I had a dream one night
about a chicken dish, and it went like this: In a greased baking pan I put 5
fresh bay leaves (why 5? It was a dream). On these leaves was placed a
well-scored chicken (not too large). The bird was then coated with thick
yoghurt into which lots of garlic had been pressed with salt and pepper. Now
the white-coated fowl was covered with a thin blanket of suet crust pastry
(using any fat with twice its weight of self-raising flour, a little turmeric
for colour, salt, and then water to form a ball to roll out). Any surplus
blanket was cut away, to which I added grated cheese to form a ball, flattening
it out with my fists on to a baking surface and scoring it to make cheese
straws (goldfingers). I took the straws out of a medium to hot oven (180
degrees) after half an hour to eat then or later, leaving the chicken to bake
for another hour. I had surrounded the uncooked chicken in its blanket with
potatoes that had been boiled for 10 minutes and oiled, salted and peppered.
That was it. And delicious it all was when the recipe was put into practice and
consumed soon after the dream.
In a pressure cooker, for half an hour, I boiled the
leftover blanket and chicken carcass with a chicken stock cube, water, the
original 5 bay leaves, and two star aniseeds to make the liquor for a soup.
Having strained out the solids from the contents of the pressure cooker and
discarded them, I added some milk to form the consistency of the soup required.
CHICKEN - DREAM CHICKEN UNDER A BLANKET (with cheese
straws and soup)
You will need:
Fresh bay leaves
A smallish chicken
Thick yoghurt
Garlic
Fat, flour and turmeric (as colour) for the blanket
Grated cheese for the goldfingers
Potatoes (optional)
Oil
Pepper and salt
For the soup:
Star aniseed
Chicken stock cube
Milk
Pepper and salt if necessary
