Exotic back then, ordinary now - a lucky dip
"This is a very appealing way to cook chicken whether you serve it up hot or leave it to cool and make it part of a picnic. There are no hard and fast rules about the herbs - just use what you've got and what you like."
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
I'm feeling a bit down and as a result not feeling terribly creative either in terms of what to cook for dinner or for what to write about today. So I have resorted to a lucky dip.
This recipe - My Herby Barbecued Chicken comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage everyday book. But initially I was disappointed by my lucky dip page. It's such an 'ordinary' recipe - to me anyway. But then I realised that it was probably a perfect choice for this book which is trying, like many others, to make those unfamiliar with or scared of cooking to try something new.
I have probably talked about this book before because I bought it relatively recently - it was on Readings bargain table once. In his introduction our author says:
"I genuinely believe that cooking from scratch (or with your own leftovers) is a possibility for everybody pretty much every day."
So his primary aim is to make it easy for anyone to cook. An aim he shares with most of the celebrity chefs we see on our TV screens - excepting the competition type programs that is. And this recipe certainly fits the category of easy, easy, easy. You probably all think so too.
In fact so easy, that to somebody like me this is definitely very ordinary. And I hasten to add that (a) that doesn't mean it's not delicious and (b) I am not saying that I am an advanced and skilled cook. No - what I mean is that if you are someone who has grown up with the cooking revolution that was begun by Elizabeth David et al. then you would be dishing up this kind of thing on a regular basis without even thinking about it. Probably not my mother though. Fearnley- Whittingstall recognises this too.
"In the twenty-odd years since I first became involved in the food business, I have seen entrenched attitudes to food, on the part of both stubborn individuals and monolithic institutions, shift massively. I've witnessed burgeoning excitement, enlightenment even, as more and more people get involved in cooking real food from fresh ingredients."
To me this recipe is so 'ordinary' that it's a bit of a wonder that cookbook writers can still feel the need to publish such recipes. I probably learnt this kind of thing from Elizabeth David and Robert Carrier, although my marinade repertoire was much enhanced by Claudia Roden's Picnic - a wonderfully suggestive book that gave you ideas rather than actual recipes. Countless cooks have similar recipes and you can even buy ready marinaded chicken in your local supermarket, or packets of prepared marinades and rubs. Not to be admired really - there are probably many kinds of extra chemicals and artificial stuff in them, but nevertheless their availability shows how much times have changed since the days when the only way you could buy chicken was whole, though mostly gutted (sometimes not - I remember my aunt gutting one), but still with feathers. This progressed to whole gutted chickens with no feathers, to cut up chickens to what we have now. Skin on, skin off, bones in, bones out, wings, breasts, legs, maryland, ternderloins, in bulk, trimmed, etc. to the mostly prepared and marinaded bits. All you have to do is slap them on the barbie - or into the oven or under the grill. In a roundabout way, I guess I am saying that everyone, including those who don't cook much is more interested in flavouring the basic meat. My mother's generation was not.
And how did this interest and engagement happen? Well TV programs, women's magazines which gradually became specifically foodie magazines, holidays abroad, dining out, and availability of products - though this, of course is as a result of demand. It's not just the media though.
"The food media can only do so much to engage public interest in these issues. Luckily there are all kinds of other catalysts that bring about a change for good in people's relationship with food and many of them can't be marshalled or predicted: a meal at a friend's house; a great dish encountered on holiday; a child coming home with something they've cooked at school; an unexpected gift of a fruit bush or veg plant. These can all kickstart a new and exciting future with food - one that turns out to be more accessible than you might have imagined." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
None of the recipes in this book are complicated or difficult. Some of them are 'ordinary' if you are an experienced cook, but not all. Many are simply new twists on what has become 'ordinary' over the years. Some are new and different. For it seems that you can continue to experiment and refine with almost everything.
So what exactly is this recipe? It is shown at the top of the page, and also here:
Really the recipe is just the marinade. If you know how to barbecue then you can cook it. Or, as I said you can roast, grill or fry it too. The marinade is as follows:
3-4 tablespoons rapeseed or olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon English mustard, 3 tablespoons chopped mixed herbs, such as parsley and chives, plus a little tarragon or thyme, a little grated lemon zest, 1 small garlic clove, very finely chopped.
Obviously you can vary the herbs, the mustard, and the lemon zest. He also has a yoghurt marinade on the same page - 4 tablespoons plain yoghurt, 1 crushed garlic clove, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 2 rounded teaspoons medium-hot curry powder and 1 rounded teaspoon garam masala. He doesn't even suggest individual spices or oriental herbs such as coriander or mint. I even saw fenugreek in the market the other day.
I found one blog - Recipe Countdown which had tried it out with different herbs - and just chicken breasts - which demonstrates how you can experiment very simply.
And straying a little bit further from the original concept chef Adam Liaw had a differently spiced version - Barbecue chicken with herb butter, which also used a slightly different cooking method in that the marinade was not a marinade but more of a basting sauce. It looked
incredibly delicious though. and was also not very hard to achieve.
I love this book and I do cook chicken like this quite often - particularly when we have a barbecue - although there is always the danger of the cooking resulting in burnt chicken whose flavour is lost under the charcoal. However, I would not need to use this recipe. I know how to do this already. But once upon a time - back in my early cooking days this would have been incredibly exotic and I would have lapped it up. So I hope that similarly young and green cooks will be inspired to try it and to move on from there to slightly more complicated things - like Adam Liaw's recipe, or to try it with a different cut of meat and different herbs - I think the lady from Recipe Countdown used dill. She also marinaded it overnight - for the longer you marinade something the more pronounced the flavour will become.
Every day it seems, some new and exotic ingredient turns up in our supermarket. If you see it - grab it and experiment. Only if we buy will the producers produce.
