Well, This Is What I Think

Oh thank you! WordPress today “Freshly Pressed” this marvellous blog, which I shall immediately subscribe to, and I warmly recommend their recipe for the ineffably wonderful “Welsh Cakes”.

You may have seen an exceptionally poor piece of doggerel I wrote about Wales on March 1st, but this yummy treat is a much better way to celebrate Dydd Gŵyl Dewi.

Mum used to make them, and they were always the sweetest, most scrumptious memory of my family in Swansea that would be possible.

http://edibleswansea.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/chapatti-pan-and-spice-st-davids-day-welsh-cakes/

What I think I love about them most is how they are truly representative of a genuine Welsh cuisine.

When Mrs Wellthisiswhatithink and I first got together she cheerfully disposed of any British food as “something that looks vaguely brown and solid and lies flat on the plate”. And frankly, at the time, if you were going to rely on the type of food served up in restaurants (with the exception of the exquisite curry houses on every street corner) then her criticism was well-founded, and some would say, still is.

But the ethnic cooking of Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland was always there, sliding by under the radar, hidden away in the miniature kitchens of millions of working class households, like a silent language linking us all to a simpler – and more delicious – past.

So I strongly recommend you jump over to Edible Swansea and make a note of their Welsh Cakes recipe right now. And better still, rustle up a batch tonight.

http://edibleswansea.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/chapatti-pan-and-spice-st-davids-day-welsh-cakes/

It’s a funny coincidence, but last night we dined on one of my mother’s other favourite recipes, Boiling Fowl in Caper Sauce.

The dictionary describes a “boiling fowl” as a mature hen of about 2 years of age, suitable for eating but which requires prolonged cooking.

And in truth, of course, that is what they were – “layers” that had stopped laying – and in the cruel world of a working class Victorian backyard that meant a quick bonk on the back of the head, plucking, and into the pot to bubble away gently for hour after hour until the meat (strongly-flavoured comnpared to a younger bird) fell away from the bones and became gelatinously, shiningly slippery-soft and sweet.

Smothered in a white sauce dotted with plenty of plump, acidic capers and served with homely vegetables cooked in the same pot, plus plenty of mashed potato and hard rye bread to mop up any left over sauce, it was then, and is now, one of the ultimate “comfort food” treats of a winter’s evening.

Low fat and healthful too. The stock left over after the cooking makes a wonderful base for any soup or stew.

The recipe below can be varied to suit your personal tastes, but don’t add too much in the way of additional seasoning or you will mess with the essential rustic simplicity of the dish.

We cooked up a couple of large “Chicken Marylands”, which is cheating, but in today’s modern world finding a real boiling fowl has become ironically rather difficult in urban areas. If you can’t find a nice tough old bird to soften up, then any skin-on chicken will do, but don’t cook “off the bone” chicken breasts and suchlike this way because they eventually just disintegrate to nothing, and anyway, you want all the flavour and fat that comes from the bones and skin.

If you don’t like eating meat on the bone, don’t worry, because by the time it’s finished the meat will fall off any bones at the merest nudge of a fork’s tip.

Variations of this great Welsh dish pop up all over the world – its served with fettucini in Italy, with beanshoots in China – revealing its ancient provenance.

And Jewish people insist – with some scientific support – that it acts as a natural antibiotic, as does the resulting soup.

So if you’re currently suffering with snow and colds in the northern Hemisphere, you could do a lot worse than to cheer yourself up with this quintessentially natural dish. From my mother to you – enjoy.

(PS The upsurge of interest in the UK in eating mutton – thanks to the campaigning of the Prince of Wales – that is to say older sheep who have past their lambing days – offers another opportunity for this recipe, because mutton goes wonderfully well with capers too. You can roast or boil the mutton according to your personal taste.)

BETTY’S BOILING FOWL

1. Take one whole boiling fowl minus the guts. Oil the skin and roast in a hot oven just until the skin takes on some colour OR take your chicken pieces (skin on, bone in) and brown on the stove top in a frying pan with a little oil.

The goal is to caramelise the skin, not to cook the chicken.

2. Remove the chicken from the heat and grab your biggest pot. Put a little fat or oil in the bottom – in the old days it would have been lard, but today probably olive oil will mean fewer frowns from the diet nazis. Chuck in a few finely chopped cloves of garlic, about one and a half casually sliced and strongly-flavoured onions, a sizeable pinch of salt and grate in a decent amount of black pepper or roughly crush some peppercorns and chuck them in. Stir steadily over medium heat for about two-three minutes but don’t let the garlic or onions take on any colour.

3. Chuck in a good double handful of diced carrots, by which I mean three or four good sized carrots. Chop up a celery stick or two into small pieces and add that too. Stir for another minute. Roughly chopped turnips or parsnip can also go in there if you like them: personally I think they skew the flavour base too much and I don’t enjoy them especially.

4. Place the chicken or chicken pieces on top of the vegetables and cover the whole lot with water. Choose one herb of your personal liking and throw a decent wodge of that in too – fresh is best but dried will do, just remember the flavour is more intense and use less – a bay leaf or two works well, so does basil, so does thyme, so does parsley, so does rosemary, so does tarragon, so does sage. All go well with chicken: the most amenable of meats.

Don’t use a bouquet garni or a hodge-podge collection of herbs or you will overwhelm what you’re trying to achieve.

5. Bring to the boil and then simmer on a gentle bubble, adding water if necessary but sparingly, (if you’re adding water you’re probably cooking the pot too fiercely), until you are ready to eat, provided and always that you aren’t ready to eat for at least 2 or 2.5 hours.

6. Just before you’re ready to eat, make your caper sauce. Take some of the liquor from the pan – just a tablespoon full or two or you will make the white sauce too brown looking – and with some water, white flour and a little butter make a classic pale roux.

Add warm (not hot) milk to make a medium-sticky sauce – it pours, but only just. Stir through plenty – plenty – of capers.

Serve with mash and bread and butter, spooning the veggies and the sauce over the chicken. When you’ve got all the veggies and chicken out of the pot, save the resulting stock, it’s liquid gold.

In today’s sophisticated world Betty’s Boiling Fowl should probably be served with any crisp, dry white wine like a good Aussie chardonnay, but for a change, why not plump for a good, chewy British “real ale”, which is how they would have enjoyed it years ago.