Inspired by ‘The Man Who Ate Everything’ (which is pretty much inspiring every aspect of my life at the moment, more on which later) I ventured into Baby Sainsbury’s last night determined to cook myself something. Sainsbury’s which live inside petrol stations are not best set up for the home gourmand, catering for that generation of feckless singletons who want to whap ready meals in microwaves. Still I have a pretty well stocked store cupboard for the three days a week I do cook for myself, all I needed was some key veg and meat.
I not quite sure why I don’t braise meat more often. It has all the joy of frying (smells, sizzle) plus the moisture of the super flavour concentrated cooking liquid. In the end I plumped for some chicken legs, which I rubbed liberally in garlic and fried in very garlicky olive oil with a green pepper. Once brown I tossed in some stock with a good handful of puy lentils, some cinammon and crushed dried chilli for oomph. There are no measurements here, we are taling a constant sup of the juices to guage quality. After half an hour, a large splash of very old red wine, a little splash of worcestershire sauce the thing was ready to be eaten by some raisin and clove couscous.
It was a touch too salty, but it took half an hour and was amazingly theraputic tinkering. Dipping the last bit of bread to soak up the final bit of juice I wondered why I don’t do this more often. Then someone rung me up and asked if I wanted to go to the pub. Aaah, that’s it.