Kitchen Diaries: Chicken and mustard seed and coconut milk

Wednesday night seems to call for chicken curry and I have most of the things Nigel suggests for “Chicken and mustard seed and coconut milk” (1st April, aka “A fragrant chicken supper”), apart from curry leaves. Obviously I’m not going to find them at 7.30pm in any Sainsburys.

Chicken browns, spices fry, my sister calls and the sauce simmers a little too close to black… But it’s a forgiving dish, I’m rough with quantities, use tomato puree for half the toms and dissolve coconut cream instead of using milk, but it’s still delicious. Subtle coconut, chunky onions and fragrant spices mean that I end up eating way too much and having to waddle upstairs with a glass of white.

Notes: Nigel’s offer of cooking an entire chicken this evening feels a little generous as I’m cooking for a lonely one, but I halve the recipe for 3 so that I get leftovers, and it seems to work fine. I also added a little sugar and black pepper at the end. I eat it with steamed edimamie on the side and they’re beautiful together.

You can buy Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through our Amazon store.

R

Kitchen Diaries: A roasted chicken with new garlic and a fresh pea pilau

Having recently purchased this gorgeous book, I have been paging through it for days on end, obsessing over which recipe I was going to try first. It's been driving my husband crazy. Something chicken related seemed most likely, and I was planning on the chicken with mustard seed and coconut milk, but it was actually a roast chicken with a pea pilau (June 3) that materialised in the kitchen last night. 'A roast on a week night?' you might exclaim, as I’ve heard a work colleague politely enquire of a friend a while back, making out it is a little ambitious – crazy even - for a work consumed Londoner to contemplate.

Anyway, Nigel recommends just olive oil, salt and black pepper to season the bird, but I could not resist adding a few pinches of fresh thyme to the freshly ground spices, nor prevent plunging a few sprigs into the birds inner recess. I calculate the time it would take to cook seeing as my chicken was 200g lighter than the 1.5kg he recommends. My calculator says roughly 54 minutes in total. I whack it into the oven – breast side down, as instructed and start on the garlic.

New summer garlic was out of the question seeing as it's only April, anyway two whole heads of standard garlic sounded like a bit much, so I reduce this to one small head; separating the cloves and tossing these into a pan of boiling water before adding them to the roasting tin. I was a little heavy handed with the salt on the chicken and feel a little nervous about what this is going to taste like. I check my watch – Nigel says to turn over the bird for the last 20 minutes.

Five minutes before I need to turn it over, I check the bird. It's looking all golden and smelling divine. I shake the tin a bit to move the garlic, which look like they’re browning a bit too fast, burning even. Perhaps more garlic in the pan would have prevented this. I turn the chicken over and see the breasts are all delicious golden as well. A few minute later, feeling really pleased, I start on the pea pilau.

Nigel does not say what rice to use, but I’ve got a bag of basmati and measure out a cup. I cook the onions and add the cinnamon bark and cloves. I guess that just a few is best to prevent being overpowered by clove. I also add a sprinkling of turmeric for a hint of colour – I've grown up with pilau that has a hint of yellow and just had to do the same as my mum does. I boil up some frozen peas in readiness. After two minutes I realise the rice has absorbed all the water Nigel recommends and is starting to stick to the bottom of the pot. I end up adding two more cups of water, but still have a very sticky situation once the pilau is done. Smells fabulous, though.

The gravy was really easy to make. I didn't have any vermouth and substituted a glass an a half of white wine instead of two (I did not want too runny a gravy), and that worked well. Most of the garlic was charred through and only three fat cloves were squishable. Anyway, I think two whole heads would have been too garlicky for a week night.

The chicken was delicious, if not slightly dry on the legs and the thyme was a good idea in the end. The salt was perfect. Definitely one of the most stress free roasts I've ever made.

I purchased Nigel's Kitchen Diaries cheap through Cook the Books' Amazon store.
foodnobody

Kitchen Diaries: Roast chicken wings with lemon and cracked pepper

My self-imposed finishing book deadline looms heavily on the horizon and I have a compulsory weekend of anti-sociability to try and make headway. But I write lists of other things to do, I try to make easter eggs, I think about cleaning the garden and wonder whether my CDs need reorganising. I decide on something easy for diner and for some reason, the sunny day, the need for comfort food, I settle on "Roast chicken wings with lemon and cracked pepper" (April 26).

The chicken wings at the supermarket look so pathetic, 12 bits of skin and bone squashed in together for £1.89 (how can that be financially viable?), that I can't bring myself to buy them and go for infinitely happier looking drumsticks. There are still no bay leaves in stock and the smell of a middle class uprising lingers around Camden Sainsburys herb section.

I squeeze lemons and crack pepper corns and mix olive oil and chuck the chicken in the oven to sit down and get sucked into About Schmidt. 45 mins later they're lemon fresh and peppery hot and roast chicken gooey. Cosy and pretty much perfect for a lonely Saturday night in an empty house. Nigel wins again.

Kitchen Diaries: Sweet and sticky chicken wings

M was upstairs putting the finishing touches on his first (and last) schoolwork essay in a decade and our house was practically devoid of any foodstuffs. I’d discovered a couple of chicken wings in the freezer which I was glad I hadn’t thrown into the last pot of stock I made. Those plus the remaining tortellini from the night before (plus the leftover bacon from the haddock dinner a few nights ago) made a dinner-like meal.

I was really surprised to see chicken wings in Kitchen Diaries. It’s not normally a part of the bird people eat in the UK (although in the States they’re practically a staple). I liked the idea of sweet and sticky, calling to mind my favourite US treat, buffalo wings, and once again a quick rummage assured me I had all the ingredients. Marvellous.

This is preposterously simple recipe. It’s almost embarrassing: Honey + Mustard + Garlic. Mix n’ Pour. Shove in oven. Flip once. Remove and eat. Delicious. Really good. I wished I had more. I can now do this in my sleep.

Nigel admits that it’s not got any spice and I would have liked a bit of heat, so next time I’ll throw in some cayenne or a sliced up fresh chilli from the plant. Because I only made 4 wings, I didn’t need to put them in for quite as long as he suggests. I’d have liked a bit more gooeyness, but that could have been remedied by pulling them out about 10 minutes earlier.

Really good – and tasty. Unfortunately it comes with a price. The cleanup is an absolute ‘mare.


Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own sweet and sticky chicken wings.

Kitchen Diaries: Chicken broth with noodles, lemon and mint

Tuesday is traditionally my rubbish day for cooking. Taichi after work means that even in these days when my after-class drinking partner seems less inclined to share a bottle than usual, I still don’t get home until 9ish. And even after 2 and a half years my eating plan so-as-not-to-be-famished-by-the-end-of-class is still hit and miss at best, so leftovers or tortellini seem more appealing than usual for speed alone.

Even though I see an ad on the tube for the possibly reprehensible www.purepackage.com and for a second think all my meals delivered right to my door sounds quite nice (surely just really, really posh meals on wheels though?, I realise as I come to my senses), I decide to take the opportunity to see if Nigel Slater and his simple/quick dinner philosophy can offer me anything helpful when I’m knackered and about to eat my own arm.

I go for chicken broth with noodles, lemon and mint (p.22 - Jan 19 for NS) because, honestly, it sounds like something I’d make anyway and can’t be bothered with a real challenge. And I like the idea of something fresh and liquidy after a packet of Maccoy’s saltiest crisps in the world (see failed plan to stave off starvation detailed above) which have sucked all the water out of the top half of my body in the intervening hours.

I approach Sainbury’s Camden with trepidation because Nigel lists “very good chicken broth” and I don’t really know if that means stock or not. There’s no way he’s talking about Campbell’s questionably “very good” “chicken broth” in a can, is there? I go for stock and get home to see I’d missed his detailed information about being lazy and getting his stock from the butchers. If only we all had time to be so “good-for-nothing”, Nigel. I go for a cube. He also lists cooked chicken, so by way of a personal first I get some rotisseried from the counter (3 drumsticks at 45p each, can that be right?), there’s no way I’m cooking it tonight before even starting.

The meal is so quick to make I hardly have time to steam spinach to go with it. In 10 minutes the summery smells of mint and lemon are mixing with cosy chicken stock. In 20 minutes I’ve managed to eat three times as many noodles as he suggests (at least twice as many as I should have). It’s zingy, sour and minimal, but quite lovely. I have it with steamed spinach which I squeezed out into the stock, then drizzled with soy and sesame oil. I’m so full I can only manage a glass of wine for afters (Vina Maipo Sauvignon Blanc – fruity but not too sweet so it actually goes happily with the broth and, essentially, on offer). £2.50 and 10 minutes max. He’s right about it being warming, uplifting and satisfying and I’d cook it at any time of year too (although are lemon, mint and coriander in season in January Nigel?) I concede that Nigel wins my Tuesday.

R

Kitchen Diaries: Chicken with mushroom and lemongrass

Cooking from a recipe book is going to be hard. I say this because we often have to depend on Sainsbury's Locals. You have to go into these shops with an open mind - if you want anything specific for dinner you'll be disappointed. If you want seasonally pertinent over-packaged chocolate then you'll probably go home happy.

And so last night after the first pleasurable outdoor pint of 2007 on the Thames by Tower Bridge we decided to cook Nigel's Thai style chicken with mushrooms and lemongrass. The only Sainsbury's busting ingredients being lemongrass and thai basil. R was convinced lemongrass usually comes in so much plastic that there might have been a chance... ha. Turns out that Chalk Farm Sainsbury's Local doesn't even have chicken on a Sunday night (unless you want it packed with chicken tonight sauce). Basil and lemongrass obviously don't get shelf space, but if you want some 'Brunshettas' there's actually variety. It's going to be hard for our cook-the-books entries not to turn into rants against the utter crapness of Sainsbury's Locals. But we can improvise, this is real life after all.

Anyway, with some enforced substitution (turkey & some lemongrass paste from the fridge, cupboard lime leaves instead of basil/mint, onion as opposed to spring onions, plus some fridge neglected sugar snap peas) we whipped up dinner. Took 30 mins and that was mainly spent waiting for the brown rice to think about cooking. Actually it was very nice and very easy to cook, I'd forgotten how nicely turkey browns. I wouldn't leave your washing drying in the kitchen while you cook this though. R's flatmates made a good show of trying not to cough when the chilli went in, but the fish sauce cleared the kitchen.

We reckon: you don't need 3 chilli peppers, we had two and that was still pretty hot. Add in any veg you can or have a side of green something-or-other, ours felt rather meat heavy.

Chicken with Mushroom and Lemongrass - March 18th

N+R