Chicken Braised With Wild Garlic, Lemon and Peas; Lamb and Chickpea Curry; Tomato, Bean and Kale Stew
Beautiful batch cooks celebrating the first flush of wild garlic, the power of leaning on friends and your freezer
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Hello there my friends, and a big wave to all the new subscribers who have joined lately - it’s delightful to have you all here with us. As always, a massive shout out to regular subscribers who read, support, and, crucially, pay me to keep on producing this newsletter. Some of you have now been here for - whisper it - a whole year now, which blows my mind, and this newsletter and the recipes and stories within it only exist because of you guys, so thank you so much for being here. Quite simply, you rock.
While last month’s ‘Something For The Weekend’ was all about celebrating the glories of winter veg, this month I’m focusing on filling the freezer with delicious, super nourishing things that you can batch cook for a time when you might really need it: say for example - oh I don’t know, just before an imminent birth…
Yes, I’m feeling absolutely massive and quite ready to pop (though no, not feeling one bit ‘ready’ - why do people ask this!?), but before that, we have another hugely exciting new arrival to celebrate together: that of wild garlic, which is back for another year.
I absolutely loved developing this saucy chicken and wild garlic braise, which has one foot firmly rooted in the joys of spring. It’s at once luxurious, comforting, elevated and incredibly achievable: with tender, golden-skinned, bone-in chicken pieces swimming in a rich, beautifully balanced, lemon-and-garlic-scented cream sauce, shot through with sweet peas, earthy wild mushrooms and wilted wild garlic.
My mother-in-law Glyn has been sending me photos of her forages of wild garlic from the North Wales countryside, and it’s starting to appear across the country, in veg boxes, on restaurant menus and in my Instagram feed, too. As you may or may not know, I’ve got a massive soft spot for wild garlic (ramson to our American friends) as an ingredient. Aside from feeling like a true harbinger of spring, it’s just got such a special flavour and packs such a punch, while being incredible versatile and fun to forage and cook with.
You can find some of my favourite wild garlic recipes (like the much-adored wild garlic and cheddar scones) in my archive, but I really wanted to bring you a brand new one ahead of spring, something you’ll want to cook again and again while wild garlic is available to infuse it with its special verdant garlic flavour. Don’t worry though, if you love the sound of this recipe but can’t get your hands on wild garlic, it’s still lovely using normal garlic, I’d just wilt some greens like spinach and parsley through at the end. I’ve suggested quantities and substitutions in the recipe, and I’m sharing some more notes on wild garlic (where to get it, things you should know if foraging etc) later on in this piece.
It’s the sort of dish you could cook for an early spring celebration lunch or supper for friends, just make sure you double down and stash half in your freezer, helpfully labelled for a grateful ‘future you’, because it reheats really well. What I also love about it is that it’s an assembly of protein, veg and sauce all in one pot, so all you need to do is add some buttered orzo, tagliatelle, crusty baguette or crispy potatoes on the side and you’re all set. I really hope you love it as much as I do. I plan on enjoying the portions I’ve stuffed into my freezer in the weeks after giving birth, when I’m feeling ravenous and tired and in need of sustenance and deliciousness.
Food With Friends
One of the things I’ve always been keen to do from the outset of setting up this newsletter is to showcase and shine a light on other chefs and food writers I think you guys will enjoy. Given that I’m needing a bit of extra support atm as cooking and being on my feet becomes increasingly challenging, I thought now was a perfect time to call in the help of a couple of WONDERFUL food writers/chefs that I’ve known and admired for years to bring you two more fantastic recipes that are as well suited to making ahead and freezing as they are to eating fresh from the pan. I’m sure many of you will already be aware of both of these incredible women, but for anyone reading this who’s not, you are in for a treat.
First up, I’m thrilled to be welcoming Maunika Gowardhan - an award-winning Indian chef, cookbook author and contributing editor to Vogue India, whose bestselling cookbooks and approach to flavour I just adore. Maunika creates and shares traditional Indian dishes with exciting flavours and ingredients that reflect her heritage and upbringing in Mumbai. Her cooking style is brilliantly simple and accessible, often informed by recipes that are cooked from communities across India; many of which have been part of her own family for generations.
Here she is kindly sharing her disarmingly simple Bengali Mangsho Ghugni - a lamb and chickpea curry (taken from her Sunday Times bestselling cookbook Thali) which has been made on repeat in my house since I first cooked it. Jamie has also mastered it now (which speaks to its cook-ability) and loves to make it, which is a huge win! It’s fragrant with cumin, coriander and cardamom and incredibly satisfying, with melting, falling apart lamb, and a deep, layered, expertly spiced sauce that has just the right level of chilli and ginger heat to make it incredibly warming and moreish.
Interestingly, ginger has been an ingredient I’ve been craving and calling upon increasingly in pregnancy in various different forms - tea for nausea, grated into broths, soups and braises and used in its syrupy stem ginger form in baking, and I really enjoyed this personal essay over on Bon Appetit by Hetty McKinnon (author of the brilliant Substack To Vegetables With Love) on her mum’s ginger and egg fried rice which she cooked for her every day after giving birth. I’d really love to hear from some of you in the comments about which foods you cooked/craved and leaned on in the early days of new parenthood - it would be super interesting to get some chat going about that.
Next up we have the amazing Melissa Hemsley - a food writer, bestselling cookbook author, sustainability champion and Substack writer over on Things That Make My Heart Sing. Melissa is one of the most energetic and generous people I know, and I really admire her dedication to sustainability (we’re fellow ambassadors for Fairtrade and The Soil Association) and the great work she does with The Felix project. Her food is always accessible and filled with heart and nourishment and she’s also a new mum with a passion for batch cooking - so I knew I needed to call on her when I came up with the concept for this newsletter. She’s sharing a wholesome, hugely adaptable bean, tomato and cabbage stew which will make you feel satisfied, hugged and restored just by looking at it. It works as a main course in its own right, but would also be excellent sporting a crown of grilled fish or fried halloumi too.
Thanks so much to both Maunika and Mel for joining us here on A Lot On Her Plate! I’m so excited to share their gorgeous recipes with you, along with their ‘Five Questions’ answered, below, so you can get to know them and their wisdom a bit more too.
Why Batch and Top Tips
Settling in for a good old batch cooking session is one of those things that might sound a bit like a chore, but can actually be a really fun and memorable way to spend a morning or afternoon, especially on a rainy or wintery day. When I’m feeling energetic, I quite like to get in the zone and bang out a good batch of something on my own pottering in the kitchen, but it’s also a nice thing to tackle together with your friends/family/partner - you can get kids involved in the chopping/stirring too, and we love to do it listening to a podcast or some best-loved albums, with mugs of tea and coffee or wine (obvs not at the moment) on the go.
You can certainly let yourself feel a bit smug for cooking your dinner for the day, and also for your future self(s) in one go, but it’s also such a generous act of kindness when you do it for someone else who really could use some help. This could be someone who’s not very well, who is struggling to cope with everything physically or mentally, or indeed, if you know someone who is nearing their due date for a new baby. In my opinion there is nothing more loving, useful, or genuinely kind than cooking new-parents-to-be something tasty and homemade to stash in their fridge or freezer. The usefulness of good, nourishing food that is easy to assemble when you’re in the throes of the knackering first weeks of new parenthood cannot be underestimated. To not have to worry about what’s for dinner when you’re in the nascent stages of newborn sleep is a gift so much better than a shop bought baby grow.
My top tip for batch cooking is to pay extra close attention to the seasoning as you cook and remember to taste, taste, taste. Make sure you’re seasoning throughout the cooking stages to bring out the flavours. When you’re working with larger quantities of ingredients than usual, you’ll need to season accordingly, but it’s not always as simple as just doubling or tripling the salt/spices/chilli/acid quantities used in the recipe because of the way certain ingredients behave and interact. Make sure you’re tasting and adjusting incrementally, and with something like spice/chilli or lemon/acid that can really permeate a dish, take it gently and keep checking until you’re happy with the balance. As a rule of thumb, and this is worth noting for the curry, you should scale up by 1.5 when it comes to spices and chilli, rather than doubling straight off, and see how it’s tasting.
When it comes to reheating previously frozen dishes, defrost them completely first and then be prepared to add a little more moisture back in as some is lost in the freezing. I use stock or water, and maybe a bit more cream/creme fraiche if needed, but don’t go mad - a splash will usually do it.