Chicken dinner

Having dealt with trolley No.708, as noticed at reference 1, I thought a visit to TB was in order. Arrived to find a small van, the sort of thing often used for street food, in the forecourt, labelled 'Pinsa'. It seems that this is the currently trending name for pizza. For which reference 2 appears at the top of the Bing list, its prize for being the most infested with advertisements. I dare say one can do better if one goes down the list a bit.

Inside, the new-to-me barmaid, explained that Pinsa was an evening and weekend thing. But the food snapped above was available every day, lunchtime on. I wondered afterwards whether the Sri Lankan flavour had anything to do with the Costcutter next door, given the the proprietor comes from there, but I did not think to ask at the time. But we will make the effort to give it a try before too long.

In the meantime, I computed that the wine, by alcohol content, probably cost about the same as the lager, that is to say just over a fiver for a large glass. This is, in most pubs, if memory serves, true of spirits but not of wine. 

Home, spot on time, to chicken dinner. In the course of which I managed to decipher the label on the steel - Kai Cutlery of Japan. A steel which I bought at a car booter, probably for a pound or so, and which has served very well over the years. I believe that you can spend a lot on such things, even going so far as to diamond dust them. However, steels are not dear at reference 3, although I could not find this particular one, and are missing from reference 4 where they do whetstones. Of which I already own several, but have not used for sharpening knives for a long time. Far too much bother.

Blackberry and apple crumble for dessert, with custard. Probably getting towards the end of the blackberries now, with new supplies due in July. Pill pot and wine visible left.

Après dessert took the form, for a change, of a spot of Proust rather than a spot of Calva, at the time unavailable. Taken from somewhere in Volume 2 of the Random House edition of 'Remembrance of things past' in the Scott Moncrieff translation. I had forgotten about the length of his sentences - but I am moved to have another go today.

It was quite a big chicken and what was left over served well cold a couple of days later. After which there was not quite enough for a third round, so we moved onto soup and boiled the stripped carcass up with a carrot, some onions and a stump of chou pointu. The resultant stock with 6oz of red lentils came to just over 2 pints and was given a preliminary boiling that same day. We had toyed with the idea of chicken soup with noodles, but when it came to it, lentils won out.

Cooking completed a couple of days later. A little too much to my mind, leaving the lentils with a sort of sandy texture, a bit like a coarse semolina. But perfectly eatable all the same.

The potatoes had been added to the lentils half an hour before the off, while the onions were cooked in a little butter on the side and only added to the mix at the last minute - which meant they still had an agreeable bite to them.

Seconds, with plenty of onion visible. Enough left of the soup for it, with a whack of water added, to serve for half a meal the next day. Warmed up for the purpose in the microwave - in which I find it easier to reheat such stuff without it catching.

PS: a melonic aside. A couple of weeks ago I bought a water  melon from the convenience store in Waterloo Road, maybe 10-12lbs of it, getting on for twice as long as it was broad, not spherical in the way of the miniatures sold by the supermarkets. Brought home in the Karrimor rather than on foot. We put cling film on the cut side and for its last few days - it lasted well under a week - it lived in the refrigerator. It did very well, going the distance. My only comment was best to cut it with stainless steel as the blue steel of our big kitchen knife - visible on the chicken dish above - seemed to taint the flesh slightly.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/06/trolley-708.html.

Reference 2: https://anitalianinmykitchen.com/pinsa-pizza/.

Reference 3: https://housewares.kaiusa.com/.

Reference 4: https://kai-europe.com/en/?v=79cba1185463.

Reference 5: https://www.karrimor.com/. No carrier bags for cycles that I can see here - but then mine might be fifty years old. Not perfect, but they have served well enough and are still fitted to the Trek.