Chicken dinners

Chicken dinner came around again a few days ago, attended with reasonably elaborate preparations, starting with a large chicken from Sainsbury's.

This was supplemented with a couple of chicken legs for the gravy, probably from Waitrose, at what seemed the improbably low price of £2. How on earth do they do it?

The chicken legs were boiled up for two or three hours along with various vegetables. Step one: drain off the liquor. Step two: separate out the meat and the soft vegetable from the mush, that is to say discarding the bones, gristle, onion skins, potato skins and suchlike. Pass the balance through the blender, along with some more water. This resulted in something like a breakfast porridge, except that it was more white than grey.

The next day, I lifted the fat off the liquor and roux'd it up with some flour. Foamed it for a few  minutes, then started adding in some of the liquor. When that had come hot and smooth, I started adding in some of the porridge, ending up with quite a thick gravy. But there was some liquor left, should thinning be appropriate in due course.

We took the remainder of the porridge as soup, fortified with a little saucisson sec, later the same day, having, in the interval, inspected the Screwfix whitebeam.

Next up the stuffing, pie dished rather than stuffed, as is our long established custom. I also reverted to adding a little oil to the stuffing mix, perhaps a tablespoon, as the stuffing, certainly when fresh out of the oven, can be a little dry otherwise. And thin cut streaky from M&S rather than thick cut back from Sainsbury's.

BH attended to the chicken, the attendant rice and crinkly cabbage.

In the event, we went for the Argentinian Malbec and it all went down very well. Rounded out with one of BH's apple pies, the flat sort made on the the Golden Harvest enamel plate.

The place from where the wine came: at least that was the address on the bottle, that is to say: 'San Martín 2044, Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina'. Zoom not strong enough to resolve the brown lines in the yard, above and to the left of the red spot. Barrels?

I had thought that we had had the wine before, but inspection of the archive suggests I may have conflated with that at reference 2: another 'B' word from the same town in Argentina, but not Bosca.

Cold chicken the day following. 

Carcase soup, fortified with lentils, mushrooms and bacon the day - or possibly even some days - after that. In any event, it did for two days, standing quite well.

At some point, the remains of the gravy was taken on bread. After reheating, naturally.

PS 1: maybe this afternoon I will remember to take my clasp knife out and cut away the new ivy growth from the whitebeam.

PS 2: on checking, I find another memory error. Not 'Golden Harvest' plate, rather 'Bumper Harvest'. See reference 4.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/04/busy.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/sheep-from-sainsburys.html.

Reference 3: https://luigibosca.com/en/. I couldn't find out wine; maybe it was a special for the UK supermarket trade.

Reference 4: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/three-trolleys.html.