Journal Friday 29th August

Apologies that there has been a slight gap in proceedings for a couple of days. Because I’m writing a week in advance, and we were away for my birthday, there wasn’t really the time to write, and I was too busy enjoying myself to be honest. This might mean that there are a couple of days where you might get 2 blogs this coming weekend. Maybe…. I want to write a proper zoo blog and a proper chateau blog, so there will at least be those. Who knows, I’m figuring this out as I go.

The first and most notable thing to mention is, we have a beautiful new baby niece (as yet untitled), born Weds 27th August. Massive congratulations to my bro and sis in law Dave & Niki, we look forward to meeting her.

The weather here has not faded gently into Autumn, but has rather clanged into Autumn at some speed. Rain, storms, night time temps barely in the teens, and it feels like it’s barely getting light. I am totally here for it.

On Thursday night I roasted a chicken, for shits and giggles, because I could stand having the oven on for more than 10 minutes. Today I used the carcass (plus another frozen reserved carcass) to make stock. I don’t really have a recipe for this, but here’s the rough gist. I have an Instant pot which has a pressure cooker function, and, handily, a setting for soup/broth, which seems to be a 15 minute pressure cook. Into this pot goes the following.

• 2 chicken carcasses (but 1 will do)
• 2 small onions whole and with skins on
• 2 carrots skin on broken in half
• a bouquet garnis (but some mixed herbs will do)
• a whole lemon skin on
• teaspoon of peppercorns
• teaspoon of turmeric (not for flavour but for colour)
• couple of garlic cloves skin on no need to peel
• enough water to take it to the max level on the pot, roughly 2-2.5l

You can improve this further with the trimmings from leeks or celery (I often freeze these for stock). Sometimes I make a more spicy flavoured stock adding a load of dried chillies, way more garlic, lemongrass, coriander stalks, more turmeric, and a lime instead of a lemon. its a great base for a chicken noodle soup, or a stock to cook gyoza.

Once this stock has run its 15 minutes, I switch to slow cook and let it just tick over for at least 6 hours. If I have time I’d even leave it overnight. To get all the health benefits of a good bone broth you want it to steep as long as possible, 24 hours is best, but we don’t all have time for that do we.

My plan was always a chicken and leek soup, so once I strained the stock into a big casserole dish, I added the rest of the left over chicken from picking the carcass clean, several big handfuls of frozen leeks, and checked for seasoning, it needed salt and more pepper. Once that had simmered for an hour, I added about 250g of small pasta, but any pasta shapes would work. After the allotted 8 minutes of cooking time for my pasta of choice, we were ready to go. added a bit more black pepper and a liberal sprinkling of parmesan to serve, alongside a garlic and herb focaccia for dunking.

This makes an absolute tonne, so more for lunch today and the rest will go in the freezer for another rainy day, which I doubt we’ll need to wait long for.

Countdown to lighting the first fire of the season has begun. Cannot wait. Need to check the candle inventory and replenish. Head lamps are charged for dark mornings outside with the dogs, and I’ve done myself customary pre season spray for the prevention of unwanted crawling things, who’s name we shall not mention, for fear of them appearing on my timeline for evermore. I love this time of year, I just don’t love anything with more than 6 legs.

TTFN,

V x

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