Tag Archives: spring onions

Diana Henry’s Chicken with Torn Sourdough, Sherry, Raisins & Bitter Leaves

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Diana Henry’s Chicken with Torn Sourdough, Sherry, Raisins & Bitter Leaves

All my favourites in one dish: Diana Henry; a new one tin recipe; chicken thighs; sourdough. This is one of those perfect for the Aga one tin dishes which has the added bonus of using up some of the sourdough I have been making. My sourdough is improving and everyone seems to enjoy eating it but this new pastime has brought out the perfectionist in me and I haven’t yet achieved my ideal loaf. I am beginning to understand what drives people to keep baking sourdough. Part of the enjoyment is reading books about it and watching video demonstrations. I am aspiring to make Chad Robertson’s “basic country bread” as described in his wonderful book “Tartine“. I am reading it avidly and am grateful to my youngest son for leaving it at home when he returned to university this week. The other sourdough book I’m finding invaluable is James Morton’s “Super Sourdough” which my sons gave me for Christmas.

Anyway, back to the chicken recipe. It’s from Diana Henry’s latest wonderful book “From the Oven to the Table” and I hope you find it as delicious, interesting and distinctive as we did. The great thing is it’s very easy to up the quantities, using an additional roasting tin, without much extra work. You would need to allow some extra time in the oven and swap the tins round halfway through to make sure all the chicken pieces achieved that golden brown crispiness.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

  • 175g sourdough bread, torn into pieces roughly 5cm square
  • 450g small waxy potatoes, cut into chunks
  • 1 large onion, peeled and cut into wedges
  • 6 thyme sprigs
  • 1-2 tsps (according to preference) chilli flakes
  • 1 head of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
  • 150g pancetta or bacon, ideally in one piece cut into chunks, but I used rashers which I chopped up
  • 8 skin-on bone-in chicken thighs
  • 2 tbsps sherry vinegar
  • 220ml amontillado sherry
  • 5 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
  • sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
  • 150g spring onions, trimmed
  • 50g raisins
  • 100g bitter salad leaves such as radicchio or chicory
  • 25g toasted pine nuts

Method

  • Put the bread, onion, potatoes, thyme, chilli and garlic cloves in the large Aga roasting tin
  • Add the pancetta or bacon and the chicken thighs
  • Pour on the sherry vinegar, 70ml of the sherry and 4 tablespoons of the olive oil
  • Season and toss everything round with your hands, finishing with the chicken thighs skin side up. Make sure the bread isn’t too exposed, or lying at the edges, or it will become too dark
  • Slide onto the second set of runners in the roasting oven and roast for 25 minutes, tossing the ingredients round and turning the tin round once. Keep the chicken skin side up
  • Mix the spring onions with the last tablespoon of olive oil in a bowl and lay them on top of the tin, adding another 50ml sherry
  • Return to the oven for a further 15 minutes
  • Pour the remaining sherry into a small pan with the raisins and bring to just under the boil on the boiling plate. Leave these to sit, then add them to the roasting tin for the last 5 minutes of the cooking time
  • For us this was a kitchen supper so I served it from the tin and placed a salad bowl of red chicory dressed with balsamic and olive oil on the table. Alternatively, you could transfer everything to a large serving dish and mix in the leaves
  • Throw on the pine nuts and serve

 

 

 

Beef Short Ribs

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Beef Short Ribs

A Bank Holiday Weekend and an opportunity to try a new recipe requiring hours of slow cooking: my sort of recipe. I bought the beef with no particular recipe in mind so I was pleased to find I’d bookmarked this one for Glazed Sticky Longhorn Short Ribs over a year ago. I have no idea if my ribs were from Longhorn cows but I bought them from my excellent local butcher, Ruby and White, which has never let me down.

Ingredients

Serves 6

  • About 3kg beef short ribs
  • Rapeseed oil
  • Seasoning

For the sticky BBQ glaze

  • 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp light soy sauce
  • 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 300ml passata
  • 100ml tomato ketchup
  • 2 level tsp five spice
  • 1 level tsp all spice
  • 1 level tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
  • 1 level tsp Sichuan pepper
  • ½ tsp ground black pepper
  • 6 tbsp dark brown sugar
  • 1 level tsp rapeseed oil

Method

(Preheat conventional oven to 100ºC)

  • Place the ribs in a large roasting tin, season and drizzle with rapeseed oil
  • Cover with a double layer of foil and place in the simmering oven to slow-roast for about 8 hours but can be longer. The meat will be tender and falling off the bone
  • Alternatively, if you want to eat at lunchtime, place the ribs in the oven before going to bed. Could probably leave them there until you’re ready to add the glaze (see below), but if you’re worried they will be falling apart too much (is this possible?), remove them at breakfast time and replace them, with the glaze, a couple of hours before you want to serve them
  • A couple of hours before the end of the cooking time make the glaze
  • Place everything in a saucepan, add 100ml water and stir on a medium heat/the simmering plate until the sugar has dissolved.
  • Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Or bring to the boil and leave uncovered in the simmering oven for at least half an hour
  • Then pour about ⅔ of the sauce over your ribs, replace the foil and return them to the simmering oven for a minimum of 30 minutes but can be longer
  • I didn’t have all the ingredients for the seasonal slaw so I served our ribs with Nigella’s Hot and Sour Shredded Salad (recipe in her book “Kitchen”) and steamed Basmati rice, with the remaining glaze drizzled over the ribs

Nigella’s Hot and Sour Shredded Salad

Serves 6

  • 3 carrots
  • 4 spring onions
  • 1 long red chilli
  • 1 long green chilli
  • 20g/small bunch coriander

for the dressing:

  • juice of 1 lime (if you don’t have one, a lemon will do)
  • 4 x tbsp Thai fish sauce
  • 1 tsp caster sugar
  • Cut the carrots into long slices and then julienne them (i.e. cut into matchstick-like strips)
  • Trim and halve the spring onions and julienne as well
  • De-seed the chillies and cut into juliennes
  • Finely chop the coriander
  • Mix all of the above in a bowl. In another bowl mix the lime juice, fish sauce and sugar and dress the vegetables with this
The finished beef
Hot and Sour Shredded Salad
Hot and Sour Shredded Salad
Making the glaze
The ribs about to go in the oven

Chicken and Sweet Potatoes with Miso, Ginger and Spring Onions

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Chicken and Sweet Potatoes with Miso, Ginger and Spring Onions

 

Another of my Easter weekend dishes was this simple chicken traybake, which is also a Diana Henry recipe. It appeared in the Telegraph’s Stella magazine a few weeks ago. I tried it then and knew my family would like it. It’s perfectly suited to Aga cooking.

Ingredients

For 4-6 people, depending on hunger levels and the size of the chicken thighs

  • 8 chicken thighs
  • 700g sweet potatoes, washed and cut into wedges
  • 2½ tbsp white miso
  • 1 ½ tbsp honey or maple syrup
  • 2 tbsp rice wine
  • 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
  • 2.5cm chunk ginger root, peeled and grated or finely chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1 red chilli, halved and finely chopped (use the seeds for extra heat)
  • 12-18 spring onions
  • 3 tsp black or toasted white sesame seeds (or a mixture of the two)

For the final basting

  • 1 tbsp white miso
  • 1 tbsp honey or maple syrup
  • ½ tbsp dark soy sauce
  • ½ tbsp rice wine

Method

Pre-heat conventional oven to 190ºC/gas mark 5

  • Place the thighs in a large roasting tin with the sweet potato wedges (they should be able to lie in a single layer)
  • Mix together everything else except the spring onions and sesame seeds. Pour this over the chicken and sweet potatoes, turning everything over so the ingredients are well coated, finishing with the chicken skin-side up
  • Roast for 45 minutes at the top of the roasting oven, basting every so often, and turning the wedges over
  • Mix the final basting ingredients together and about 15 minutes before the end of cooking time, take the tin out of the oven and pour them over, adding the spring onions at the same time. They should become soft and slightly charred
  • When cooked, sprinkle with the sesame seeds and serve
  • I served ours with pak choi stir-fried in a little groundnut oil with black pepper and soy sauce

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