Last Night's Dinner 26

A very sustainable, energy saving method of cooking chicken, potatoes and asparagus together but separately, a refresher on Zero Minute Chicken and a chopped salad.

Hello all - first of all, a bit of housekeeping as there have been a fair few new subscribers recently. Welcome all of you! If you are new to pressure cooking and need advice on which sort to buy and how to get started, please refer to the first few posts of this newsletter - they are all open access. And I am here to answer questions too - all free subscribers can access chat which I check in on regularly.

These Last Night’s Dinner posts are recipe posts for my paid subscribers BUT there is always a lot of useful information above the paywall, which today includes a refresher on zero minute chicken and an even more sustainable than usual cooking method for cooking chicken, potatoes and asparagus (you can substitute other greens) together in the same pot.

The other thing housekeeping thing I wanted to mention is that this week I realised (because I got notifications of it happening!) that if you are a subscriber and you share posts with people who then go on to subscribe, you get rewards. 3 subscribers = 1 free month of a paid subscription, 5 = 3 months and so on. You can do so by clicking through on this

but I think simple sharing works too. Now onto today’s post!

Until Sue Quinn’s latest post made me aware of it, I didn’t realise that chopped salads were having a moment. Apparently they are all the rage on TikTok and Insta reels, two places I spend very little time. But scrolling through both media, it wasn’t long before they cropped up. The other thing Sue mentions is that they often feature celery, an ingredient I have come to realise is quite divisive. I go through loads of the stuff as it is an excellent team player but I also like it braised to a melting consistency or going to the opposite extreme, simply as a crudite or finely sliced into a sandwich. And yet I know a few people who keep it in their kitchen under sufferance and during a recent conversation, my lovely friend Deborah Robertson mentioned the fact that French greengrocers are very aware of this and will sell it in single stick portions. A boon to anyone who just needs to finely chop a bit for a sofrito or mirepoix.

Roses outside my front door going crazy in this weather. They smell amazing - the aroma hits me every morning when I open the door, and it wafts inside all day through the open windows

Back to chopped salads (and yes, most of mine include celery, and if not, something with a similar crunch such as fennel or radish). Here in the UK we are well into salad weather (look at my roses!) and consider this paragraph one of my regular reminders that pressure cookers are NOT just for winter stews, soups, casseroles and the like. They are your best friend when it comes to cooking all those ingredients which are useful to keep in the fridge for impromptu salads. Grains, rice, pasta, beans, pulses, meats, potatoes, vegetables that you can’t or don’t want to eat raw - they will always cook faster in a pressure cooker, and often better too, retaining nutrients, getting rid of anti-nutrients, ramping up flavour…..basically making your salads even healthier than if you had cooked all the elements conventionally. The other main benefit to using pressure cookers specifically in the summer months? Less heat in your kitchen!

I love most kinds of salad (even pasta ones, if I am in control of what goes into them) but a chopped salad is a particular delight. When they are made right, you will get most of every ingredient in a single mouthful, but no mouthful will taste exactly the same as that balance of ingredients - in particular the herbs - will subtly change. More so if you chop them particularly small. As you will see below, mine is all cut up quite roughly, but still uniformly - the size is up to you, just try to keep everything about the same dimensions.

The main protein in this salad is chicken, so I’m taking the opportunity to remind you about zero minute chicken - or introduce you to the concept if you are new to pressure cooking and haven’t read any of my books yet….

How to poach chicken using the zero minute method

It is a very simple, low energy way of poaching chicken. All you have to do is:

• cover your chicken in water (not chilled or boiled, just as it comes out of the tap or water jug), you can also use stock if you like

• add salt and any aromatics you like (unless I am using mine for something very specific, I keep to fairly neutral flavours)

• bring up to high pressure

• immediately remove from the heat

• drop pressure naturally* before opening

• if you are nervous about doneness, check the internal temperature of the chicken, which should be 74C (or roughly 165F). After the first few times you will realise you don’t need to do this anymore

*A reminder about dropping pressure naturally as I have been asked a couple of times recently - unless I specify leaving it for a set number of minutes, this just means the time it takes to drop pressure on its own to the point you can safely remove the lid.

This method works with whole chickens and chicken pieces, filleted or unfilleted. Unfilleted portions do not need all the time it takes for your cooker to drop pressure naturally unless you are using particularly thick chicken breasts, but it doesn’t do any harm to let them do so unless you want to shorten the time as you have added other ingredients to the pot.

The bonus to this method is that you end up with an instant chicken stock too. This will have a surprising amount of flavour, especially if you are cooking chicken on the bone. And of course you can add any aromatics you like. I cooked some wings this way at the weekend and the base of the pressure cooker had a layer of jelly in the base when it had cooled down - just shows you how good the pressure cooker is at quickly extracting goodness.

How to cook chicken, potatoes and asparagus together, 3-in-1, using the zero minute method

You are saving time, fuel and a lot of water with this method - not just because you don’t need extra water to cook the potatoes or asparagus but because you are saving on washing up too - another pressure cooker benefit.

I used chicken thigh fillets (better flavour than breast), baby salad potatoes, the larger ones halved, and a bunch of asparagus which was decidedly uneven in terms of stem thickness, but none really skinny. You can use most greens as a substitute - green beans, sprouting broccoli, sliced courgettes etc.

Simply put the chicken in the bottom of the pressure cooker, cover with water, season and add aromatics. Balance a steamer insert on a trivet and add the potatoes. Season again - the potatoes will take on some of the scent/flavour of the aromatics. Finally, wrap the asparagus tips in foil and put them on top of the potatoes.

Bring the cooker up to pressure, immediately remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure for 4 minutes. Then release the remaining pressure.

All cooked as I wanted. Honestly, I was expecting the asparagus to be cooked to different degrees, from al dente to soft, but it was all al dente or just fractionally the soft side of it.

Chicken, Asparagus and Potato Chopped Salad

The ingredients for this are as is so often the case, inspired by Saturday’s farmers market. As hoped, the first British courgettes are in - tiny - the largest is similar length and girth as my middle finger - and really good very lightly steamed (you can add to the asparagus if you like), whole, or as in this salad, left raw and finely sliced. You could also use a medium sized courgette and dice it.

Treat the herbs as suggestions. I love the sweet, aniseedy flavour of tarragon, but I know I over use it at this time of year. If you can get it, chervil is subtler.

For the cooked elements:

4 chicken thigh fillets, skinned

2 sprigs tarragon

1/2 tsp dried thyme

3 pieces pared lemon zest

500g salad potatoes, halved or thickly sliced if large

2 sprigs mint

1 bunch asparagus, trimmed

For the raw elements:

1 stick celery, finely chopped (optional, you could use half a small fennel bulb instead)

100g baby courgettes, finely sliced

200g cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped

2 little gems, shredded or torn

A selection of microgreens and/or herbs

For the dressing:

4 tbsp olive oil (a fairly mild one, nothing too bitter for this)

zest and juice of 1 lemon

Leaves from a few sprigs of tarragon

Leaves from a sprig of mint

A few sprigs of chervil if you can get it

Leaves from a sprig of basil

1 mild green chilli, roughly chopped

1/2 tsp honey

1 tsp Dijon mustard (optional)