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.

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R

Kitchen Diaries: Chickpeas with harissa, basil and ham

The warmest day of the year so far and I briefly venture out from my weekend of splendid isolation in flip flops, their first wear of the year. After a day of working and listening to mentally bad jazz I go for May 4's "Chickpeas with harissa, basil and ham". Light and tasty and warm, I hope.

Toms and aubergines are roasted in olive oil, red wine vinegar and cumin seeds for an hour. A tin of chickpeas, a harissa dressing, basil and crisped prosciutto (or, for me, some random cured French meat bought on holiday) are added.

Sounds great... Did I get the amounts wrong? Were my tomatoes too small? Did I misread Nigel's careful instructions? They sounded easy enough. Far too many chickpeas and veg on the oily side did benefit from my addition of lemon juice, but somehow I was left entirely cold. Where was the cumin? Where was the jazz? Perhaps I mistook a support act for a headliner, who knows. Anyway, Nig, you're one down.

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R

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: A Fiery Way With Lamb

I have a rare lamb fancying moment on the tube home and invest in a small neck fillet, hoping that Nigel and my cupboard will lend me further inspiration. Happily, I have the lion’s share of things for “a fiery way with lamb” (March 11). It’s one of those meals he describes the idea of rather than directs, so I don’t worry about using puree and water instead of real toms and I reckon I’ll survive without coriander.

The frying whole spices (mustard, cumin, fennel and coriander) smell beautiful in our lonely kitchen and after the marinade’s done I leave my lamb cosily wrapped in it for an hour before grilling. Nigel uses chops and offers no cooking times, so mine (done for just under 10mins on each side) is a little over done unless you don’t like pink, then it’s perfect. I don’t think I reduced the tommys enough, they’re still pulpy and so blacken under the grill. But it’s fresh and hot and vibrant and the whole spices work considerable magic.

I have it with roast sweet potato and fennel, mushrooms and spinach (sweated with lemon and pepper, but they’re definitely the weakest link) and it works well together, good colours too. Once again Nigel wins my night, but took a little longer about wooing me than I’d hoped for.

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Kitchen Diaries: Stir-fry for a spring day

Before even the crack of dawn is a twinkle in Saturday’s eye we’ll be heading off to Gatwick and this means I’m trying to run down fridge supplies. Today I am looking to Nigel to use up the best parts of a packet of mushrooms and spinach. The man does not disappoint.

A well put together index (multiple listings for each recipe) leads me straight to page 100 - March 29 in the Kitchen Diary and before leaving for work I realise that I only really need some lemongrass to try out “a stir-fry for a spring day”. On the way home I try a hit and run on Sainsburys. Can I manage to leave with only one purchase? I fall at the first hurdle and have to carry my scallops on the long walk of shame home.

Preparation is monkey work though. Chop all the stuff and chuck it in a really hot pan (I forgot about spring onions but they’d have added to fridge stocks anyway – and I don’t care that my mushrooms aren’t chestnut and that my chilli is the wrong colour). I worry I’m over cooking my slightly misshapen scallops because I thought it would all be more complex. And then I worry about the stir-fry because the scallops take longer than I’d anticipated…

But it’s all fine, white rice soaks up the extra soy from the stir-fry and the scallops’ sweetness and firmness goes well with the spinach and mushrooms. The “stir-fry for a spring day”, to be fair, isn’t a show stopper though and not really worth following a recipe for. It’s nice nonetheless, salty and smoky and would be a good supporting role to many a fresh and lemony dinner star. Perhaps I add too much soy but the lemongrass is overpowered and I suspect Nigel’s suggestion of a hot red chilli would have been better than my medium green one, it’s not hot at all. Maybe the spring onion was all important after all. I’m afraid that Nigel loses the battle for my Wednesday to a few showy griddled scallops.

R

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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