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I think chicken is my favourite meat. I could genuinely just eat chicken every day and not get bored… maybe that’s why whenever anybody eats something new and unusual it always tastes like chicken.

Here’s another quickie recipe for you starring chicken and 40 cloves of garlic. Yeah, you heard me: 40 cloves of garlic. Amazingly you won’t even smell that bad after eating it… but your kitchen will temporarily smell like, well, garlic. If you need to stave off the vampires it’d make a good hangout.

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Comfort food, for me, is a big bowl of white rice and tender chicken. Luckily for me, Hainanese Chicken Rice or hoi nam gai fan as it’s known in Cantonese, is exactly that. I make this far too often for my own good – I could probably live off it quite happily. I’d be very fat… but very happy.

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The other week I had a slight health scare. Y’see, the medication I’m on has the potential to shut down your immune system (scary stuff, I know) so if you start feeling unwell or have a raging sore throat, you’re advised to go and see your doctor immediately or you could be dead within a week. After a wonderful weekend in Brighton celebrating a birthday, I woke up with a horribly sore throat and a slight fever. As I’m sure you can imagine, I panicked.

Waiting to see whether or not you need to go to hospital urgently is not the best way to start a Monday. I was supposed to be working in the city right at that moment and instead I was at home, waiting for the email. It finally came, “go to the hospital” and I was off, fighting through the mid-morning crowds at Waterloo. The first nurse couldn’t find a vein. “Do you have problems giving blood?” He asked, my answer a curt shake of the head and a tense, “no. Not ever.” The second nurse had a quick look at me and plunged the needle into my right arm, drawing blood immediately. They sent me home where I waited for the results whilst trying to work. A few hours later they came back: I wasn’t dying.

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Finding good Mexican food in the UK is a feat that will give you both a headache and a belly ache. There are now a handful of good, cheap places around, such as Tortilla and Poncho No. 8 (or so I hear, I haven’t yet been able to take a trip to one of their stores, but they sell barbacoa! Win), but finding authentic Mexican grub? Not bloody likely.

What other choice do we have, then, but to make it ourselves? Exactly. Not only is this recipe easy and tasty, it uses up all of that lovely chicken you saved from your stock (if you used fresh chicken pieces) – double win.

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I was running through the forest so fast I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, pounding so hard it almost flew straight out. The wind was at my heels and I could hear them coming – they were after me. I wasn’t sure if I could run any faster, the ground was falling away from me and the man at the house had told me that I had to get to the kitchen in the forest before they caught me. They wanted my gold. But it was mine! I had cultivated it! No, they couldn’t have it. I refused. I tripped on a tree branch and flew through the air – dammit! They were almost upon me and now would catch me for sure. I hit the ground.

I opened my eyes in semi-darkness. I was in my bed, a little chilly and I was awake. My clock told me that it was a little past 7am. It wasn’t the sun that had woken me up – that was all blocked out and the little that came streaming in through the chinks in the curtain was hitting the opposite wall. No, it was something else. I sniffed the air once, twice and suddenly it hit me: my chicken stock was ready.

I’m certain that there is nothing better in this world than waking up to the smell of chicken stock that has been bubbling away quietly whilst you slumbered, but the effort this involves normally… well. When I was living at Momma Lee’s I once spent an entire night sleeping in the kitchen so that I could keep checking my chicken stock, making sure it hadn’t bubbled over. It was good but the fact that I woke up every hour to make sure that nothing was going to burn down imminently ruined it somewhat for me, plus the fact that I had to keep topping it up with water was irritating. A good night’s sleep I did not have and the stock was so much trouble I didn’t make it again whilst I was living there. Enter the slow cooker.

Guys, if you have to invest in one gadget, invest in this one. A slow freaking cooker. It doesn’t have to be fancy – mine has three functions: off, low & high, that’s it – it doesn’t have to be expensive (I think mine cost me around £25?) and it doesn’t need to be dealt with, you just turn it on and let it go. Honestly, my slow cooker rarely comes out because before this point I didn’t realise how bloomin’ easy it would be to make something as every day as stock in it; I know, I am slow to the slow cooker revolution, but it is simple! So simple I almost want to cry with joy and when we’re done taking this journey together, you will too. So let’s begin.

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Lemon & Thyme Roast Chicken, originally uploaded by jaxies.

Today has been my completely indulgent and utterly useless day. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to have a full weekend to myself of doing nothing whatsoever, since I’ve been working every Saturday (and some Sundays) for the past month and a bit. Yesterday I had decided that today was going to be dedicated to sleeping and recharging my batteries, and you know what? I didn’t get out of bed until 5pm and it was good. Sometimes you just need to say ‘screw it’, and just take that totally lazy day. When I did finally roll out of bed I felt refreshed and happy, totally at peace with the world – just as it should be.

With cooking, too, you should have a little book of go-to meals that are easy to whip up with nary a thought, and for me roast chicken is just one of those meals. What, after all, is better than a golden crispy-skinned bird with soft, succulent flesh that practically melts in your mouth, accompanied by little baby patooties, all buttery and delicious? Very little, my friend. Very little indeed.

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I’ve actually managed to do quite a lot of cooking over the past few days, pretty good, right? So I’ve got quite the backlog of recipes and write-ups to get through, luuucky you!

This particular recipe is brought to you by Momma Lee. It’s a favourite recipe of hers which she adapted from a friend, and is super simple to put together, especially as she uses pre-cooked chicken legs. Very refreshing for the summer and keeps well in the fridge. Pretty sure we’ve been eating it quite a lot over the past few days…

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I’ve actually managed to do quite a lot of cooking over the past few days, pretty good, right? So I’ve got quite the backlog of recipes and write-ups to get through, luuucky you!

This particular recipe is brought to you by Momma Lee. It’s a favourite recipe of hers which she adapted from a friend, and is super simple to put together, especially as she uses pre-cooked chicken legs. Very refreshing for the summer and keeps well in the fridge. Pretty sure we’ve been eating it quite a lot over the past few days…

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It’s entry #8 in my Foodie Competition, innit blud. BOOYAH. If you’re new here and you’re wondering, ‘foodie comp? What foodie comp?!’ then you should familiarise yourself with this page and get submitting! And if you’re a regular round these here parts then you should still re-read the rules and get submitting. Boom-diddly-boom.

So actually, before I give you this entry, I’d like to use this opportunity to give myself a little self-promotion. Unheard of, I know. When I went down to Soho to interview the Mooli’s boys last month, I took a few interior shots. The other day the lovely Mathew sent me an urgent request asking if I could send them those shots as they are being featured in the Metro, a nation-wide free publication, tomorrow. That means that my photos (along with, hopefully, my credit) are being featured in a nation-wide publication tomorrow. Can I get a ‘booyah beeatch’? So anyway, if you’re in London you should definitely pick a copy of the Metro tomorrow (Wednesday 21st). I’m actually going to be in Nottingham getting my Grad-u-a-ti-on (read that outloud, spelling it out; oh yeaaaah) but the boyfriend has promised me he’ll pick up a couple of copies. YOU SHOULD PICK UP COPIES TOO :D Okay, enough of that, now onto the meat (ha) of this post…

This particular entry is brought to us by Spammed over at Kudocities and is a lovely little summer-time dinner recipe. It’s also incredibly easy, requiring minimal effort with maximum flavour results. What is it? Easy Cajun chicken.

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I am possibly the world’s biggest advocate for polenta. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I can’t emphasise enough how great polenta is. Seriously. It’s definitely up there in my top ten foods. Now I’m not talking about the ready-made blocks of polenta you buy from the supermarket, fry up or grill and then are disgusted over how tasteless and bland it is, no. I’m talking fresh-from-the-pot-my-mama-shoulda-been-Italian-I-love-it-so-much polenta.

I like to buy my polenta from Carluccio’s because I can get a huge bag and it lasts me a long while. It is quick-cook polenta so technically not “authentic” but it’s still darn good, and it makes your life a little easier. For really authentic stuff I’d probably need to move to Italy, somehow get myself adopted into an Italian family and then learn their family polenta secrets, but in the meantime this’ll do me just fine.

The great thing about polenta is just how versatile it is. When wet it works amazingly to sop up all the delicious juices from other food, and when you’ve let it cool it hardens and then you can fry or grill it to perfection (or, if you’re feeling peckish and can’t be bothered to heat it up, just eat it as is).

Normally, the way I make it, I use a base of chicken or vegetable stock mixed with a bit of milk, then at the end add a knob of butter and a very large handful of grated parmesan cheese (Parmigianno Reggiano, not the pre-grated kind, I always use real ingredients in my cooking, not fake ones!). I then eat it with some homemade bolognese sauce (I usually make a vat of this and keep it in the freezer for quick meals, I’ll post the recipe next time I have to make one, at the moment I’ve still got a large box in the freezer!), a little more parmesan on top and some freshly torn basil leaves. Perfection. If I have any leftover (which is rare because I’m a glutton) I pour it onto a baking tray, let it cool, cut it into triangles and store it in an airtight box. Try frying it with a little olive oil in a pan until crispy (be careful, it spits quite a bit because of the nature of polenta) – it goes a real treat with a glass of white wine!

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