Chicken up

I understand that chicken is not the economy meal it once was, particularly if you were not very fussy about your chicken. But that was the choice a few days ago now, to be served with full-on stuffing. Stuffing which has not, in our kitchen anyway, actually been used to stuff chicken or turkey for many years now.

First item was the bread, which turned out to be a sour dough, round white loaf from Sainsbury's, styled 'boule'. I worried about the sour dough but while it made the bread crumbs smell a bit, did not bother the stuffing. May even have improved it.

Second item was the sage, from at least three different sources.

The first sage was a proper sage plant, bought from a garden centre, but probably a bit long in the tooth and pot bound now. Probably ought to replace it. But whatever the case, while there were plenty of leaves they were mostly quite small.

The second sage started life as two of those curious sage plants you buy at Christmas. Probably cuttings forces in a greenhouse, with the virtue that they stay alive until you want to eat them. BH thought to bring the plants on, but they took a very long time to get established, only doing anything much at all nearly two years later. And they are still not up to much.

The third sage was dried from Turkey. The country which is also good at drones (rather bigger than the mass produced jobs from Iran), figs and hazel nuts.

So bread crumbs, freshly ground black pepper, freshly chopped green sage, chopped dried hazel nuts, onion, celery, two eggs and a little oil. Topped with streaky bacon, the wet stuff rather than the full-on dry cure which we find a bit strong and salty. With some sliced boiled potato at the bottom. Using up the left overs. A habit from the more austere years of our childhoods.

At which point I went for my morning stroll, leaving BH in charge of her kitchen. Capturing trolley No.541, as noticed at reference 1.

Also picking up a young person's Oyster card on West Hill. No idea if losing such a thing is a pain, but the young lady concerned was not in the phone book and I was not going to dive into Facebook or Twitter to look there. I then wondered whether she was a pupil at Rosebery and whether I should try there. But that was a bit of a hike and in the end I handed it in at the railway station the following morning.

Returned to find everything pretty much ready to go.

The fowl, as my father would have called it. Not altogether an affectation as the fruit farm on which he grew up almost certainly had mixed fowl in the yard.

On the plate. Our custom being rice, either white or brown, rather than potatoes, unless it is the new potato season, a season which seems to be very short these days. And we never were much good at roasting potatoes, in any case maybe a touch heavy with chicken. Roast parsnips front left, much more suitable.

To drink a 2019 Pessac-Léognan from Waitrose, along with a bundle of vouchers, two of which were discarded by the shopper before me at the self-service. We rather liked it. After which we wondered how we were going to redeem the vouchers, which all looked the same, so no personalisation.

We also rather liked the stuffing, with BH being particularly taken with it and we did about three quarters of it at this first sitting. I had worried about it having been cooked for too long, having gone in at the start. And tasting it, I thought that maybe I would not bother with the oil next time. But it was very good, nonetheless. Although I say it myself.

There must have been something in the way of dessert, but I imagine whatever it was, it was not cooked for the occasion. So stewed apple and blackberry, grapes, cheese & biscuits or some combination thereof. There was also a spot of calva, as Simenon would have it.

All in all, a fine meal. A tribute to the cook who did the heavy-lifting after the stuffing had been assembled.

Later that day, I bought six more bottles of the Waitrose wine online, to find that everyone got 25% online and there was no need to do anything clever with vouchers. Wine which turned up a couple of days later in a parcel from DPD. Waitrose must have found it cheaper to use them rather than send one of their own vans out with some odd, small order.

Later still, I had a go at Middlemarch, starting at the very beginning, that is to say the prologue. A book which I used to describe as my favourite novel. Not for the first time, I was very impressed - but not so impressed that I have read any more since. Maybe tomorrow.

Cold chicken the day following, chicken soup the day following that. Rather good soup, without the hint of animal glue I usually manage with boiled chicken bones. Three ounces of orange lentils on this occasion, amongst other stuff.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/trolley-541.html.