I recently bought an recipe book from 1969: the Family Circle Thrifty Cook’s Book. It’s full of some frankly quite odd recipes but equally some really interesting ideas. SPICY EGG FLUFF… CHEESE CURRY… RICE AND RAISIN WINE… and an entire chapter on how to throw a ‘teenager’s record session’. Oh, and fried chicken with cucumber sauce.
I put a selection of these recipes out to my socials and the cucumber recipe was the most popular. So I streamed the recipe on YouTube – check it out for yourself:
It’s a fried chicken leg, with a roux made from the pan and then diced cucumber stirred through the sauce. It’s… kind of OK? It’s fresh and crunchy, against the thick and savoury roux. Probably worth further experimenting.
Melt margarine in a large frying pan. Fry chicken joints slowly for 20 to 25 minutes, turning occasionally until golden brown and tender.
Remove joints and place on a warm serving dish.
Add remaining flour to fat in pan and cook for 2 minutes. Dissolve stock cube in boiling water and add to pan. Bring to boil, stirring, and cook for 2 minutes. Add milk and salt and pepper to taste.
Peel cucumber, cut into small dice and add to sauce; reheat and pour over chicken. If liked, serve with grilled, halved tomatoes.
Notes
I've presented the recipe as it was originally written, including Imperial measurements.
Sainsbury’s are wanting to inspire the nation to be more creative with their vegetables after seeing a massive upturn in sales of vegetables with Avocado (147%), asparagus spears (118%), broccoli (40%), courgettes (30%) and bunched beetroot (25%) leading the way. I do love a salad, but it’s a bit easy just to get a plastic bag of leaves, slice a tomato and say we’re done. There’s so much more that can go in a salad though!
Inspired by their “vegetable butcher” Amber Locke I felt like giving it a go too. I am a recent convert to spiralizing veg and have been going all out to make curly-wurly courgettes. I’ve been trying out the Savisto tabletop model and Lakeland hand-held models lately – look for more detailed reviews in a future post. If you don’t have a spiralizer, just slice the ingredients finely on the cutter side of a box grater or mandoline.
Combined with lightly pickled cucumber to make the base of a dressing and freshly grilled asparagus this salad celebrates plenty of vegetables and would be a vibrant accompaniment to a barbecue.
Sainsbury’s contributed to the ingredients for this recipe.
Mix the pickle ingredients together. Slice the cucumber lengthways and use a teaspoon to scoop out the seeds. Chop diagonally and leave in the marinade while you get everything else ready.
Grill or barbecue the asparagus for ten minutes, or until wrinkled and blackened.
Lay the asparagus on a serving plate. Spiralize or slice the beetroot and carrot and lay on top. Remove the cucumber from the marinade (reserving the liquid) and add this. Shred the lettuces and top the salad. Scatter mixed seeds over the top.
Whisk a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil into the pickle mix, and drizzle over the salad.
In my most recent monthly roundup, looking at my favourite food posts of the last month, I highlighted Helen Graves’s cold sesame noodles as one I definitely wanted to try. It struck me as a perfect lunch, so I made it the night before for the next day’s al desko treat (see, there’s a mouse and keyboard in the picture and everything).
I made a few tweaks based on my store cupboard. I gave the veg a light pickling to provide a tangy edge, as I was fresh out of pickled mango (not an ingredient I am familiar with). I ended up with a salty, sweet, savoury, crunchy yummy pot of noodles. I transport mine in a snazzy Sistema lunchbox where the dressing, noodles and veg can be separated from each other until the perfect moment. Much more interesting than a flabby cheese sandwich.
Cold sesame noodles (serves 2):
½ cucumber
1 large carrot
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
Pinch of sugar
2 roasted onions, roughly chopped
2 dried noodle nests
1 teaspoon ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 large heaped tablespoon peanut butter
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon spiced rice vinegar
Pinch of chilli flakes
A shake of sesame seeds
Halve the cucumber lengthways and use a teaspoon to scoop out the seeds. Cut at an angle to get little 1cm-wide bridge shapes. Grate the carrot into the cucumber, splash over the vinegar and add a pinch each of sugar and salt. Toss gently and allow to macerate while you get on with everything else.
Bring a pan of water to the boil and cook the noodles according to the packet instructions. Drain and rinse the noodles thoroughly with cold water.
While the noodles cook, combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Add water if necessary to make a runny dressing. When you’re ready to eat combine the lot and wolf down! (Warning: wear a napkin tucked into your collar).
What a triumph this is. Just when I was feeling a bit indifferent to Jamie Oliver’s Great Britain along comes this absolute belter. Jamie introduces this by saying most people when asked about their favourite foods will mention roast chicken and curries, and this utterly unites the heart of both of these.
With blackened, tangy skin the chicken comes out juicy and tickling on the tongue, although be warned it will make a mess of your oven as it sits on the rack.
Being the kind of blog this is though, I have to talk about the roast potatoes. They are a triumph. I used to get “spicy spuds” from a dubious takeaway near me and these are very, very close to those – crispy, spicy and fluffy.
I’ve made a few changes to the spices in the potatoes based on what I had, and used floury over new pots to get them really crispy. I’ve served mine with a refreshing salad.
Empire chicken, Bombay roasties, Indian gravy and refreshing salad (serves 4):
For the chicken and marinade
1.4kg free-range chicken
1 heaped tablespoon each finely grated garlic, fresh ginger and fresh red chilli
1 heaped tablespoon tomato purée
1 heaped teaspoon each of ground coriander, turmeric, garam masala and ground cumin
2 heaped teaspoons natural yoghurt
2 level teaspoons sea salt
For the gravy
1 stick of cinnamon
2 small red onions, peeled
10 cloves
3 tablespoons each of white wine vinegar and Worcestershire sauce
3 level tablespoons plain flour
500ml chicken stock
For the Bombay-style potatoes
800g new potatoes
sea salt and ground pepper
1 lemon
2 or 3 tablespoons olive oil
a knob of butter
1 heaped teaspoon each of nigella seeds, ground coriander, garam masala, fenugreek and turmeric
1 bulb of garlic
Pinch of chilli flakes
For the salad
½ a cucumber, peeled
3 carrots, peeled
1 red onion, peeled
½ lemon
Slash the chicken’s legs a few times right down to the bone. Mix all the marinade ingredients together and smear all over the chicken. Leave to marinate overnight.
Preheat the oven to 200°C and organize your shelves so the roasting tray can sit right at the bottom, the chicken can sit directly above it, right on the bars of the shelf, and the potatoes can go at the top.
Cut the potatoes into golf-ball size pieces then parboil them in a large pan of salted boiling water with a whole lemon for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked through. Drain the potatoes then let them steam dry. Stab the lemon a few times with a sharp knife and put it right into the chicken’s cavity.
Roughly chop the onions and add to a roasting tray along with the cinnamon stick, cloves, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce, then whisk in the flour. Pour in the stock or water, then place this right at the bottom of the oven. Place the chicken straight on to the bars of the middle shelf, above the roasting tray. Cook for 1 hour 20 minutes.
Put a roasting tray in the oven for five minutes to get hot. Add the olive oil, butter, the spices, halve a bulb of garlic and add it straight to the pan. Add your drained potatoes to the tray, mix everything together, then season well. After the chicken has been in for 40 minutes, put the potatoes in.
Once the chicken is cooked, move it to a board to rest. Pass the gravy through a coarse sieve into a pan, whisking any sticky goodness from the pan as you go. Bring to the boil and either cook and thicken or thin down with water to your preference (I had to add some boiling water to deglaze the surface and make a sauce out of it.
For the salad, use a vegetable peeler to make thin strips of the carrot and cucumber. Then finely slice the onion and add this to it. Add a pinch each of salt and sugar, then squeeze over the lemon and toss to combine. Leave for 15 minutes while everything else finishes off.
Get your potatoes out of the oven and put them into a serving bowl, then serve the chicken on a board next to the sizzling roasties and hot gravy.
