Be The Jam

Two Chicken leg joints
About 25g smoked gammon / bacon - diced
Two small onions – peeled and chopped in half
One large carrot – scraped and chopped into chunks
One large red potato – quartered
Glass or two of white wine
One clove of garlic, thinly sliced
Sea salt
Pepper corns – cracked between the flat of a knife and a flat surface
Nutmeg
Rosemary
Double Cream
Oil
Water

Brown the chicken over the fire, meanwhile brown the onion, carrot and gammon or bacon in the oil and add a healthy sprinkle of rosemary. Put the chicken, bacon, carrot, onion, wine and garlic into a pan and top up with water so that liquid comes up to just about cover the ingredients, put a lid on, bring to the boil and simmer for about half an hour (this works best if cooked in an oven). Then put the potato on top and let steam until really well cooked. Remove the potato and put on one side (I stuck them in the lid of the Billy) if you are outside in the winter it’s probably best to add butter at this point to help it melt. Leave the potato for a while and let the steam come off to make sure they are nice and dry before mashing. Remove the chicken, onion and carrot from the Billy and let the chicken rest for ten minutes. Meanwhile put the sauce over a high heat and let it reduce. Mash the potato with whatever comes to hand (I had to use a spoon), add salt, pepper, some cream and grated nutmeg. By this time the sauce should have reduced so remove it from the heat, add some cream and stir together over a low heat, add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the Chicken and vegetables covered in the sauce with a sprinkle of black pepper a slice or two of granary bread and a glass of dry white wine.

I have made many variations of this dish in the past and the slight BBQ flavour of the chicken really adds something to it.

Notes

I used a bit of bacon cut from the end of a loin joint I had bought for tomorrow, seeing as I had bought this from a supermarket the meat was covered in useless packaging and had been injected with water. The water ran out into the lid of the Billy Can that I was using as a frying pan and caused the vegetables to stew rather than fry.

Shallots would be more appropriate to use than onions but I just couldn’t be bothered to peel them.

If you are grating nutmeg on the serrated blade of a knife try to avoid also grating your finger, if you can’t avoid this inadvertently quaterising the cut on the handle of the Billy Can will stop the bleeding.

A sprinkling of finely chopped leaves adds a whole new dimension if you have them – I didn’t.

Try not to eat this dish out of the lid of a Billy Can with a hole melted in the side as the sauce will leak out all over you.

Don’t let the sauce boil or the cream will separate (as mine did) it will still taste fine but won’t look so good.

This dish also goes very well with leeks.