have come up from the bulbs I planted last year amongst the apple trees.It appears that more than I thought managed to survive the greed and ravages of the squirrels.
Last night we ate the second of the five chickens I bought to stock up with from The Farmer’s Market. It was the biggest and I stuffed it with garlic.
There is something very satisfying in stuffing a chicken under its skin. It is a question of using your fingers to push their way up carefully easing the skin away from the meat to create a pocket into which the stuffing can be stuffed. It is dirty work but once the stuffing is in their it can forced into the odd corner by smoothing over the skin. This has the added bonus of allowing some of the flavour to be rubbed off onto the skin.
The stuffing was a mixture of garlic, coriander and saffron courtesy of the first Moro cookbook.
The garlic was soften in simmering milk. A couple of tablespoons of the hot milk was but in a bowl with an extravagant amount of saffron. It quickly took on a beautifully dep yellow colour. Once the garlic was soft it was taken out of the milk and allowed to cool. Then each of the cloves was squeezed out into the bowl with the milk and saffron. Ground cumin was tipped in along with some chopped coriander and olives oil. The gloves were crushed with a fork and it was all mixed together.
Sheep's Head Food Company 