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A winter supper to revive and restore

from Appetite
Nigel Slater
Oh joy! Oh bliss! New Nigella, New Nigel all in one season. This time Slater devotes less space to recipes and more to theory-flavour pairings, for example, the better to expand our kitchen repertoires. Colour photos. $65.00.

A bowl of food to bring you back from the brink; to restore you to your old self after a cold or flu; to warm you on a cold winter's night when you arrive home chilled to the bone; to rekindle your faith in food after a succession of fancy dinners. I have never found a meal that revives more triumphantly. Soul food, indeed. You will need a knife and fork for the melting, pallid chicken, and a spoon for the broth, which, if the dish is to be allowed to work its magic, must be served so hot that you need to blow on every spoonful of shimmering amber liquor before you put it to your lips.

Enough for 4, at least

pearl barley -- a good handful
chicken -- a large free-range one, jointed
a little fat -- dripping, butter, goose fat or olive oil
carrots -- 1 or 2, thoroughly scrubbed
parsnips -- 1 or 2, peeled
leeks -- a couple of large ones, or one of those enormous, thick winter ones
onions -- a large one, or 3 smaller ones, peeled
some herbs -- a few bay leaves, 3 or 4 sprigs of thyme and a couple of sage leaves
potatoes -- about 4 small to medium ones
parsley -- a small bunch, perky and vibrant

You will also need a very large, deep pan with a lid.

Simmer the barley in a pan of salted water until it is tender -- a matter of twenty minutes or so but taste it to check it -- then drain it.

Lightly brown the jointed chicken in the fat in a large, deep ovenproof pan. I do this in a relay, three or four pieces at a time, over a moderately high heat. Transfer the browned chicken to a plate. While the chicken is browning you need to cut the carrot and parsnip into large chunks and the leek, thoroughly scrubbed and freed of grit (it gets between the layers) into short lengths. I think it is important to keep the vegetables in fat juicy chunks for this. Cut the onion in half and then into large segments. Once the chicken is out of the pan, add the vegetables, turn them in the fat and let them soften a little, though don't let them colour. In another pan bring enough water to boil to cover the bird. Set the oven at 180°C /Gas 4.

Keeping the vegetables in their pan, drain every little bit of oil from the pan, otherwise you will only have to do it later. Now return the chicken to the pan with the pearl barley, then tuck in all the herbs except the parsley and pour over the hot water. Season with salt and some black pepper. Now slice the potatoes the thickness of pound coins -- I really think there is no need to peel them -- and lay them over the top of the chicken and vegetables. Some will inevitably sink; others will sit on top, the water just lapping at their edges.

Cover with a lid and place in the oven for an hour and a half, by which time the chicken and vegetables will be meltingly tender. Remove the lid, turn up pthe heat to 200°C/Gas 6 and leave for thirty minutes for the potatoes to colour here and there. Remove very carefully from the oven -- the pan will be full and very hot -- then scrape off any floating oil from the top. Chop the parsley and sink it into the broth. Taste the broth and adjust the seasoning with a grinding of salt and pepper.

Spoon the chicken, vegetables, barley and plenty of the broth into shallow bowls, scatter with flakes of sea salt and pass round the the pepper mill.

And more

-- the point of the leeks. The inclusion of both leeks and onions here is not an oversight. The leeks are tougher and play the part of a vegetable; the onions act as an aromatic, virtually collapsing into the broth.

-- a lamb supper. Do try this soup-stew with lamb instead of chicken. You will get a bit more fat to remove from the broth, of course, but the lamb, falling from its bones, has a truly homely, nannying quality to it. Choose a bony cut, such as neck chops, and ask the butcher to cut them thick, so everyone gets a big wedge of meat.

-- and a duck one. This would be good made with duck, too. If you can bear the endless task of spooning off all the fat, that is.

-- a guineau fowl supper. A sometimes pick up a guinea fowl instead -- it's not that I could ever get bored with chicken, it is simply for a change. The broth becomes slightly richer from its gamier flesh, though the preparation is exactly as above