Chicken & other fowl

There can be a real joy in revisiting recipes – and this one is a case in point.  It is a few years since we first cooked this dish but it really is worth coming back to!  You can find the original cook here –…

Walking through the garden I suddenly realised that our Sage was growing precociously.  And precocious sage means one thing – Saltimbocca!  What could be better than Saltimbocca?…….. Saltimbocca with extra crispy sage! Classic Saltimbocca alla Romana is not surprisingly thought of as a Roman dish.…

We have had fantastic fun this year cooking new dishes with some great products.  We have also spent a lot of time trying to reduce our food waste by making sure that we have some plans (at least some idea) what we might do with…

What is in a name? I often think it funny how we accept both the name of dishes and their presentation as though they are ‘original dishes’. I mean original in the sense of – always made this way.  In reality the dishes we have…

During the 2020-21 pandemic lockdown we had a number of meals from the Rick Stein restaurant as part of their “Stein at Home” series.  One of these dishes was their Coq au Riesling based on the Alsace take on Coq au Vin using a local…

We have been slowly trying to clear things from the freezer and came across some frozen pheasant breasts.  A little out of season for the UK, but that doesn’t take away from the beauty of the produce or its free range pedigree!  Hunting round for…

In this current health crisis we have been trying to make better use of our food and make fewer calls on our food suppliers.  One area that this has worked well with is chicken.  So often an ‘also ran’ meat – but from well reared…

We This is a short followup on the recipe for Roast Chicken Breast and Mushroom Stuffed Wings (here).  We had divided a large chicken as there are just 2 of us and we are trying to make our food go a little further to reduce the…

What is the best way to manage a large chicken when there are just 2 of you and you are trying to make your food go a little further to reduce the pressure on our food suppliers?  Well whilst it was very tempting to roast…

I do wonder why we tend to reserve so many lovely things for Christmas eating when they are so good for other times too!  Whilst this one was chosen as our Christmas terrine it would work really well throughout the whole of the ‘game season’…

We had called into Charlotte’s Butchery to pick up some minced pork for some autumn sausage making.  One of the real joys of Charlotte’s is that in addition to fabulously consistent meat, the meat display often has something unusual to tempt you away from your…

Having been pleased at the outcome of our fried and grilled calves liver recipe, I wanted to go back and try the more conventional approach.  We had reverted to grilling the meat after initial frying as the temperature of our plancha/pan had really not been hot…

It was lovely to be able to roast 2 beautiful slow grown chicken breasts – butchered as supremes, with the first part of the wing bone and the skin included.  Even better when roasted on a bed of rosemary with just a hint of wood…

We were very lucky to be able to go back to the restaurant La Scottiglia in Pescina near Seggiano in Tuscany.  Last year, 2018, we wrote about the wonderful dish La Scottiglia that the restaurant has been named after since 1972.  This year we arrived…

Whilst chicken can be bland it really doesn’t need to be!  This is a really simple recipe and almost a one pan dish too.  We had taken 2 chicken breasts from a large free range organic chicken.  The skin was left on the chicken and…

For some years now we have visited a delightful restaurant in Tuscany called La Scottiglia in the village of Pescina on the side on Monte Amiata.  We have always been looked after exceedingly well there and it is a place we frequently recommend. They do…

Having finally come to the conclusion what we were going to include in the Christmas Terrine it was time to put it all together!!  The one thing we have learned this year making terrines is that

We had fun making terrines on the Big Green Egg over the summer when on holiday in Tuscany.  So now it was time to put some of that experience together as we get ready for Christmas.  

The inspiration for this was taken directly from Tom Kerridge’s book on low calorie dining ‘Lose weight for good’ but slightly adapted for the Big Green Egg.  The recipe in Tom’s book describes

The idea of eating liver seems to divide people in the same way that Marmite does – you love it or loath it!  Well both Jackie and I are in the ‘love it’ camp.  This is the quickest of quick dishes – I make no…

This is a ‘super simple’ dish to do on the Big Green Egg or indeed most BBQs that have a lid you can close.  It is an ideal dish for mid week when you want to cook something fresh, ideal for eating outside in the…

Having been out with friends to a Lebanese restaurant one of our favourite dishes there was the Shawarma Chicken.  So the quest quickly came about to try and replicate the tastes from that evening.  Typically the Shawarma  chicken is made from the thigh meat, unrolled…

Turkey gets such a bad press, and yet it is the “go to” meat in the UK for Christmas in particular but also and other holiday periods too.  This year we delayed our ‘Christmas season’ Turkey cooking until New Year’s Day, and I have to…

I am always staggered when we journey through France and Italy at the variety and quality of the meat the local supermarkets carry in contrast to the picture I find in my part of the UK.  We were driving along the Rhone on the way…

On our wanderings we came across a butcher selling ‘home reared’ turkey and turkey breasts.  Well for 2 of us even a 1kg turkey breast seemed quite a lot of meat and even that was going to be a bit of a ‘tight squeeze’ on…

Wandering around the local market here in Tuscany we spied a Spatchcocked chicken…  and so our plans for today’s food was sorted! The term spatchcock refers to poultry prepared for roasting or grilling by removing the backbone and sometimes the sternum and flattening it out…