one pot, slow-cooked, creamy chicken, swede and mushroom stew

… another week and another 7 days being obsessed with the weather.  We just can’t help it.  It’s May and it really should be warm but it’s not.  It’s cold and not just ‘Spring’ cold but proper cold.  Lots of fed up people with flu and confusion… and the whole country is confused.  I flew 400 miles north to Glasgow for work, which should have been colder than London but was in fact sunny and warm.  All very odd.  Sadly I didn’t get the chance to savour any of the brilliant local cuisine – and believe me, there are some epic restaurants in Glasgow, but looking back on last weekends post about the classic Bounty Bar, I picked up another childhood favourite at the airport. The Tunnock’s Teacake.  If you’ve never eaten a Tunnock’s Teacake then you’ve not lived and you should add it to your bucket list immediately.  Essentially it’s a very soft marshmallow cloud on a biscuit base, covered in chocolate.  They come wrapped in an individual foil wrapper and they are utterly delightful.  As a child I remember carefully unwrapping the foil wrapper so I could keep it and flatten out the wrinkles in the foil.  Then instead of just eating it I would crack the dome of chocolate much like the shell of a hard-boiled egg and peel it off and eat it bit by bit before devouring the fluffy marshmallow.  Now as an adult whenever I eat them it’s an instant throwback to when I was a kid.  The ultimate nostalgia food and it’s so pleasing to know the company remains successful and teacakes are still so popular.  I must make some kind of teacake cake soon…

one pot, slow-cooked creamy chicken, swede and mushroom stew

it was a too-good-to-refuse special offer on these organic and free-range chicken leg joints that made me purchase them.  I hadn’t really gone into the supermarket for chicken and if I had it would have been for my usual chicken thighs but i’m glad I did, they were delicious and a very generous size too.  I guess I have the luxury of being able to be quite free-thinking when it comes to meal planning and I do love it when I get inspired by what I see rather than having to think too hard about what the next meal is going to be.  Which I guess is why the choice of vegetables i’ve used alongside these chicken joints may also appear to be a little odd.  They were a combination of me gayly skipping through the supermarket and picking up random veg and what I had left in the fridge at home but, along with the cream left-over from baking a quiche I knew I had a lovely warm and rich stew.  Much needed because the weather is still quite chilly for May and so a nice comforting but light stew is heavenly perfection.

• 1 medium onion – roughly chopped
• 1 stalk of celery – roughly chopped
• half a swede – peeled and chopped into medium chunky cubes
• 8 medium dark brown mushrooms – thickly sliced
• 4 garlic cloves – unpeeled
• 1 large glass of white wine
• roughly 100ml fresh single cream
• a selection of fresh herbs – I used lemon thyme, rosemary and thyme – roughly chopped
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

i’ve used my small cast iron casserole stew pot with a lid but any pot of this type could be used or even a slow cooker, although it really does need crisping up at the end for that wonderful golden skin… pre-heat the oven to 120C

place all your chopped veg along with the fresh herbs and a sprinkling of salt and pepper into the bottom of the casserole dish, lay the chicken portions on top, drizzle with a little olive oil, season well and add the glass of white wine.  Pop the lid on and bung it into the oven for 2 hours

after 2 hours, take the lid off, turn up the heat to 180C and roast the bejesus out of it for another 20 mins until the skin is beautifully golden

carefully remove from the oven and gently lift out the chicken portions which will be beautifully tender and have the tendency to slip off their bones like a hussy slips out of a negligee… pour the cream into the juicy veg mix at the bottom of the dish, stir in and let it sit for 5 minutes before serving

eat and of course, enjoy!