Ostrich Eggs

Honestly, I love Waitrose. I can’t imagine where else you could trot down an aisle and find this:


I didn’t buy it as I wouldn’t really know what to do with something approximately the equivalent of 25 large hen’s eggs but I did read the cooking instructions on the box.

For a soft boiled ostrich egg you need to cook it for around 50 minutes, an hour and a half for a hard egg. God knows what you’d cook it in though as it wouldn’t even fit in my largest pan. Or you can scramble the thing and feed an army.

On another note this evening I came out with what is possibly the most middle-class sentence ever:
“Oh no! I bought battery-farmed quail!” (Which is another story for another time...)

Roast duck

A friend of mine, Daisy (in the middle), is currently living in Madrid and popped over this week to celebrate her 21st with a rather wonderful party. To say thank you and hasta luego I decided to do some sort of duck dish. Unfortunately I didn’t plan it very well at all and ended up doing a roast lunch on the warmest weekend 2010 has seen so far.

After rejecting a neat little oven-ready duck (it felt too much like cheating) I ended up with a giant, free-range bird that looked quite daunting. Especially scary were the little stumps of feathers left poking out of its wings… or whatever those bits were. I’m still not quite sure.

When I shoved the squidgy carcase onto a chopping board to prepare it I got a bit of a shock. The duck had TROUSERS on. I imagine these used to be it’s legs but it’s wings were so massive I freaked out slightly and started to get a bit hysterical, imagining that these extra bits of skin were bum flaps or something.


My little friend also came with giblets. As these are usually in a bag shoved inside I grabbed a trouser leg in each hand and had a look. There was just a big lump of red flesh with the spine in it (I’m not really selling this, am I?) and I realised I was going to have to get its insides out myself. After jumping around manically laughing for five nervous minutes I whipped out some latex gloves and prepared to get my hands metaphorically dirty. Thankfully as I tentatively poked my fingers where no fingers should go I felt plastic. I thanked whatever higher power was looking down on me that day and pulled out a little bag of ducky innards.

With the oven preheated to 200°c I plonked Daffy (see what I did there?) onto a roasting rack in a roasting tin and with the tip of a knife pricked the skin all over.

Obviously the times change with the weight of the bird but my duck needed to be roasted for about two hours. An hour in I took it out of the oven to drain the fat. There wasn’t too much in the tray but this was because it had all collected in the cavity. With the help of an oven glove, some tongs and my mum this ended up in a measuring jug, ready to be sloshed over the roast potatoes with a bit of olive oil.

Sixty minutes later a gorgeous, golden duck came out of the oven and after letting the meat rest for ten minutes I set about carving. And then gave up. In the end I just sort of tore it apart with a knife and fork. I had been unsure what to do gravy-wise and ended up buying a Waitrose shallot and red wine sauce which was lovely.


While this whole post makes it sound rather horrid it was one of the nicest things I’ve ever cooked. The nicest thing if you ask Charlotte. I would go as far as saying delicious. But as a complete novice in the kitchen I still get nervous around uncooked meat so it’s nice to know what you’re up against.

Rosemary and thyme roast chicken - and why I always buy free-range

Confession: I have never roasted a chicken.

I understand that absolutely everyone everywhere has roasted a chicken but I am a complete rookie. I don’t really understand how it works. Pretty much whenever I cook meat I make sure it has the texture of Clark’s boot leather in case I poison someone. This includes meats that are meant to be pink such as lamb and beef. If I see the slightest rosy tint they go back in the oven for another half hour. It’s dreadful I know but I’d rather chew roast beef for forty minutes than get botchulism. I don’t help myself by reading Daily Mail articles about men who ate a steak and very quickly became paralysed until their hearts stopped. So roasting a chicken - a meat that can absolutely not be pink - terrifies me. But tonight I overcame this hurdle by, you know… putting a chicken in the oven…

I am a little bit obsessed with Waitrose rotisserie chickens. Especially the rosemary and thyme ones. They stopped doing them in the Ealing Waitrose for a while and when I asked why the answer was “health and safety reasons”. I have absolutely no idea what this means but no matter: they’re back now. So when planning my first roast chicken this was obviously something that I had to try.

Grub (who I realise I’ve cooked for quite a bit recently – I think I’m starting to know his kitchen better than my own) summoned me round on Saturday evening to celebrate his lady’s football team’s 9 - 2 win. We made a deal that he would buy the ingredients and I would cook us dinner. After texting him a shopping list that included ‘a free-range happy chicken that never even LOOKED at a shed’ he panicked and bought two. One was a standard Waitrose chicken and the other a Tesco’s free range chicken.

Having spent an awful lot of time recently reading the Channel Four Food website I’ve gathered that even a standard chicken in Waitrose has had at least a vaguely good life; once in a while seeing the sun and pecking at the odd worm. I’m sort of (read: not brilliantly) boycotting Tesco as they refuse to get rid of their standard, awful, battery-farmed chicken rubbish because lots of horrible people like them.

My mum is basically a pescetarian (having started eating fish when she was pregnant with me) who stopped eating meat because she found it cruel. To her that’s just a personal choice but she doesn’t have a problem with anyone else eating it. She’s always cooked meat for me and does a fantastic roast. But I’ve been brought up always eating organic and free-range meat. She thinks – and I strongly agree – that if you are going to eat an animal it should have had a good life before it goes to slaughter. And I honestly think that free-range meat tastes a lot nicer than an animal that has been cooped up for the whole of its life.

I think the big argument against free-range food is the price and that’s fair enough (I’d hate to meet to sort of person who would eat battery hens if they all cost the same) but when you eat factory farmed chicken for instance, what are you letting yourself in for? How good can a bird that has been reared in a shed packed to the rafters, some of them dead, fed until it could burst and rarely being given darkness in which to sleep, be for you? In my mind it can’t be healthy. I would rather eat a meat once week than twice and pay the same amount for it and know that I wasn’t putting money towards giving something a terrible quality of life as well as putting lower quality food on my plate.

I don’t want to sound like some middle class hippy – as I’m really, really not – but I think things taste better when you know that the meat you’re eating has had a good life or that the vegetables you’re munching on haven’t been sprayed in a load of chemicals. Maybe it’s just me but I would never buy battery chicken or eggs (or anything but British pork) because I believe it’s not worth how ever much money you save – in all honesty I think that if you really look at what you’re eating you’re not saving anything at all.

But ANYWAY: roast chicken.

The packaging on your obviously free-range chicken will tell you how long it should be cooked or the butcher will give you an idea. I always thought you could just stick chicken in the oven but I’ve found this isn’t the case. You should rinse your chicken out. Please don’t take this as kosher but I basically stuck mine under the tap and filled the cavity up with warm water. Then, while shuddering massively, I stuck my fingers in and did disgusting things for a bit. Some red bits came out with the water – I didn’t look too closely – and I did this a couple of times.

I stuck the (Waitrose) chicken on a roasting tray - I’d heated the oven to around 200°c - and stuck half a lemon up its bum (just to keep it moist – promise.) and some rosemary and thyme stalks. I chopped up a few handfuls of both these herbs and then attempted to get my hands under the skin. You have to be a bit rough to do this but gentle enough not to rip the skin. Stuff the chopped herbs between this and the breasts and try and even them out. Rub a tiny bit of olive oil over the chicken with a bit of salt to crisp the skin up and sprinkle over the rest of your chopped herbs.

Roast this in the middle of the oven for as long as you’ve been told to and you should end up with a lovely succulent, flavoured chicken. And the moral high ground.

Piri piri chicken

The clocks went forward on the 28th of March to mark the start of summertime. And what better way to celebrate than to have a barbecue? Of course we are talking British summertime here which meant it was absolutely chucking it down outside. So rather than taking my eyebrows off during an unfortunate incident involving lighter fluid and delirium tremens I dragged my griddle pan to Hammersmith to cook indoors for Grub and Charlotte.

For your piri piri marinade you need:
6 to 12 red chillies
3 cloves of garlic
½ a tablespoon of paprika
½ a teaspoon of oregano
Around 1 teaspoon of salt
50ml of red wine vinegar
100ml of olive oil

If you find this makes more marinade than you need don’t worry as it’ll keep for a couple of weeks if it’s been nicely sealed up in something.

I arrived to find Grub bellowing down the phone at his internet provider, Charlotte shrieking down my phone about where she could park (half seven on a Saturday – ANYWHERE!) and got in to trouble with the oven. You see it’s got lots of knobs on it and I don’t know what any of them do. Even Grub has to light the stove by a process of elimination. While he bollocked web geeks I stood looking a bit lost and finally just turned a selection of dials and hoped for the best. If you know how to work an oven heat it to 180°c / gas mark 4. I managed this after Grub came in to say hello and ask why I had the grill on.

Stick the chillies on a baking tray and roast them for 10 minutes. How many you use depends on how long you want to spend with your mouth open, fanning it with your hand going ‘eeeh ooooooh ohohohoh’. I thought they smelled rather lovely but Charlotte repeatedly asked if they were burning. Out they come a lovely ruby red with crispy brown splotches, all wrinkled and hot. Once they’ve cooled enough for you to handle them roughly chop them up.


The garlic part of the recipe I had involved a quick Google (thank God Grub had put those internet chaps in their place and got it working again) as it said to use blanched garlic. Apparently you do this by placing the peeled cloves of garlic in some cold water, bringing it up to the boil, draining and repeating twice more. This leaves you with something that I imagine feels like just a warm eyeball and needs chopped up.

Now very simply put the vinegar, olive oil, salt, paprika, oregano, garlic and chillies into a pan and simmer for a few minutes. The photo isn’t brilliant but this was such a wonderful mix of colours and it smelt amazing.



Let this all cool down and then pour it into a food processor or a blender and purée it. Let the chicken marinade in it for an hour minimum before cooking.

I shoved some baked potatoes in the oven while this was going on and hastily stuck some sausages under the grill to stop Charlotte stuffing her face with sneaky bits of the baguette I’d bought to go with dinner. I did these in the bourbon and Tabasco glaze I mentioned in another post (4 tablespoons honey, 10 drops Tabasco, two tablespoons bourbon) and they were lovely.

I used a splash of oil in the pan when I cooked the chicken but wouldn’t again as there’s enough in the marinade.

Once this was nice and browned I chucked it onto plates with a potato and some salad. If it’s a bit too hot for you squeeze over some lime juice.

Due to the fact I’m a complete idiot and can’t really time anything well we ate at 11 o’clock so if you’re as special as me I’d suggest doing all this and marinading the chicken the day before you need it.

I also tried my hand at mayonnaise but the less said about that the better.