More chicken

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

Years ago I remember that if you wanted a good chicken for roasting it had to come from the Marks & Spencer food hall. It is a while since I have had a chicken from Marks & Spencer, and I am sure they will still be good, but for now there is no better chicken than than the one I buy once a month at the Farmer’s Market.

If I am around I try to buy one every month they are there. There is nothing much to do to them but follow the clear instructions set out by Simon Hopkinson in his book about roast chicken.

I rocked the boat slightly today and made a stuffing of garlic and parsley. The garlic came from the garden and two bulbs were cooked in milk until soft. Once they Wee done the remains of the milk was infused with the last of the saffron I could find in in the back of the cupboard. In the meantime each clove of garlic was squeezed to give up its pungent flesh. This was then stirred back into the saffron infused milk to which was added a good tablespoon of ground cumin and a bunch of chopped parsley.

Once this mixture was done a hand was put up the back of the chicken. There is something satisfying in the way that a few fingers can turtle there way along and pick out a pocket for stuffing between skin and flesh on a chicken. I briefly thought about keeping my hands clean and doing the stuffing with a spoon but after 2 seconds realised that it it would all work better getting my hands dirty.

Chicken stuffed it went into the hot oven for a little under two hours.

We had it with roast potatoes and carrots glazed with orange juice and pomegranate juice and a whole cauliflower head in a yogurt and tahini sauce.

Sat here now listening to Ton Waits and waiting for him to ‘shiver me timbers’.

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Belgium Pork Chops

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

The pork chops looked so good in the Farmer’s Market I came home with four of them.

Back at home they seemed like a good excuse to get out a book on Belgium cooking that had come my way via an Oxfam bookshop a year or so ago.

At home the chops looked bigger than they appeared on the butcher’s slab so in the event we only had three of them.

They were salted and peppered and then doused in flour before being fried in butter in oil until a good brown. The chops were taken out of the pan for a while and sliced onions stirred in. They cooked until golden.

It is always important to have your onions golden.

Once they were the chops were laid on top together with some good beer and allowed to cook.

We had them with chips.

Curried parsnip soup

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

Early Saturday morning and I was down The Farmer’s Market in New Ferry. The grocer had some fat parsnips and they looked too good to resist for a quick Saturday lunch. A soup would also provide a good opportunity to try out the hand blender I had been given for Christmas.

Back home a chunk of butter was melted in a big steel pan. As it melted two onions were chopped. They were given time to sizzle and soften in the hot butter. As they did so I cut up the parsnips into more or less equal sized chunks before adding them to the butter and onions.

I left them heat through for five minutes or so. I didn’t want them to burn but I did want them take on some caramelisation. Once they had done so I stirred in a good teaspoon of fiery curry powder and some plain flour and plenty of salt and pepper.

Once it had all cooked for another couple of minutes I tipped in a litre and a half of water. It came to a simmer and I left it until the parsnips were soft and giving.

We then introduced the blender. Within seconds there was a good spattering of soup over walls, toaster, radio and jumper.

Once we got the blender under control the soup was very good. We ate it with bread, listening to Boz Scaggs. There was a lonely tall Christmas tree in the garden.

First weekend after the New Year

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Ralph Bullivant

Is there any more melancholy time of year than the few days after Christmas when all the noise and bright lights have come to an end and children are moving away.

There has been talk about our taking the tree down early but I have resisted the temptation. Outside the weather is so resolutely wet that any excuse not to go outside is desirable, and the tree, three weeks on, is still a magnificent beast.

Sometimes a tree will take on a forlorn air about itself now. Not this one. It is still almost grazing the ceiling and it seems a shame to take it outside to be converted into firewood. So it will stay put for another few days.

By way of a goodbye we went into Liverpool late yesterday afternoon. Walking through the crowds it seemed that notwithstanding the excess of Chistmas there is still plenty of money to be spent.

Not wanting to miss out I slipped into Probe and picked a re-release of an old Lee Hazelwood album and a compilation of film music written by a Russian composer called Mikael Tariverdiev. The film music is particularly fine and seems to be fitting well into the post Christmas whistfulness. It is mostly from the 1960s- 1970s. The pieces are short with lots of accordions, mid -European waltzes and ballads sung in strange voices. A bit like an out of kilter Tom Waits. Every home should have a copy.

We then moved onto Oxfam where I was pleased to be able to pick up a fine copy of Roald Dahl’s Cookbook published in 1991.

With this in hand we made our way to Roya de Pinchos and spent an hour or so gorging ourselves some more on the balls of cream cheese, slices of good bread with cheese, quince paste and chorizo and pieces of toasted bread with pork loin, prawns oand pieces of flash fried steak. The major disappointment was the lack of quail egg to go with toasted mushrooms.

Late Sunday afternoon now and it has been wet all day. It is darkening outside and the house is quieter now apart from the sound of Russian film soundtracks.