holiday leftovers

Intense vanilla sugar

Oh the food, the food...

Two 4-day weekends back-to-back and i am spooned out. Saucepanned. Dished. No tea-towels left unsullied, no pantry drawer left unruffled. Vanilla sugar plundered to the depths, not a stick of butter remaining.

Pot-roast chicken, Rose Prince style. My new favourite way with the bird. It made sense to cook two at at time, for holiday emergencies (chicken pot pie, perhaps?). The stock from two roasted carcasses was a flavour bonus, one portion in the freezer, another used for lentil & mushroom soup last night as an antidote to meat protein. 

2 free-range Chicken

2 sprigs of thyme

2 bay leaf

2 tbsp butter

2 small shallots, peeled and left whole

2 fennel bulbs, sliced into quarters

1 litre chicken stock or water

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Pull out any fat on the opening of the chicken cavity and discard. Split the herbs between the birds and insert inside the cavities, truss the chickens with string and rub with butter.

Put the birds in a roasting tin, tucking the shallots and fennel around it. Season and pour round the stock. Cover with a foil lid and roast for 45 minutes.

Remove the lid and cook for a further 20 minutes. Taste the juices and adjust seasoning if necessary. 

Chicken pot pie with buttermilk dumplings