TAMASIN DAY LEWIS ‘SUPPER FOR A SONG’ RECIPE: Spanish Chicken

Featured on Woman's Hour Radio 4 Wednesday 7th April 2010

Serves 6
1 large chicken, about 2-2.5kig/4.5-5.5lb, jointed into 8 pieces
250ml/8.5fl oz hot chicken stock
36 or so whole, blanched Marcona almonds
good pinch of saffron stamens
2-3 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
1 thick slice stale, good bread, crusts removed
sea salt and black pepper
a suspicion of nutmeg
2 cloves, crushed
125 m/4 fl oz fino sherry
a sprig of bay leaves
4 sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped
1 tbsp flat-leaf parsley
spritz of lemon juice
Preparation
Have the chicken joints and stock ready. Preheat the oven to 150c Gas 2. Scatter the almonds on a small baking tray and toast in the oven for 5-10 minutes until golden.
Soak the saffron stamens in a ladleful of the hot chicken stock in a small bowl.
Heat 2 tbsp olive oil and the garlic slices gently in a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan until hot; do not let the garlic brown. Fry the bread in the garlicky oil on both sides until crisp and browned and then remove it to the garlic plate.
Season the pieces of chicken well and sprinkle with a little freshly grated nutmeg and the crushed cloves. Add a little extra olive oil to the pan if you need to brown the chicken pieces on all sides. This will take about 20 minutes. Remove the browned chicken to a plate.
Add the chicken stock (not the infused saffron stock) to the frying pan with the sherry and scrape up the sediment with a wooden spoon to deglaze the pan. Let the liquids bubble for a few minutes, then return the chicken to the pan. Add the bay and thyme leaves. Cover with the lid and simmer for a further 10 minutes.
Blitz the toasted almonds in a blender until the coarse side of ground. Tear the fried bread into pieeces and add to the nuts with the fried garlic, parsley and saffron-infused chicken stock. Blitz to puree.
Scrape the mixture into the chicken pan and stir to amalgamate with the juices. If it looks very thick, add a little more hot chicken stock. Taste and adjust the seasoning and add a sprtiz of lemon juice.

Summer pudding

This is not technically a use for stale bread, as fresh bread should be used, but perhaps, if you have some left-over sliced bread which would otherwise go stale, then this is a super way to use it up. They also freeze well, always useful.

Summer Pudding Recipe

Why Waste Bread?

I admit that frugality and old fashioned miserliness is not terribly fashionable at the moment, but being green, saving the world and eating fabulous food is. One of my hobby horses has always been food waste. This was probably partly due to being brought up by a post-war mother and continually being told to 'clean my plate', and being reminded that if I didn't want the food that was put in front of me, there were many starving children in the world who did. Well, of course, being a child all this was water off a ducks back. I only wished that they would send the wretched dinner to Africa or wherever.

It was when I moved to the Limousin, the rural heartland of France, and started to explore the traditional cuisine of this region that I was struck by the number of recipes that specified 'stale bread' as a main or essential ingredient. This was a very poor area of France, and the people who lived here were mostly farmers. They knew how hard it was to grow, harvest, store and cook the food on the table and I expect very little went to waste. This set me thinking. Mostly, I had given the scraps from the table and old bread to 1. The Dog 2. The Cat 3. The Hens 4. The Geese 5. The Sheep - in that order, but really, it doesn't do to feed the animals on perfectly good (if not perfectly fresh) baguettes!

When, after several years of building and restoring, we opened Les Trois Chênes Bed & Breakfast the problem was compounded. More bread that has to be served absolutely fresh, and more waste. So this blog is devoted to uses and recipes from all over the world designed to transform old bread into delicious gourmet dishes.

I would be delighted to receive your ideas, comments and recipes.