Chicken lite

Our last Sunday roast was near a fortnight ago now, and, according to the people at reference 1, just about at the top of the last hot spell.

Given the heat, we settled for chicken lite, that is to say without the traditional accompaniment of bacon surfaced sage & onion stuffing.

On the plate. There would have been some rice lurking behind the cabbage. The trick being to cook the chicken long enough for the skin to be brown and crackly - but the cabbage short enough for it to retain a bit of bite. Easy to overcook this particular sort of cabbage. Taken with our last bottle of Vernaccia di San Gimignano. With the towers associated with same being noticed at reference 2.

Plum crumble for dessert. With yellow custard, naturally. The significance of yellow being that I have been trying to convince one of our granddaughters of the merits of blue custard, without success, for some time now. Perhaps I would have done better had I gone to the bother of making up a sample.

Wound up with a spot of cooking Calvados from Majestic. Stuff which I like - more than a hint of rough cider about it - and which does just as well for me as much more expensive brands.

The day following BH was lunching out, so I made up an Epsom stir fry with the left over vegetables, some fresh onion and chunks of chicken. With a light chicken salad to follow later, which brought us to soup by the Tuesday.

Unusually, having boiled up the stock in the usual way, I added 8oz of red lentils to just two thirds of a saucepan of stock, that is to say more lentils and a stronger stock than usual. Snap above taken just before serving, the mushrooms having been in for a minute or so. Remembering the adage from my scouting days that 'a stewed stew is a spoiled stew'. An adage which may have been misquoted, with reference 3 offering the much improved version 'a stew boiled is a stew spoiled'. I am fairly sure that this last is quite new to me. A year or so ago, I would have been quite sure!

It turned out very well, with both excellent flavour and texture. Potatoes soft, carrots with a bit of bite left in them. The trick being not to take too much at once, a trap which it is easy to fall into.

PS 1: not yet been able to find out much about the people at reference 1, although I have learned of the existence of something called collections in Microsoft Edge, mainly by failing to get a straightforward copy of the image from said reference 1 into it. The point of interest being, where was it? How does one run it down, short of asking enough people to turn up a resident who recognises one of the buildings? There can't be that many large cities with lots of bridges over middle sized rivers running through the middle of them.

PS 2: a snap from Popik below is offered above - with traces of my recent interest in ladders having been inserted right and left.

PS 3: I had thought that braising meant cooking meat - or perhaps a chicken - mostly in water, then finishing in the oven to brown it. Or that it was US-speak for grilling. It now turns out that both were wrong, and that braising means start at a high temperature to brown then slow finish at a low temperature to cook - both here and in the US. A technique which BH does, as it happens, occasionally use. See references 5 and 6. 

References

Reference 1: https://www.accuweather.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/towers.html.

Reference 3: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_stew_boiled_is_a_stew_spoiled. Where Popik has gone to the bother of digging up lots of versions of this saying, many turkey orientated.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Popik. Very likely the same chap.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braising.

Reference 6: https://barbecuebible.com/2020/07/24/smoke-braising-technique/.