no vam­pires in MY house

How much gar­lic can one fam­i­ly of three eat on a Thurs­day evening short­ly before the spring sol­stice? I’m sure there is a for­mu­la for work­ing this sort of thing out, but I’ll make it easy for you. A LOT. Suf­fice to say, the con­tents of this love­ly dish you see before you? Gone, along with almost an entire baguette and a whole baked chick­en. I’ll explain.

Some­times my meat-veg-starch plate arrange­ment at din­ner gets me down. How many dif­fer­ent ways can you present a pota­to, espe­cial­ly when a baked one has been banned from your din­ner table because your poor child was forced to eat one every day of her life at school for a year? And rice isn’t very pop­u­lar in my house either, while cous­cous gets eat­en but with a marked lack of enthu­si­asm. Then yes­ter­day, while idly leaf­ing through Simon Hop­kin­son’s Roast Chick­en and Oth­er Sto­ries (anoth­er book I would mar­ry if I were sin­gle), I came across this gem (I’ve adapt­ed it slight­ly for quantities):

Baked Gar­lic With Creamed Goat’s Cheese
(how many it serves is entire­ly down to you and your fel­low din­ers: I count­ed on one head of gar­lic per per­son and it was about right)

4 heads garlic
4 tbsps olive oil
4 thyme sprigs
1 rose­mary sprig
4 bay leaves
1 lemon cut into 6 wedges
salt and pepper

For the creamed goat’s cheese

6 oz goat’s cheese (a nice sim­ple one with­out rind or ash)
3 oz dou­ble cream
1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
salt

Pre­heat oven to 400F, 200C. Slice the tops off the gar­lic heads about a quar­ter of the way down. Pack into an oven­proof dish in one lay­er. Driz­zle over the olive oil and tuck the herbs and lemon around the heads, giv­ing a squeeze of each of the lemon wedges as you do so. Sea­son with salt and pep­per. Place in oven and leave there for 10 min­utes, then turn heat down to 250F, 170C for anoth­er 50 min­utes. When the gar­lic comes out of the oven, tip the dish so you can spoon the now lus­cious­ly fla­vored oil over the heads. Set aside to cool slightly.

Mean­while, cream the goat’s cheese with the cream, add the chili flakes and salt and stir well till mixed thoroughly.

To eat, serve with nice chunks of baguette. Dig into the heads of gar­lic with a lit­tle fork or spoon and spread the gar­lic onto the baguette, top­ping with the goat’s cheese mixture.

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Now, two things stand out as being imper­a­tive truths about this dish: you and your guests have to be pot­ty about gar­lic, and you ALL have to eat it. I could­n’t tell if we stunk to high heav­en, just because of this last pre­cau­tion. The tex­ture of the gar­lic is soft and silky, the fla­vor is gen­tle and per­me­at­ed with the heady thyme and rose­mary, and the lemon adds a bit of bite. Some­how the com­bi­na­tion, along with the seri­ous­ly self-indul­gent creamy cheese, is heaven.

With this we had one of my favorite chick­en dish­es, invent­ed by my dear moth­er in a rare dis­play of culi­nary interest:

Mama Nel’s Chicken
(serves 4)

1 whole chick­en, cut into legs, breasts and wings
4 tbsps flour
1 tsp each: thyme, basil, gar­lic pow­der, papri­ka, lemon pepper
1/3 cup veg­etable oil

I’ve become quite adept at what is called here “joint­ing” a chick­en, sim­ply tak­ing a whole bird and cut­ting it up, part­ly because it is unbe­liev­ably inex­pen­sive to do this, and part­ly because unless you have a real butch­er, you will not find chick­en breasts on the bone with skin left on in this coun­try. Nor are your typ­i­cal super­mar­kets keen on whole legs, pre­fer­ring in gen­er­al to sep­a­rate the thighs from the drum­sticks. I myself hate the look of a chick­en drum­stick, feel­ing it has a Flint­stones look about it, a cave­man sort of desperation.

Now, in a recy­cled super­mar­ket plas­tic bag (I used to use Ziplock until I saw the ungreen error of my ways), mix the flour with the herbs, then shake the chick­en pieces in this until nice­ly coat­ed. I sup­pose you could get all Martha Stew­art and dip the pieces in egg or milk first, but my moth­er did not both­er and so nor do I.

Line a 9x13 oven­proof dish with alu­minum foil (a great aid to cleanup) and pour in the veg­etable oil. Lay the chick­en pieces skin side down and bake at 400F, 200C for half an hour, then turn the pieces over and bake for anoth­er half hour. Sim­plic­i­ty itself.

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If you’re being ter­ri­bly cred­it crunchy, you may toss the back and rib bones from your clever joint­ing into a stock­pot, throw in some car­rots, cel­ery and onion, sea­son it all well and cov­er with water, then sim­mer for a cou­ple of hours and voila: chick­en soup.

I must dash: we are off to see War Horse, a play that has received almost unprece­dent­ed fab­u­lous reviews, both before Christ­mas and in its cur­rent revival. Have some gar­lic, brush your teeth, and I’ll be back with a review…