Oui Oui French Chicken

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not ashamed to say it but I had the best day of my life (don’t tell my wife) last weekend. England beat the French in the rugby! Now for those of you who don’t know I am a big rugby fan so this was epic. There was a couple of reasons that made it feel even sweeter, which I will elaborate on in a moment. 

And don't worry I haven't forgotten this is a newsletter about food! This week's recipe is pretty classic for me, I haven't named it yet so please feel free to name it for me, it’s a French beanie stewy chicken thing. It’s so easy and soooooo tasty!

So back to the French and Rugby… I whisked myself off to Paris a few weekends ago to catch up with one of my best friends. He is doing a crazy Ironman called The Norseman, and I am his support crew. We had gentlemen's agreement that if one of us got in the race the other would support. While we were there, the idea was to do loads of exercises, drink loads of booze and have some decent grub and we defo did that.

Friday morning 8am I was on the Eurostar, after a quick catch up I dumped my bags and we headed straight to Barry’s Bootcamp to do a savage session and earn our dinner. My post work meal of choice was a classic French gouty meal at Brasserie Martin. We had French Onion soup, snails, rillette, bavette steak, cheese and lots of wine and beer. Of course the night then escalated and we ended up at a Jazz gig, many cocktails were consumed and we ended the night with falafels and a taxi home at 3am. 

The next day we were up early for the Market, a brilliant classic French Market that had everything you could think of. My mate lives just outside of Paris so it was actually wonderfully pleasant and welcoming, much like a small town vibe then a city. We filled our bags with loads of veggies, cheese, bread and of course a big old rotisserie chicken!

Check out my Youtube with George egg where we recreated the French Market chicken at home!

Post Market, it was off to another fitness class, a lay down and a massive serving of Daal before heading to an Irish bar to watch England v Ireland in the opening game of the Six Nations! I don't think I have ever felt so out of place being the only English person in a bar where everyone hates, and I mean HATES the English! We put up a good fight in rugby but ultimately, the Irish are just brilliant! This experience is what made the England France game feel so sweet muahahhaha

Anyway, Sunday was once again ridden with a hangover, but we had promised to do a 4000m swim so off we cycled fueled by tartiflette and Haribo we started our 4000m swim only to be stopped and shouted at about an hour in that the pool was closing! Saved by the Bell! Overall the weekend was full of laughs, good food, plenty of drinks and a fair bit of exercise so I came back feeling like a hard cheese rather than a gooey stinky one!

Fast forward a week and I was on my way to the rugby at Twickenham. It turns out that Ollie Lawrence, who is England's centre and standout player of the tournament, is a fan of my content. We started chatting and bonded over food and the game and he kindly  invited me to the match to sit with his family, which was nuts! The atmosphere at rugby is always brilliant, there is this immense competition between the teams but there is a sense of fun about it.  So there I was, googling butter fingers in French to do a pathetic chant as France let countless chances slip. But England jumped on it and scored a last-minute try to win the game! BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!

So this week's recipe is a bit of a homage to us whooping the French at the rugby! Haha

STUFFED POD

If you want to have a good chuckle, then have a listen to this week valentines/chocolate special!

Lessons with Mart

As there is chicken in this weeks recipe, I have done a lesson just having a chat about chicken, see what I did there.

There is also a fantastic person who loves working out the cost of things on my recipes, they did one for a ready meal which took them ages but also did the cost breakdown of a chicken versus buying the bits individually just for a laugh.

I’m doing one of these again:

When buying bulk and cheapest ingredients from aldi

One whole large chicken is £4.79

2 chicken breasts (2kg pack) £3.00

2 legs (pack of 4) £1.30

2 wings (1kg pack) £0.32

2 chicken tenders (600g bag) around £0.20

Total price to buy separately: £4.82

So basically same price but you earn free carcass by butchering

I have shown you how to butcher a whole chicken as it’s a wonderful skill to have!

How to butcher a chicken

• Cut between the leg and breast to reveal the meat

• Pop the socket of the leg so you can cleanly cut around the leg joint

• Its good practice to take the wishbone out when getting the legs and breast off but i cant be bothered 90% of the time

• Let the knife fall to one side of the breast bone and follow the breast plate to take off the breast

• Cut through the joint to get the wing off

• If you want to seperate the thigh and drum find the white fat line and that will indicate where the joint is.

The Recipe

As I said this is kind of a play on a classic, whenever I cook, I have a starting point/theme/ingredient that I get started with. This time I knew I had the chicken but also had some wonderful beans so started to lean towards a cassoulet kind of dish! Now a cassoulet is a deep rich stew with beans, pork, duck and sausage all under a gratin-style crust! Now i didn't have any of those bits so just went with a super hearty, simple bean dish that comes together in minutes. So I hope you enjoy and get making it!