FOOD Chicken dinners and asparagus risotto

Chicken dinners and seasonal delights


Food
Redmond Cabot

You’ll be interested to hear how the Cabot family got on with their cooked cock mentioned in our last article. Basically it worked out just fine and the cock-pot provided food over five days - not a bad return. Being the only meat eater I had two dinners with big legs each night, two lunches with the breast, a good many nibbles of neck, enjoyed the tender scallops below the bird, and picked on delicious tasty skin for several days. Finally I cooked up the remnants into a hearty potato and chicken soup.
The bird was quite dark coloured around the legs but otherwise white-breasted. Slow cooking with water ensured every ounce of goodness in the bones, carcass, flesh, and skin was disseminated from the beautiful and fine animal. The texture and flavour of the wild bird from our garden was a joy to behold. Every mouthful was enjoyed as I knew it was pure, clean meat, from a happy (relatively) animal. Talking with Maureen Sweeney last Saturday we shared ideas and she too told me she used to cook it that way. And many interesting stories too were regaled of rearing turkeys!

Seasonal effects
While the weather has dominated for all the wrong reasons we should still try to enjoy seasonal produce. I hear you can’t buy Irish or English broccoli in the Dublin markets, and even the humble cabbage is sold for a premium!
Watercress, crab, new potatoes, lamb, and asparagus should all be coming in new and fresh these days. Enjoy this unfolding spectacle for what its worth. You only live once, these are fruits from Jah heaven. They are part of us, we are part of them, their nutrients make us what we are.
Let’s be positive and hope  our British brothers and sisters get a good start to the Asparagus season.
Here’s a new way of cooking it in a dish that involves more than just boiling it and eating with salt and butter…not a bad way though!
Red’s Positive Asparagus Risotto
You gotta be positive, the weather is gonna get good, produce will flourish, and we’ll all have a good year! This positive dish lets you enjoy one of the seasonal highlights of the year. While you see dishes like this on restaurant menus it proves relatively easy to do at home. This method of cooking one type of rice circulates and integrates all the flavours into a warming bowl of comfort to serve and enjoy. The cooking pace here is slow and steady, no rushing. It is about adding each ingredient at the right time and watching the picture take place.

What you need

• 200g Risotto rice
• 1 x Onion or shallot
• 2 x Garlic clove
• Olive oil
• 500ml veg stock
• 250ml White Wine
• 6 x Asparagus stalks
• Butter
• 80gm Parmesan
• Seasoning
• Serves 2.

What you need to do next
Start cooking the Risotto by gently frying onion/shallot and garlic in a dash of olive oil until they are sweated and soft (no browning!). Stir in the Risotto rice and stir with a wooden spoon to coat the rice. Now add on at stages, the white wine and the veg stock, adding, stirring, cooking, adding more, more stirring…cooking. The flavour of wine, stock, and sautéed onions gets right into the rice.
Stir in knob of butter. Place the Asparagus, cut into generous lengths or left whole, in salted, boiling water for two minutes, then place on top of rice. Just before, and only before, as otherwise it becomes stringy, mix through the grated Parmesan cheese. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper and serve up.
The Risotto is meant to be a relatively blank canvas with which to showcase the simple pleasures of fresh, crunchy, green, new asparagus. Don’t get distracted and add peppers (different climate and season) or red onion, or anything too fancy. Just be happy with what you have and say a positive…. Thank you!

Red Cabot is interested in food, nature and small things. He sells his food at Westport Country Markets in St Anne’s Boxing Club, James’s Street car park, Westport, every Thursday, from 8am to 1pm.