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Showing posts from January, 2019

January: The supper and knives of a mood

January. Does it go by quickly or does it drag its heels? Whichever way you think the first month of the year passes, once it's gone the rest of the year gathers speed. It's going by quickly for me but at least I can look back with satisfaction about the various things I've been doing.  This is a blog about my cooking so I'll stick with that for now.  I have followed two recipes from Nigel Slater's Appetite (2000) this month, both in the same weekend. On Saturday 19 January 2019 I made sausages with mash. Delicious gravy with onions and marsala. The following day I made Nigel's hearty and warming chicken stew. Very simple: carrots, parsnips and leeks cut in chunks, onions cut in wedges. Having browned the jointed chicken, I removed it from the pot and added the vegetables. The chicken was returned to the pot, covered with water and some pearl barley (cooked separately) was mixed in. So were lots of herbs from the garden.  Finally the ingredients were topp

Catching Up

Okay. So I haven't been a conscientious correspondent. I admit it but I am not making a new year's resolution about being a more consistent and regular blogger. In the interests of catching up, here's an entry I started writing last October (three months ago!) and forgot about: A few weeks ago a recipe for chicken with fennel and clementines in Yotam Ottolenghis' Jerusalem  (2012) caught my eye. All I needed was Pernod or a similar aniseed-flavoured drink. Then, as if they'd guessed, the older offspring and his wife returned from Greece bearing ouzo for the younger offspring. I'm not sure how delighted he was with it. Let's just say he wasn't unwilling to let me have some for the chicken recipe. The spouse and I are trying out a new shopping regime: we're no longer driving the mile or so to the supermarket we've patronised for years. Instead we're popping over the road to the nearby German discount stores. While we're saving money, w