Eating Albion

How was your Easter, then? Spent it with family and friends cooking up tasty dishes and watching family blockbusters from yesteryear on the TV? Well I spent three solid days cleaning, packing and sorting for my move, and, God, it was dull. Now as some of you may know I’ve ‘bet the farm’ on Eating Albion/Channel 4’s Big Food Adventure, and so this weekend I moved out. I never knew I had so much stuff. Eight bags of rubbish, six bags of recycling, and I took so much stuff to the charity shop over the weekend - Cancer Research in Crystal Palace - that the shop began to resemble my house.

Anyway, all that isn’t really about food. What is about food is the the muck-out of the cupboards I found myself doing on Saturday night. Blimey, I never thought it was possible to pack so much stuff into such a small space: vinegars, pickles, sauces, spices, ketchups, herbs. Most of the jars at the back had best-before dates of late 2007. Now, everyone knows that spices are best ground fresh or used as quickly as possible, but unless you eat a lot of curries and such it’s very hard to get through an entire packet of coriander seeds.

Other highlights included an unopened bag of paprika bought exactly two years ago in Budapest, and never used, and a tin of treacle I once bought planning on making some parkin, though I didn’t. On the tin it said discard after expiry, so I did along with all the other stuff. For one moment I contemplated doing a culinary equivalent of George’s Marvellous Medicine and pour, tip and shake everything into a massive bowl to make a ‘MEGA MARINADE’ but it probably would have tasted rank. So it all went down the sink or in the bin and the jars and tubs into the recycling.

I also cleared out the fridge and defrosted the freezer, where I found half a organic chicken I’d forgotten I put in there a few months ago along with the obligatory handful of peas. The peas went in the bin, but the chicken went on to glory as Saturday’s tea in what I’ve just christened…

‘Gipsy Hill Spicy Leftover Moving Soup’

1/2 a free-range organic chicken

1 sweet potato

1 onion

1 carrot

1 parsnip

hand full of chilli flakes and one fresh green chilli

half a star anise

clove or two of garlic

knob of ginger

handful of dried curry and or lime leaves

Method: Break down chicken into leg, breast, and wing, so that it fits in a casserole and cover in boiling water from the kettle - about a pint. Add all the other ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes. Lift out the chicken and set aside to cool. Lift out and discard lime leaves and ginger.

Shred the chicken when it’s cool enough, then blitz the remaining liquid down to a smooth soup with a hand-held blender, adding the chicken after the first couple of pulses. I like to have a smooth spicy base with tiny chunks of chicken in, but you could chop it by hand if you like bigger bits.

I found a packet of instant noodles and thought about adding that, but for me these work best in clear soups rather than opaque smooth ones like this. I was planning to dunk in the last of the sesame seed loaf I’d bought, but on closer inspection it seemed to be ‘on the turn’, so I just had two bowls of the soup instead and threw the bread out. Given that the weather was so poor this weekend, almost winterly in fact, this soup hit the spot with filling root veg and some chilli warmth.