As I said in my last
post, when shopping for Becca’s
Mum’s birthday paella, I rather over bought. I didn’t over spend, I hasten to reiterate, everything was a
bargain, and most of it just plain cheap – I just bought more than we needed,
or indeed could come close to fitting in the pan. Actually pretty easily done on a trip to Theobalds… Not to worry though, nothing whatsoever
went to waste, it just meant I didn’t need to do any proper shopping for a
week. And that week we ate
fantastically well.
Apart from the
leftover paella itself, which was enough for a light lunch for two or a hearty
dinner for one (as it became for Becca on one of the evenings I was working in
the week), we had the best part of a whole rabbit, jointed and already browned,
six fat chicken thighs and plenty of cooking chorizo.
 |
| A tub of rabbit meat, a bowl of rabbit bones |
The first thing to be
done was make something of the rabbit.
Or rather two inter-related things, a stew of the meat and a stock of
the bones. So the day after the
birthday feast I pulled all I could of the rabbit meat from the rabbit bones,
put the bones in a stockpot of water with the regular veg, herbs and spices to
simmer into a rich gamey stock, while making a basic stew of the meat with some
shredded bacon, coarsely chopped onion, fennel and celery, a good splash of
white wine and (added later in the whole process) the first few ladlefuls of
stock from the pan.
Dinner that night was
a simple pasta dish with a sauce made with cherry tomatoes, fried till soft,
then a couple of ladles of the rabbit stew and a bit of extra stock added to
the pan, tossed together with some penne.
A ribbony pasta, like pappardelle or broad tagliatelle - which one might
argue to be something of a tautology - would undoubtedly have been more
traditional, and perhaps more appropriate, but the principle culinary object of
the day was throwing together something easy out of what we had to hand and
that was penne. And you know
what? It was perfectly good.
The bulk of the rabbit
stew, and the stock, went into the fridge. The next day we’d be due a change from rabbit, and it would
be the turn of the chicken thighs.
My original idea had been to roast them with onions and sherry, a
wonderfully simple and tasty dish, I believe of my own devising, which I have
yet to post on this blog (although it has obvious things in common with the
dish described here,
it’s an open roast rather than a lidded casserole, and I will write it up one
day, I promise). But, disastrously
(I say ‘disastrously’, but that’s speaking very
relatively), the only sherry
in the house was half a half bottle of 30 (thirty!) year old palo
cortado which for all that it’s a ridiculous bargain even at around £18 for
a half bottle – it is 30 years old
after all – is not something you cook with. Not even if it wasn’t a gift from your favourite aunt. So in keeping with the theme for the
week, I instead took a look at what we did have in the house and let my decision
making be guided by that. Which
turned out to be red peppers, of the long pointy variety widely and cheaply
available at the Turkish stores round here – or usually at a pound for a big
bowl full in not always ropey condition on Ridley Road market. And of which, like pretty much
everything else intended for the paella, I had bought twice as much as I needed.
The obvious thing to do
with chicken thighs and red pepper perhaps was a Sicilian,
Basque or maybe Provencale
type stew, and very good that would have been too. But I decided, more or less on a whim, and still with my
onion and sherry dish in mind, to experiment with roasting the peppers whole in
the dish with the chicken thighs, and some onion. That may not have been a particularly wild or daring
experiment, but I have to say it turned out to be a very successful one. And again, very simple.
I simply marinated the
chicken in the usual
mix of crushed garlic, chilli, lemon juice and zest, olive oil, salt,
pepper and herbs (sage and thyme), then browned them well in my stove proof
cast iron roasting dish, lay the peppers between them, giving them a good turn
in the juices, and tucked wedges of red onion, simply peeled and cut lengthways
into sixths, into the remaining gaps.
ThenI transferred to the oven, at around 200, for about half an hour.
At the same time, but
in another dish, I roasted some jersey royals and carrots that were slender
enough to leave whole (having first been steamed over the potatoes as they were
par-boiling), as much for aesthetic coherence with the whole peppers as
anything, along with a few cloves of garlic.
The resulting plateful
was one of the tastiest and most aesthetically pleasing roast
chicken dishes I’ve ever had, while at the same time being one of the
simplest. There wasn’t even any
need to think about making a gravy, the juices from the chicken and the red
peppers making a thoroughly delectable sweet sauce in the roasting tray all by
themselves.
Two chicken thighs
apiece for Becca and me was plenty for dinner, and left two thighs over to be
added to the rabbit stew for the thing I’d been most looking forward to ever
since I’d realised the extent of our paella overstock. Possibly what I’d been deliberately,
but subconsciously, planning even before that, back at the point of making
decisions in Theobalds. The next
step in our use-em-up program would be rabbit and chicken
pie. For which you’ll have to
wait till my next post…
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