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One-dish roast chicken, potatoes and accompaniments

Certain groceries were absurdly cheap in the markets we used in the Cote d’Azur. These two chickens, though, beautifully dressed and trimmed, with Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée labels and a lovely succulent plumpness, took the parsimonious biscuit. Each was large enough to serve four, and the special offer which gave me one free (in a lovely cardboard box) when I bought the other meant that the pair only cost €4. That’s €4 for more protein than my cats get in a week.

I decided to roast the chickens like this for a number of reasons. I was on holiday, so wanted a dish that wasn’t too fiddly, which meant I could spend some more time on the terrace drinking. They were good birds whose flavour deserved a chance to sing on its own. And this method meant that I could pile the dish high with Provençal flavours. I found some paste made from sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, capers and a very little anchovy, some roast red peppers marinated in olive oil and herbes de Provence, some nutty-tasting little new potatoes and other good things. To serve six with plenty left over, this is what I did with them :

2 chickens
5 tablespoons sundried tomato paste
8 salted anchovies
100g roast marinated red peppers, cut into strips
1kg new potatoes
750g shallots, peeled
6 bulbs (yes, whole bulbs) garlic
1 lemon
1 bottle rosé wine (I used the local Bandol, which was pretty much the only wine you could buy in the area)
150g butter
4 bay leaves
1 tablespoon herbes de Provençe
1 handful fresh chervil
1 handful fresh parsley
1 handful fresh basil
150g crème fraîche
Salt and pepper

Pull any fat out of the inside of the chickens and discard. Zest the lemons, putting the zest to one side. Chop the lemons in half and put one half in the cavity of each chicken with a bay leaf and a generous seasoning of salt and pepper.

Place the chickens in a large roasting dish, and fill the space around them with the potatoes, peeled, whole shallots, garlic bulbs (not peeled, and cut in half across the equator), the remaining bay leaves, the anchovies and peppers. The anchovies will ‘melt’ when cooked and will give a deeply savoury, but not fishy, base to the dish.

Place knobs of butter on the chickens, and scatter over the herbes de Provençe and some more salt. In a jug, whisk together the tomato paste, the lemon zest and the wine, and pour it all into the baking dish. Season and place in the oven at 180° C for two hours, basting frequently with the winey juices.

When the chickens come out of the oven, transfer them and the potatoes, shallots, garlic and peppers to a warm serving dish to rest. Chop the chervil, parsley and basil finely, and whisk them and the crème fraîche into the pan juices. Serve with a green salad and some more of the wine you used in the dish.

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Green curry

Thai green curry is fierce stuff. A green chicken curry is also pretty easy to make at home; with half an hour to spare you can produce a wok full of searingly hot, aromatic deliciousness.

Although you can make your own curry paste from spices and fermented fish paste at home, I’ve found that Mae Ploy’s green curry paste is so good and so convenient I don’t bother any more. Some UK supermarkets stock it (I’ve seen it in Waitrose and Sainsbury’s), you’ll find it in oriental supermarkets as a matter of course, and it’s available online in the UK and through Amazon in the US, where you can buy things to eat while you read your books. Please do not believe what it says on the pot. If you use three tablespoons of this extremely hot paste in a curry of this size, you’ll lose sensation in most of your digestive tract for the rest of the evening (which may be a blessing). I love hot curries, but there’s a point past which even my tastebuds refuse to go.

To serve two you’ll need:

1 can coconut milk
2 tablespoons Mae Ploy green curry paste
2 large chicken breasts, boned and skinned
8 small aubergines, halved, or one large one cut into pieces
1 small can bamboo shoots
1 tablespoon palm sugar (substitute soft brown sugar if you can’t find any)
5 kaffir lime leaves, torn
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 handful basil leaves

I couldn’t find any kaffir lime leaves – they’d sold out at the Malaysian supermarket I went to in London at the weekend, so I used the pared zest of a lime instead. If your supermarket stocks Bart’s Spices, you should be able to find freeze-dried kaffir lime leaves, which work very well.

I like to use Chaokoh coconut milk (Americans can find it here, and Brits here; it’s very inexpensive and extremely useful in the kitchen, so stock up on plenty). It’s something Rosemary Brissenden’s excellent South East Asian Food put me onto; when cooking a Thai curry, you need to look out for a coconut milk like Chaokoh, without emulsifiers, thickeners and God knows what else. This is because you’ll be cooking with the thick part of the milk, which will float to the top of the can, until it separates and releases its oil – in a coconut milk with added gubbins, the oil will never separate out, no matter how much you cook it. You need this oil for flavour, and because it’s the fat you’ll be ‘frying’ the curry’s ingredients in.

Chop all your ingredients before you start. Put the thick, solid part of the coconut milk in the wok (about half a can of a watery-looking liquid will remain in the can), and cook it, stirring, over a high flame until it is bubbling and the oil has separated from it. Add two tablespoons of curry paste to the wok and carry on stirring until the paste no longer smells harsh and raw – you’ll notice a mellow, aromatic fragrance starts to develop.

Add the chicken to the wok and continue to ‘fry’ until the meat has all changed colour. As you stir, add the remaining liquid from the coconut can, a tablespoon at a time. Add the sugar, fish sauce, lime leaves or zest and vegetables to the wok and turn the heat down. Simmer for about eight minutes, until the meat and vegetables are cooked through and the sauce has thickened a little. Taste a little of the sauce to check the seasoning and adjust if you want to.

Take the wok off the heat and stir in a large handful of basil, torn roughly. Thai basil is much more fragrant, with a delicious edge of anise, but if you can’t find any, the European sort will be fine. Serve on top of a bowl of rice, and make sure you allow plenty of the delicious sauce to soak into the rice.

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Chicken liver parfait

…And we resume normal service.

Apologies for the last month’s lack of updates, and thank-you to everyone who emailed (or recognised me from the few photos on the site, came up to me in a pub, and demanded to know what was going on). Gastronomy Domine is now officially back in the saddle, so please start checking regularly for updates again.

This chicken liver pate recipe is hopelessly good, and chicken livers themselves are hopelessly cheap. You’ll find them occasionally alongside the boned, peeled, pale and sad chicken breasts in the supermarket, selling for less than a pound (cash) per pound (weight). They’ll be flopping wetly in a sad, bloody plastic bag. Ignore the aesthetics here and just buy as many bags as you can, and stick them in the freezer for the day you decide you want a very easy, exceptionally good starter. Defrost before you begin, and follow the recipe as below. A frozen liver will not cook as firmly as a fresh one, but we’re not after texture here, since the livers will be blitzed in the food processor and then shoved through a sieve.

Far be it from me to condone lying to guests. But if you have an awkward type who remembers the grey stuff with tubes in from school and says they do not like livers coming round for lunch, please feel free to call this something else, and make like it’s just lovely . . . meat. The really duplicitous among you will get away with calling this a duck pate; I defy anyone to tell the difference. The Worcestershire sauce, nutmeg and chipotle chillis may sound like curious additions to a parfait like this, but you can trust me here; they work, and are not overpowering.

To fill a terrine dish, serving eight for a starter or four for a boozy lunch, you’ll need:

1 ½ lb chicken livers
1 tablespoon salted butter for sauteeing
½ lb butter for puree
¼ lb butter for melting over the top (say a prayer to the cholesterol god at this point)
1 bulb garlic
1 medium onion
3 shallots
Freshly ground nutmeg
½ wineglass madeira
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon chipotles in adobo

Rinse the livers carefully in running water and pat dry. Chop the onions, garlic and shallots roughly (don’t worry about being too even here; they’re going in the food processor shortly) and saute them in the butter in a large pan over a high heat for about four minutes. When the onions, shallots and garlic start to brown, add the livers, season with salt and pepper and cook for two minutes, keeping everything on the move.

Bring the heat down and keep sauteeing for another five minutes or so, until the livers are nearly cooked through. (You’ll be able to tell by prodding them with your spatula; they become less springy as they cook.) Add several gratings of nutmeg (I like quite a lot) to the livers with the Madeira, Worcestershire sauce and the chillis, and deglaze the pan. Turn the heat off when the liquid has reduced to half its original volume.

Turn everything in a bowl and leave to cool. Take half a pound of butter out of the fridge to soften at the same time.

When the livers are cool and the butter is soft, put the livers in the bowl of the food processor and puree. Add the softened butter a tablespoon at a time once the livers are pureed, and keep processing until it’s all amalgamated. Your mixture will be very soft (almost like buttercream icing), but don’t worry; it will firm up in the fridge.

Push the puree through a sieve into a terrine dish. The straining through a sieve is important; it’ll buy you a gorgeously smooth texture which you can’t get through processing alone. Flatten the top with a spatula and melt the remaining ¼ lb of butter, then pour it over the surface. If you are particularly fussy, you can clarify the butter first, but I’m afraid I don’t bother.

Refrigerate the mixture for a couple of hours before serving. I’m still in two minds as to whether this works most brilliantly with Melba toasts or with a nutty, rustic bread toasted in thick slices. Experiment for yourself and let me know what you think.

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Chicken with fairy ring mushrooms

Waitrose usually carries at least one seasonal wild mushroom, with several on the shelves in the autumn. At the moment, it’ s mousseron mushrooms, usually called the fairy ring mushroom in the UK. (Not by Waitrose, though – perhaps mousseron sounds more tasty.) The fairy ring is a tender, round-capped, yellow fungus with a subtle but delicious flavour. It’s the mushroom you see growing in circles in lawns, and you can pick your own – but do be careful to check any mushrooms you pick in the wild in a good mushroom identification book. I’d recommend Peter Jordan’s Mushroom Picker’s Foolproof Field Guide.

Thyme, garlic and the slight tang of crème fraîche are gorgeous with these little mushrooms. They’re pretty tiny and shrink down further on cooking, so to eat them as an accompaniment you’ll need a few boxes of them. To make them go as far as you can, you can use the mushrooms to make a sauce. Like this, they’re wonderful with chicken. I was only able to find chicken without skin, so I wrapped pancetta around it to add a little fat and to keep the moisture in. If you’ve got good chicken breasts with skin on, you can leave the pancetta out if you like; just brown the skin well when you saute.

To serve two, you’ll need:

2 plump chicken breasts
6 slices pancetta
1 punnet fairy ring (mousseron) mushrooms
4 shallots, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
A few sprigs of thyme
Butter for sauteeing
Salt and pepper

Place a sprig of thyme on each chicken breast, and wrap pancetta around the breast, holding the thyme in place. You shouldn’t need to secure it; as the pancetta cooks, it will stop being flexible enough to unroll. Saute gently for about eight minutes per side, until the pancetta is golden-brown.

While you saute the chicken, melt some butter in another small pan and soften the shallots and garlic. When the shallots are transluscent, add the mushrooms and a sprig of thyme. Saute, keeping everything on the move, until the mushrooms are cooked and soft.

Add the crème fraîche to the mushroom pan, stir briskly until everything is amalgamated, and season. Put a pool of the mushroom sauce on each plate and place the cooked chicken on top. I served this with mashed potatoes, and a green salad with a sharp dressing.

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Sticky grilled chicken with satay sauce

This was meant to be sticky barbecued chicken, but we in Cambridgeshire are living through history’s wettest drought (hosepipe bans, drought orders and torrential rain all in a very aggravating welter). The barbecue flame took one look at the sky and went out immediately when I rather foolishly lit it in the five-minute window of good weather on Sunday. Not to worry – this is a recipe which does very adequately under the grill too.

The recipe is one which was given to my Mum by a friend who very sadly died of breast cancer quite recently. If you cook it, it’d be great if you could perhaps look at buying some fabulous pink wellies from Breast Cancer Care, or giving them a donation.

Sue’s recipe comes with a bonus satay sauce which uses the marinade as an ingredient. When you’re making the sauce, be careful to simmer it hard to cook off any raw chicken juices. The marinade itself is extremely penetrating (a characteristic of many treacle or molasses-based marinades), so don’t marinade for more than six hours. Chicken kebabs are also very successful in this marinade. To cook two pounds of chicken pieces you’ll need:

Juice of a lemon
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
2 tablespoons treacle or molasses
8 tablespoons light soya sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons tomato ketchup

Easy as anything – just mix all the marinade ingredients together and marinade the meat for five or six hours. Grill or barbecue until the marinade on the skin is beginning to caramelise.

For the satay sauce you’ll need:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
2 teaspoons coriander (thrash to bits in the mortar and pestle)
3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
¾ pint (or a can) coconut milk
2 tablespoons marinade (above)
Salt and pepper

Fry the onions, garlic and spices in the oil until the onions are soft and transluscent, then add the peanut butter, salt and coconut milk. Simmer for twenty minutes with two tablespoons of the marinade you used for the meat. Some of the oil will be released from the coconut as you cook – you can use kitchen paper to absorb it if you feel there’s too much. Season to taste.

This sauce is remarkably close to Malaysian satay sauces (without the lemongrass, and substituting the treacle for the palm sugar). Give it a spin – I think you’ll like it.

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Zesty roast chicken

How on earth have I managed to go for so many months without roasting a chicken? I found this beautiful free-range, maize-fed bird in Waitrose. It was calling out in a ghostly chicken voice to be stuffed with zingy, summer aromatics.

Roast chicken using this method is as easy as anything; you only need to spend a few minutes preparing the bird to go into the oven, and it produces so much buttery, herby, oniony juice that you don’t need to make a gravy.

Some people like to roast their chicken with the breast pointing downwards, in order to keep everything moist. You don’t get such a crisp skin with this method, though, so I prefer to roast the chicken the right way up, breast pointing skywards, and baste every ten minutes or so with the buttery juices.

You’ll need:

1 chicken
1 lime, cut in halves
3 red onions, sliced roughly
10 cloves of garlic, skin on
1 handful marjoram from the garden
1 stalk celery
3 tablespoons butter
Sea salt
2 teaspoons flaked dried chilis and freshly ground pepper (I used a grinder of Spirits of Fire mix from the Elements of Spice company in South Africa – a present, along with another five grinders of wonderful things, from our friends Greg and Sienne.)

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put both halves of the lime, the celery (in pieces), one of the onions, the marjoram, half the garlic, a tablespoon of butter and a teaspoon of chillis and pepper inside the cavity of the bird. You may have to push quite hard, but persevere; it’ll all fit with a bit of squeezing.

Stack the remaining onions and garlic in the bottom of the roasting tin, and place the chicken on top. Dot the rest of the butter on the surface of the chicken, and grind the rest of the spices all over.

You should cook your chicken for 45 minutes per kilo, plus 20 minutes. Baste every 10 minutes or so, and rest the bird for 5-10 minutes when you remove it from the oven. It will have released delicious juices into the tray, which you can spoon over your accompaniments along with the now roast onions and garlic. I served this with a bacon and onion rosti, which soaked up the juices beautifully – watch this space for a recipe.

No sandwich in the world is better than the sandwich you make the day after roasting this chicken with the jellied juices, a little roast onion and the tender meat you’ve stripped from the carcass.

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Chicken wrapped in wild garlic leaves and pancetta

Thanks to Kalyn for hosting Weekend Herb Blogging (and I’m sorry I’ve not taken part in a while; the winter has made herb blogging a real stretch of the imagination in the UK!)

Wild garlic isn’t the same plant as the garlic you buy in the supermarket. It belongs to the same family, but wild garlic (Allium Ursinum) has a tiny bulb with no separate cloves, soft leaves and a strong smell but a gentle flavour. Cultivated garlic (Allium Sativum) is a tougher-looking plant, with larger, much more pungent bulbs, and without the soft leaves, instead growing leaves a bit like a leek.

The leaves of wild garlic look a little like the leaves of lily of the valley; a little less glossy and rather softer, but similarly strap-like. In late spring and summer, their extremely pretty white, star-shaped flowers appear – they’re also edible, and are very good as a garnish or in salads. The abundant leaves are very strongly scented, so if you are walking in a wood where there is a patch, you’ll be able to find it with your nose before you spot it. Pick in winter and spring; the plant dies down after flowering. The bruising that happens when you pick the leaf makes the smell even stronger, so don’t leave the container you’ve put your leaves in in the back of the car- consign them to the boot. This smell (and the flavour) becomes softer and sweeter when the leaves are cooked. The leaves will keep raw for several days in the fridge.

I picked a bag of the leaves in Yorkshire, in my mother-in-law’s garden. Wild garlic spreads like crazy, especially in damp shade, and it’s considered a weed when found in gardens. I also dug two clumps and their accompanying soil up, and put them in pots in my own garden. I’m not going to plant them in the ground, because I have a feeling that if I follow my garlicky instincts, in a couple of years I may end up with an all-garlic garden, which isn’t a good look.

Try the leaves in a salad to taste them at their freshest. They’ll also cook beautifully in the same way as spinach (as in the side-dish I prepared to accompany this chicken – saute mushrooms in butter, and add the leaves towards the end, stirring until wilted, then add lemon juice, cayenne pepper and salt), but I think I’ve found the perfect application for them in this chicken and pancetta parcel. I’m very, very pleased with this recipe – if you can get your hands on any wild garlic, give it a try.

You’ll need (per person):

1 chicken breast fillet
5 slices pancetta
1 handful fresh wild garlic leaves
Pepper
1 knob butter

Lay the slices of pancetta out in a rectangle on a piece of greaseproof paper. The slices should overlap so there are no gaps. Lay the wild garlic leaves all over the top, then place the chicken breast on top of that. Grind pepper all over the chicken (you don’t need any salt; the pancetta will be salty enough on its own) and use the greaseproof paper to wrap the pancetta and garlic leaves around the chicken, as if you were rolling a Swiss roll. Use toothpicks to secure the ends of the pancetta.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed, non-stick pan, and when it starts to bubble, saute the wrapped fillets for eight minutes each side. (Start by cooking the presentation side – the one without toothpicks – first.) Garnish with some wilted leaves and pour over the pan juices.

I served the chicken with roast new potatoes, the mushrooms and garlic leaves described above, and a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. Delicious.

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Frickadellen – a fabulous meatball

Sometimes, the best recipes come about by sheer accident. This was one of them, and if you make anything from this blog this month, you really should think about making these moist little meatballs – they’re fast, completely delicious and very easy. So easy I feel a little ashamed.

Frickadellen, a Teutonic cross between a meatball and a burger, are little patties made from white meats, usually veal and pork. I had been poking around in the fridge, wondering what on earth to do with half a bowl of olives, some randomly purchased vegetables and some bread which was on the verge of going stale, and came up with this. The results really had no business being this good. Clearly the little god who works the refrigerator light was smiling on me. Try making these the next time you feel the need to sacrifice a wilting lettuce and an about-to-burst tomato to him.

You’ll need:

1 pack good sausages
1 egg
3 slices soft white bread
1 red pepper
6 spring onions
2 cloves garlic
½ cup olives
A grating of nutmeg
2 dried chilis
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 chicken breasts

Skin the sausages, and put them in the food processor with everything except the chicken breasts, and whizz until you have a rough paste. Add the chicken breasts and pulse until they’re chopped roughly, mixed in with the other ingredients. Form round patties about the size of a ping-pong ball and saute (I used some bacon fat left over from breakfast’s patented hangover cure, some very crispy bacon sandwiches). Turn regularly for between 10 and 15 minutes, and serve hot with rice and a salad.

The olives keep everything moist (use black or green ones preserved in oil, not in salt, and make sure they’re de-stoned); the coriander seeds pop, full of flavour, in your mouth; the bread gives the meatballs a beautifully tender texture; and the red pepper makes everything sweet and juicy. Delicious.

My guilt at the easiness of preparing these meatballs was soon realised. I had a sneaking suspicion that food this good should involve suffering. It just wasn’t my suffering – immediately afterwards, Mr Weasel, washing up, nearly chopped his thumb off on the Magimix blade. It now has three macho-looking stitches (administered by my Dad, a GP with a delicate touch and a good line in sympathy for the poor sod who has to live with his daughter). No photographs, in that I am hoping that you will want to keep coming back to read this blog, and I suspect you’ll be put off by extreme clinical detail.

Happily (I think), Mr Weasel has said that he’d cheerfully chop most of the other thumb off if it means he can have these Frickadellen a second time. I think that’s probably as good a recommendation as I’m going to get. Enjoy these, but be careful about what sharp-edged, curved bits of steel might be lurking under the bubbles in your sink afterwards.

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Lettuce wraps

Every country has a dish it thinks is Chinese. These dishes don’t originate in China, but are often good enough to be celebrated and enjoyed. In the UK, made-up Chinese food includes crispy ‘seaweed’ (deep-fried, shredded greens served with fish floss) and the ubiquitous chop suey. Americans can point at that peculiar sweet mustard, Crab Rangoon (no self-respecting Chinese dish contains cheese), and General Tso’s chicken.

The lettuce wrap is another of these mongrel dishes, but it’s so good that you can easily forgive it its roots and embrace it. Preferably with tongue and teeth.

To serve four people, you’ll need:

4 chicken breasts
1 inch piece of ginger, diced
4 cloves of garlic, diced
8 spring onions, sliced
1 red, yellow or orange pepper, diced
1 can water chestnuts, diced
3 sticks celery, diced
5 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in boiling water and diced
1 teaspoon sugar
1 wine-glass Chinese rice wine
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons soya sauce
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 teaspoon sugar
Pinch of MSG (as usual, leave this out if you must, but read this first)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 large lettuce (I used a Cos)

Put the chicken in a blender, and pulse gently until it’s chopped finely. You’re aiming for a texture like mince here, not like slurry, so be careful.

Stir-fry the ginger, garlic and spring onions together for three minutes, until their fragrance is filling the kitchen. Add the chicken and the cornflour, and stir-fry until the chicken is all white. Throw in the diced vegetables, stir-fry for another two minutes, then add the rice wine, the oyster sauce and the soya sauce with the MSG and sugar. Let the liquid ingredients start to bubble, and when the cornflour has made the sauce glossy and thick, stir in the sesame oil and transfer the mixture to a warm bowl.

Serve by spooning into the bowl of a lettuce leaf. I used a Cos lettuce, partly because of the charming spoon shape of a Cos leaf, but mostly because my choice was extremely limited; it’s near-impossible to buy whole lettuces these days, the whole world having gone mad for pre-mixed salads in bags.

Wrap the leaf around the hot, textured filling, and then wrap your mouth around the whole thing.

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Spice-crusted chicken with Boursin stuffing

Regular readers will note that I’m very fond of Boursin – the garlic-spiked cream cheese which comes in a dear little corrugated tinfoil hat. It’s got a lot more kick than the Philadelphia variety, and I find it much more robust in cooking than other cream cheeses.

It may be a mass-produced cheese, but Boursin actually has quite a history behind it. It’s been around for more than forty years, and was the first large-scale soft cheese production business in France. François Boursin took the idea behind the meal of fromage frais and herbs eaten in French villages (it was a popular meal in Gournay, his own home town), and turned it into “All-natural Gournay cheese”. The ad campaign with the “Du pain, du vin, du Boursin” tagline has been around for nearly as long; it started in 1968, and you can still buy wedge-shaped bits of Boursin for your cheeseboard, if you are the sort of person who has a cheeseboard and thinks Boursin belongs on it.

I like it very much on bread, but Boursin really comes into its own when it’s hot, and acting as a hard sauce.

For this dish you’ll need (per person):

1 breast joint of chicken with skin and bones
1/2 round Boursin
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Butter, olive oil, salt

Push your fingers under the skin of the chicken until it’s loosened and you’ve got a little pocket under all the skin. Push the Boursin under it, squashing and flattening until you’ve forced it all into the pocket. (This is a lot of cheese for a little chicken; just keep going until it’s all packed in there.) Smear any that’s left over the outside of the breast – it’ll help the crust to stick.

Bash the coriander, cumin and a pinch of salt in a pestle and mortar; you’re aiming for a rough grind, so don’t go mad with it. Press the spices and salt into the skin side of the chicken breast (which you have cleverly prepared by making it sticky with cheese).

Melt butter (about a teaspoon per breast) and a slug of olive oil in a large, non-stick frying pan which will fit in your oven (if you don’t own one, use a non-stick roasting tin on the hob) over a high heat, and put the chicken breasts in it, skin side up, for three minutes. Turn the breasts skin-side down when your three minutes are up, and put the whole pan in the oven at 180c for 25 minutes.

You’ll end up with a sweet, toothsome chicken breast annointed with a creamy garlic sauce, and a crisp, herbed skin. Serve with rice, to soak up the cheese and the chicken’s spicy juices.

Incidentally, the corn in this picture, which I served with the chicken, is white corn (maïs blanc) which I found in France, produced by good old Green Giant. The kernels are paler, smaller and longer than normal niblets, and they’re delicious; buttery and sweet. If anybody has seen any in the UK, please let me know. I’ve only got two tins left, and I seem to have become addicted.