A very happy Easter to you all! I hope that elusive bunny caused everyone to become thoroughly spoilt, and that you ate and drank your fill of good food and wine.

Yes, I'm aware this post is being written on a Monday - time seemed to slip away yesterday and I just didn't get a chance to sit down and commit my Easter dinner to the annals of time.

With that said, behold!

I had initially been toying with the idea of the traditional roast lamb for Easter dinner, but given my somewhat rocky relationship with red meat at the moment  (we're spending time apart, see each other on weekends sometimes), I opted for chicken and white wine casserole instead.

Some of you may call foul at this, and indeed I grappled with the notion as well - stewing meat in wine is after all a very French thing to do, and you can almost imagine those salty old English cooks spinning in their graves at the very thought of me soiling this blog in such a way. However I have in my possession a charming book entitled Dinner at Buckingham Palace - describing in detail the royal families eating habits and preferences - which points out that after the Napoleonic wars a great many out of work chefs from France found themselves in Old Blighty. It was thus that some French cooking practices - stewing in wine, for example - became intertwined with the traditional English love for game, like chicken, pheasant, and grouse.

So vindicated, I excitedly began to dig around for recipes. In the end I selected the simplest example I could find:

- Brown some chicken pieces and remove from pan
- Fry some mushrooms with garlic in the same pan, then throw the chicken back in
- Pour over 600ml of combined white wine and chicken stock, along with a good helping of herbs such that you like
- I also threw in some chopped celery because it was knocking about in my fridge and no better place for it really

- Simmer for an hour and a half or so!

Although English food never needs to justify a simple recipe, I'll point out here that half the reason I chose it was because it involved cutting up my own whole chicken, which was an educational experience using a knife that could barely cut through cheese - however I persevered, hacking through joints and cracking breast bones until I was rewarded with an impressive amount of meat for a mere twelve dollars (another reason I chose to carve my own bird)

You're probably supposed to get rid of the skin and gristle, but throwing caution to the wind I said aloud "jam that!" and just threw it all in the pot - I was paid a rich dividend in the form of skin that just slid off the flesh, soaked as it was in wine, stock, and celery juice. I served it with good old mash and asparagus, those nutritious little green-piss cigars. The best thing of all is that upon placing your desired foods onto a plate you can ladle over all that terrific cooking juice, to your liking.

While it was simmering away and smelling absolutely divine, I reflected that it's the kind of thing my Grandma (Mum's side) would approve of. She and her husband - Papa to me - ran a hotel for some time in England, and she's always had a taste for the finer side of English cooking - her Salmon mousse is notorious for its dynamite level of flavour, while her chocolate version of the same for it's proof.

If I'm smart, I'll organize some time to talk to her about that experience, because she is an amazing woman and a wealth of knowledge when it comes to eating and drinking in the English way - she recently bought by accident several boxes of wine (she thought she was buying just several bottles) and confided to me "Now my only worry is that I'll die before I can drink it all". 

Prior to writing this post I finished off what was left of the casserole for my supper and it struck me that several of the dishes cooked thus far are actually better the day after - the nature of stewing things all together in one pot means that the flavours steep overnight and become one gluttonous mass of gastronomic pleasure.

So that's that - something special for Easter dinner. I was in fact going to casserole a rabbit, something of an Addams family approach to 'seasonally appropriate fare', but then I remembered that I've cooked it before, and that rabbit is really the word for expensive chicken. It tastes the exact same, I'm not joking.

Perhaps, in time, and when I'm getting paid obscene amounts of money to travel the world and chronicle various cuisines in written form....maybe, I will re-visit that admittedly fun white meat. If anyone knows of any jobs going which fit that description, you know where to find me.

Til next Sunday (or Monday)

                                               - Jon