As Strong As Soup

I've been lobbing recipes into this blog for over 14 years now and, since I must be running out of things to say and original things to cook, I thought that 2024 should be the opportunity to gather up the few recipes that I've been meaning to get round to (or haven't got quite right yet) before I finally shut up once and for all. So, first off, here's a recipe that I've had hanging round for many years but never posted. That might be because it's a bit odd or it might be just because I've never managed to get a good photo of it. Oh well, here goes anyway.  The sauce was (indirectly) inspired by a dish from Les Rosiers restaurant in Biarritz, although their food is a lot more sophisticated than anything you'll find here. Sadly, I've never been near the place, but, many years ago, I saw it featured in an episode of the now defunct TV show 'Les Escapades de Petitrenaud'. Over the years since I first made this dish, I've come to the conclusi...

As part of this year's project to uncover the recipes and styles of cooking that I've left out of this blog for inexplicable reasons, I wanted to include more of the food from the small bistros in France (and sometimes England) that I've enjoyed over very many years. So here's a version of poulet au vinaigre based on the simple, cheap but delicious lunches that I've enjoyed at small French bistros, bars and cafés. Poulet au vinaigre is a great classic that you'll find all over France and in many cookery books of French cuisine. The books will usually contain a refined, classic version of the dish which starts with a whole chicken and uses different cooking times for the various parts of the bird. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that but that's not what this recipe is all about. I'm recreating the sort of lunch served to large, communal tables in happy, friendly places in the north of France 20 or 30 years ago. Such places are still around if yo...

As part of this year's nostalgic and somewhat bemused review of the food styles and recipes that so far I've neglected in the blog, I got to thinking about classic curries. I've included a couple of time-honoured (or, some might say, hopelessly out-of-date) curry recipes already -  Goat Rogan Josh  and  Lamb Bhuna  - but I couldn't resist adding this one. If you search for Moghlai cooking then you might well find it described as combining ancient traditions of Persian and Indian cooking. I'm sure that's the case but I've derived this dish from the more recent tradition of British curry houses of the 1980s. This is a delicate, rich and fragrant korma that's very characteristic of some of the dishes you'd find being celebrated back then. I've been reasonably faithful to the recipe of the time, but I've reduced the amount of cream a bit. The other change I've made is to use chicken thighs. Back in the 80s, you weren't thought to be makin...

Recently I heard someone happily reminiscing about the recipes and styles of cooking that represented the different stages of their life. This blog has been going since 2009 and has close to 300 recipes and I imagined that it would fulfil that function for me. But when I looked back through the blog I realised that there are quite a few gaps. So, before I admit that enough is enough with this blogging malarkey, I've decided that my project for this year should be to try to fill at least some of those gaps. Yes, I know this is self-regarding nonsense, but I'm too old to care.  This isn't a history lesson, though, and I wouldn't necessarily want to recreate dishes from the past in their original form. I'd rather offer versions that I really want to eat today. I suppose that I should present these recipes in chronological order but I'm afraid that my mind doesn't work that way. So I'm starting in the 1990s for no very good reason at all. This recipe is a ri...

This dish is based on a Spanish recipe that I found while wandering about in my usual dazed manner many years ago. The original was a rich sauce that usually accompanied duck and contained buckets of cream. Times change and if I made that original sauce today then everybody I know would look horrified and refuse to eat it. So this is a much lighter and fresher version that keeps the unusual and attractive flavours without all the fat.  You don't have to thicken the sauce at all but, if you prefer a classic, thicker result then, rather than add cream, just add a spoonful or two of cornflour let down with either a little of the sauce or water or deploy whatever thickener you prefer. (I tend to use a little Ultratex if I really need to thicken sauces these days). A quick note on the ingredients: Sherry vinegars can vary quite a lot in acidity and, in this case, a less acidic style works best. A PX (Pedro Ximenez) vinegar is ideal. You could leave out the orange liqueur, but it does a...

The Dark ‘n’ Stormy cocktail is a combination of dark rum, ginger beer and (usually) lime juice. (I've added a few notes on the cocktail if you're interested at the end of this post). They're great flavours in a drink but recently I decided it was time to eat them. So here's a simple way to get those flavours into chicken.  I've used a little Henderson's Relish in this recipe and I've become a bit of a fan of the Sheffield elixir, lately. (I would call it Hendo's, but I think that's illegal unless you were born in Sheffield). There would be outrage in Sheffield at my suggestion that Worcestershire sauce is an alternative but, if that's what you have, then use it. This method of cooking chicken is based on the way the estimable Rosamund Grant used to cook chicken half a lifetime ago (or thereabouts). While my enthusiasm for Henderson's Relish owes a great deal to the way Tom Wrigglesworth has expounded its virtues. This should serve 2.  8 ch...

I created a version of this dish based on stories I'd been told about it. As it happens, what I'd been told differed from person to person. So this version is doubtless a long way from its Portuguese roots but, nevertheless, it's seriously tasty. It takes its name from the dish in which it's cooked and that should really be quite a large, lidded clay pot (púcara). I don't have one so I used a classic, ceramic casserole dish.  The mustard and the assortment of alcohol makes this a little different to other chicken casseroles and you might imagine that the resulting dish tastes boozy but, in fact, it has a very savoury flavour. A whole, jointed chicken is normally at the heart of this dish but I've used chicken thighs here in an attempt to keep things simpler and smaller. Originally I was told to use chorizo for this dish but then I was told to use an air-dried ham instead, so use whichever you prefer and, if you use the ham, add a little paprika. I have a vivid...

I've just been listening to someone on the radio wittering on about how terrible British restaurants were back in the 1960s and 70s. This version of history seems to be accepted as the official narrative today. I admit that many of the restaurants back then were pretty bad. In fact some of them were laughably awful such as the trendy restaurant that served only tinned food. But there were very good places to eat if you looked hard enough in the right places. I was lucky because the right places were often in London and that's where I happened to be living. If you headed for one of the simple trattorias scattered around town then you could get decent, straightforward Italian food at a reasonable price as well as encountering waiters with comically large pepper grinders. There wasn't a huge choice of food in those bygone tratts but some options were very similar to what's on offer in restaurants today. For instance, I swear I had crushed avocado on toast in a little pla...

This month Dom of Belleau Kitchen is celebrating the start of the third year of his Random Recipe challenge and has graciously allowed us to select a recipe from our books in any way we choose. As an old hand at this particular challenge I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try some of the books that don’t make the usual selection list. I decided that the biggest challenge would be to select from the ‘lost’ books. ‘Lost’ in the sense that I did own these books once upon a time but now I have only a few recipes left. A couple of books suffered regrettable kitchen accidents while others haven’t survived house moves or have been loaned out and never returned. I missed these books enough to get photocopies or make notes of some of my favourite recipes from borrowed copies. So with a quick random grab from the pile of scraps I came up with a recipe for Country Captain. I copied this recipe from a book of British cookery that I had around 1980. (It was last seen somewhere...

While sipping a thoughtful cup of tea recently I came over all Proust-like and remembered a shop that sold tea near where I grew up in South London. I used to go to this shop in the late sixties and early seventies but I don't think it had changed much since Edwardian times. The shopkeeper would pull out dark wooden drawers and dispense small portions of exotic teas into little paper bags. The tea can't have cost much – I was pretty broke at the time (some things don't really change). It was the first time I'd tasted or even heard of green tea, maté, lapsang souchong, gunpowder and, the best name of all, broken orange pekoe. I would buy whichever tea the shopkeeper decided that I should try next and wander off to spend the afternoon drinking tea with a few like-minded friends. We'd talk (we had to, there was no internet then) and listen to Jefferson Airplane and the Incredible String Band – well, it was the late sixties and, yes, I really was that much of a nuis...

This salad could be made with leftover chicken, or, given the time of year, even leftover turkey. I try not to have too much to do with turkeys - we've always had a strained relationship. It's some years since I cooked a Christmas turkey and on that occasion the bird was still in a garage in Widnes on Christmas morning and nobody could quite remember which garage. This recipe will serve 2 people. A few chicken thighs with skin on and bone in; 4 maybe, but as many as you feel like eating 2 portions of medium egg noodles (around 125 g altogether, uncooked) A good handful of green beans 6 smallish or 4 large spring onions For cooking the chicken:      1 scant tsp 5-spice powder      3 tbsp dark soy sauce      1 tbsp balsamic vinegar      2 tsp sesame oil For the dressing:      2 tbsp dark soy sauce      2 tbsp light soy sauce      1 ...

This dish might sound as if it just wouldn't work, but oddly it does – as long as you like plums. I came across a French recipe using chicken and plums and since there were plenty of cheap plums around, I thought I'd try something along the same lines. It might sound a little complicated, but it's not really and can be prepared largely in advance. This recipe serves two hungry people, but the size of plums and chicken thighs will vary a lot so you might want to vary the amount of pasta or other ingredients to suit your appetite. 3-4 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in 3-4 plums, ripe but preferably still on the firm side 2 medium courgettes, topped and tailed Zest and juice of 1 small lime 150 g (or thereabouts) tagliatelle – or use whatever pasta you have Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, dried chilli flakes, salt and pepper and maybe a little sugar Cut the courgettes into thin slices lengthways. Dry these slices out by placing them on silicone sheets on baking tray...