Last Night's Dinner 14

Braised Chicken with Ginger and Cranberries

Aga lids UP

I must admit that my expectations weren’t high. I’m talking about last night’s dinner, but also its inspiration - the latest adaptation of the Jilly Cooper classic, Rivals. Both Riders and The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous made it to the small screen and they were woeful. Absolutely unwatchable with clunky dialogue and their ability to strip away all the humour and heart which makes Jilly Cooper’s books stand out from all the other bonkbusters. I needn’t have worried. Rivals has both in spades and is therefore an absolute JOY to watch. It is close to perfect. Just the look of the thing - the clothes, the sets, the fact that the cast look real with hardly anyone looking too thin or plastic. One eagle eyed friend noticed that in one scene the Aga lids had been left up (which everyone living in the country would know is a massive faux pas), but that is just about the only criticism I’ve heard - and actually, in the book there is a scene when Taggie bemoans the fact that someone has done exactly that. The occasional plot divergences and developments are totally in the spirit of the books. It is one of those rare things you wish you could relive the experience of watching for the first time. As it is, I can’t wait to watch it again.

Rivals is by far my favourite of the Rutshire Chronicles. It introduces us to Taggie O’Hara, who I absolutely adored when I was in my teens and reading Jilly Coopers, avidly, as they were published. Not only because she is the nicest person in the entire series, she is a bloody good cook - mostly of the crowd pleasing comfort food I love. Shepherd’s Pie for 200 people, proper casseroles and stews. Less of the nouvelle cuisine the decade was famous for, more batch cooking and filling up freezers for Christmas and children’s holidays. Canapes of the traditional sort - who doesn’t love a vol-au-vent? There is a key scene when she is doing her very first paid dinner party - a horrendous experience as she is forced into wearing a maid’s outfit much too small for her and asked to write out the menus in French - an impossibility because she is very dyslexic - not to mention to being groped and dropping the pudding. But the food is a dream.

The main course at the dinner party is pheasant in a cranberry and ginger sauce. Which made my ears prick up as it actually sounded nice (unlike the liver and marmalade dish Charles Fairburn eats which I think might be better than it sounds - I do love chicken livers in sour orange so might have a play). I did not have pheasant to hand, but I had chicken thighs so used them instead. And I really liked the results. It’s a bit fusion, a French style red wine braise with a subtle sweet/sour flavour. You could use pheasant if you have it. Duck would also work really well, but you might have to strain off some of the fat once the legs are seared.

I served it with roast parsnips - my parents are over from Greece and there are two things they always want to eat every visit - Lincolnshire sausages and roast parsnips. You can do the parsnips one of two ways - treat them like pressure roast carrots and cook entirely in the pressure cooker or par boil in the pressure cooker - put them in a steamer basket over a little water, bring up to high pressure, cook for 1 minute and fast release, before roasting in the oven or air fryer. Kale was steamed in the pressure cooker, this time in the base, for 2 mins HP natural release (it was quite a tough Russian kale, so needed slightly longer than the usual zero minutes for greens). Leftover crushed potatoes were anointed with more butter and put in the oven with the parsnips, and broccoli was also steamed in the base of a pressure cooker - zero minutes, fast release - then dressed in a little ponzu and sesame oil - a combination which has been very popular at my cookery demos recently and a really good match for the chicken.

If you are a 1 pressure cooker household and you want to cook all the sides in the pressure cooker, I would suggest the following order.

1. If oven roasting, par cook the parsnips and transfer to the oven

2. cook the chicken. This will cook from start to finish in the time it takes the parsnips to roast in the oven. Transfer to a serving dish or a casserole - you can reheat for a minute on the stove or keep warm in the bottom of the oven while the parsnips finish or in the residual heat if they are done.

3. Pressure roast the parsnips if this is the way you are cooking them. Transfer to a serving dish.

4. cook the kale, transfer to a lidded serving dish or saucepan to keep warm - it will be quite happy while you cook the broccoli - again, you can put it in the oven to keep warm or on a low heat if necessary.

5. cook the broccoli or any other greens

Rivals is cropping up a lot on Substack at the moment. For more on the food than I am offering here, take a look at Sue Quinn’s post.

Chicken with Cranberry and Ginger Sauce

2 tbsp olive oil

4-8 chicken thighs, depending on appetite, bone in, unskinned

1/4-1/2 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder

2 small red onions, peeled and cut into wedges

10g root ginger, finely chopped (not grated)

3 garlic cloves

50g dried cranberries

1 tsp dried thyme, or a couple of sprigs fresh

100ml red wine

150ml chicken stock

1 tsp honey

1-2 tbsp ginger wine (optional, will add a nice warming hit if you have it)