Chicken Noodle Soup

Nothing beats chicken noodle soup on a crisp winters day. There are a couple of steps and a couple of pots involved in this version, but it’s not overly complicated or confusing, just keeping the two stocks separate gives a cleaner flavour and lets the chicken stock reduce down and develop deep caramel flavours.

Chicken Stock
Chicken, broken down to fit in the pot.
Ginger
Garlic
Chili, whole dried sichuan
Bay Leaf
Salt

• Add the chicken to a pot and cover with an inch of water, toss in the rest of the ingredients and bring to a simmer.
• Cook until the chicken is done, but not falling off the bone. Transfer the chicken to a bowl.
• Strain the liquid and put back on the heat. Reduce to about a quarter of the original volume.

Vegetable Stock
Wood ear fungus (black)
Shiitake, dried
Garlic
Ginger
Onion
Bacon, fatty rashers
Celery
Carrot
Chilli
MSG (optional)

• Add all to a pot and cover with water. Bring to a simmer and cook for half an hour. Strain.

Building the bowl

• Pick the meat off the chicken, and set aside.
• Combine both the stocks, taste and season with salt, soy and sesame oil. Reduce a little if required.
• Cook fresh noodles.
• Portion the chicken and noodles into bowls, pour over hot broth, add spoon or so of chilli crisp (or oil), and a little bit of pickled daikon. Slurp and enjoy.

Creamy rice with pork sausage and thyme

Well I should start with a slight disclaimer, the idea of this dish is completely and utterly ripped off, or humble homage to the original, from Loretta on Cuba St. It makes a hearty dinner or a filling warming lunch it can be tweaked and tinkered with to your hearts content. It's a little less labour intensive than risotto, and a little more forgiving, as we're not aiming for al dente but well cooked rice, not falling apart though.

1 Cup arborio rice
1 Litre chicken stock
2 Good pork sausages, removed from casings
1 Medium fennel bulb, finely diced
1 Medium onion, finely diced
3 Cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tsp black pepper
1 Tsp chilli flakes
1/2 Tsp bay leaf powder
6 Sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped off
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Anchovy fillets

If you feel like being a little more indulgent, add 3 tbsp of cream or butter and a third of a cup of grated parmesan to the ingredient list.

Place a pan over a medium heat and add a slug of good olive oil. Soften the onion, garlic and fennel, add the pepper, chilli, thyme, bay leaf powder and cook through.

Add the sausage and anchovy fillets, sauté, breaking the sausage apart, try not to colour too much.

When the sausage has given up its fat, but not browned too much, tip the rice in and stir through. Give it a chance to get coated in the fat and cook a little.

Pour in the vinegar and cook it off.

Tip in a third of the stock and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, cook until almost absorbed, about 5-7 minutes, add another third and cook for a further 5-7 minutes.

Repeat with the last third, you don't want it too thick, the rice should of given up a lot of starch so the liquid should be lush and glossy, while the rice is still loose stir vigorously to release more starch from rice and make the liquid more creamy and homogeneous. Taste and season.

To really gild the lily, beat in the cream and parmesan cheese.

Serve a generous ladleful in a bowl and drizzle over a little peppery olive oil.

Pea risotto

We’ve been quite lucky with the peas in our garden, they went in a little late and have given us a glut of plump pods, which we still have a good meal or two left on the plant, well that is if they survive my greedy little hands snapping them off and ripping open the snappy pod and scoffing the sweet round peas. Ever since the plant showed signs that it was actually going to produce I’ve been hanging out to make a risotto using our home grown peas, frozen is fine but nothing really beats peas freshly picked and podded mere minutes before being folded in some lush steaming risotto.

So to justice to the fresh produce, make your own stock or at least get some good quality stuff. It’s not too hard to get a stock going, and if you have a pressure cooker well you have no excuse at all not to make your own fresh chicken stock. Take one chicken carcass and any other saved chicken bits and bobs and place in the cooker, add a bunch of herbs, thyme, parsley, bay leaves, sage, then a carrot or two, roughly chopped, an onion or two depending on the size, a good dash of salt and pepper, pour in two litres of water and cook on high pressure for about 40 minutes. Strain the stock through a cloth into a saucepan and put on a medium-low heat and bring to a simmer, reduce down to about one litre, skim off any scum as it reduces. Strain into a bowl through a cloth, cover and let cool, when cold enough transfer to the fridge. It should set up to a nice firm jelly overnight.


I had about twenty pea pods, which would be about half a cup of actual peas, so the peas are podded the peas set aside and the pods put into a pot with the chicken stock and a fresh bunch of thyme and parsley, bought gently to a simmer and left for about fifteen minutes, refreshing and infusing the stock, it is then strained and put back in the pot and put on the lowest flame. Adjust the seasoning of the stock with lemon or vinegar but not too much salt at this stage.


Getting the risotto together is very simple and quite therapeutic standing in front of the stove stirring and folding the rice, adding the stock little by little until it’s reached just the right consistency, not hard at all, just remember slower is better.

With a large pan on a medium heat add a good glug of olive oil and toss in a finely diced shallot, sauté until translucent and then add a cup of risotto rice cook until almost fully translucent, stirring constantly, deglaze the pan with a cup of dry white wine. When the wine has fully evaporated add in a small ladleful of stock (about 70ml) and stir in, keep stirring and folding the rice, helping release the starch, a silicon spatula makes easy work of this, when the stock is all but absorbed add in another ladleful of stock and repeat, the rice should take the whole litre and will take a little more than twenty minutes to cook on a low heat.


Once the rice is lush and cooked, taste and adjust the seasoning, fold through the peas, they’ll take no time at all to cook. I gilded the lily a little and stirred through a large tablespoon of ricotta, mainly because I had it and it needed to be used. Fold in a chiffonade of mint and spoon into a serving bowl and drizzle with a little peppery olive oil.

Mister rabbits last meal

Ambition and vision seemed to come into alignment, and as usual I probably went a little overboard on a dish for two, and maybe put in a few or more hours into it, just as well I like spending time in the kitchen I guess. I didn’t have a clear idea when I first saw Mr Rabbit inviting me to take him home from Moore Wilson as we madly dashed around the store on a rather freezing cold morning, rushing home to get a panel heater installed. Not so much a recipe as such, but more a list of what was what in roughly the order it happened.

Rabbit Broken down, loin removed, belly removed, legs removed and deboned.


Bones and scraps into a pan (pressure cooker) with baking soda, carrots, onion, caraway, juniper, peppercorns, thyme and parsley, 1 cup of water and 1 cup of dry suffolk cider, cooked on high pressure for 45 minutes, let to release pressure, strained without pressing the bones and vegetables.




Leg meat was cured in salt (2%), juniper and thyme overnight. Sous vide confit with duck fat for 4 hours at 70ºC. Roughly pulled apart and formed into a torchon, wrapped firmly in layers of cling film. Refrigerated overnight.


The leg “torchon” is sliced in half, and one half in half again, the intact half rolled in flour, egg yolk, panko crumbs, yolk and then finally crumbs again. Left in the fridge for at least half an hour.


Carrots peeled, sliced and cooked in enough water until tender, passed through a mouli, then a fine sieve, returned to pan and cooked with some butter until enough water has evaporated and a thick purée is left, seasoned.


Sauce, red onion, thyme, butter, cooked until the onion is tender and 1 cup of dry suffolk cider is added, reduced to 1 quarter, strained, 1 cup of rabbit stock added and reduced to 1 third of a cup, seasoned and enriched with a little butter to thicken and add shine.


Radish is sliced thinly then placed in an ice bath. Brussels sprouts broken down to individual leaves, blanched in boiling salted water then transferred to ice bath.


Leg quarters are seared on one side in butter and left to heat through. The crumbed half is fried in butter, spooning over the foaming butter to help create an even golden brown coating, drained on paper towels, and sliced in half on a bias just before serving.

Loin, pan seared and spoon with butter until medium.

Parsley and thyme picked over for garnish.

Plated with what one could call a skid mark of carrot purée, loin sliced in half, then the uncrumbed leg, crumbed leg, radish and sprout leaves arranges, and dressed with the rich sauce, and a scattering of herbs.

Oeuf en gelée

I had been meaning to try my hand at Oeuf en gelée for a while, usually a poached egg set in a consommé gelée, maybe with a few other ingredients set in there too. A terribly old fashioned idea, foodstuffs set in aspic, a foreign texture, a little odd to begin with, wobbly cold savoury aspic and egg, maybe not to everyone's taste, but worth a try. I do have to admit this initial try was not a total success, I didn’t make my own stock, I clarified it though (egg white raft, but gelatin filtration is good too), and the ratio of gelée to soft boiled egg was a little on the high side, but it’s a good starting point.

Future plans are to find a better container to set the aspic in, make my own stock and rely on it’s own gelatin to set the the dish, although I’m not sure how much would survive the clarification process, I’d imagine none if I chose to do gelatin filtration, and I’m thinking a good ham or bacon hock with a few trotters in there should do the trick, maybe a riff on bacon and eggs? So I’m sure there will be a more indepth post sometime in the future on this dish, hopefully more successful entry.

Summer Soup

It seems like only last week that the bean stalks only had a few lonely pods hanging from them, but now they sag heavily laden with plump broad-beans ready for picking. The herbs also have had a massive growth spurt in this strange hot but humid weather, especially the parsley. The potatoes I planted, what feels like an age ago, should finally this coming weekend be ready to harvest (fingers crossed).

It was all feeling quite green, lively and summery, the type of day you either chuck a huge piece of red meat on the barbecue sit out side with a cold beer (cocktail or wine) and get heat stroke, or, as I did, go the other direction and have a warm (not hot) aromatic, take advantage of all the great produce, soup.

I had some home-made chicken stock in the freezer and a couple of chicken thighs in the fridge. I defrosted the stock on the stove and then gently poached the chicken in the simmering stock, making sure to skim of any scum that formed.

While the chicken was cooking, I set about preparing the vegetables, a red onion; bunch of asparagus; carrots; confit garlic (again, a staple for the fridge); spring onion; celery; olives; parsley; broad beans; and peas.


The carrots, asparagus stalks (not tips), onions, celery, and garlic were set aside in one bowl to cook first, as they take a bit longer to become tender.


And the remainder in another bowl, ready add at the last minute.


I gently sautéed the first lot of vegetables on a low heat, to soften slightly. As they cooked, I took the chicken out the stock and shredded the meat off the bone, then strained the stock. I added the stock to the pan, a small handful of fusilli pasta, and let it simmer gently for about 8 minutes.

After about 8 minutes the pasta should almost be cooked. I then added the rest of the vegetables, herbs, shredded chicken, and a squeeze of lemon. Tasted and adjusted seasoning (and added a small shake of chilli flakes).

When the pasta is cooked (about 3 minutes more) take it off the heat and let it sit to cool down a little, this soup shouldn't be eaten piping hot.

Leftover Congee, and stock

I had a bit of left over congee from the other night, I decided to put it under a hard vacuum seal to compress it in to a block of rice goodness.


A fresh batch of chicken stock had just finished reducing, so I thought a nice bowl of soup would go down a treat.


I cut some cubes of the set congee and fried them in a bit of sesame oil until crisp on the outside. With the stock I seasoned it with a little soy sauce and warmed through some tomato, chilli, and scallions.

Wrap up

Haven't bought grapefruit for a long time, but I saw a couple with my name on them at the supermarket, very juicy and very tasty.

Brined Chicken

Chicken tonight, but not content with my usual roast chook, I decided to try something different, brining it. And I have to say after tasting the results, this will be my roasting method of choice from now on.