Editing a food magazine cultivates habits that would send Steven Bartlett reaching for his cold plunge, and this was thrown into unflattering relief recently when someone across a dinner table asked, with curiosity, how I sustained the lifestyle of a Tudor man. Ouch. But fair. To the outside world I live like a sturdy, medieval baron: marbled meats, pasta birthed from the insides of cheese wheels, more spicy Margaritas than a Soho House rooftop during a heatwave.
At home, though, I cook as if atoning – fresh, green and restrained. I like to cook the sort of meals that leave you confident you could see off the bubonic plague you’ve accrued so nobly out in the field.
This is one of the recipes in my roster I like to make when I want to feel like an Erewhon regular – chicken with a moreish green herb oil – aromatic with ginger and spring onion, with the crunch of sesame seeds and fried garlic served with gently steamed jasmine rice, and the snap of pickled carrots. The oil is a variation on Kitty Coles’ from Make More With Less (excellent cookbook, run don’t walk). It’s very good over chicken, but just as delicious stirred through egg fried rice, or mixed with shredded veg for a fast, vibrant slaw.
I’ve used chicken legs here because they’re pretty, and make me feel as though my kitchen is a small Parisian bistro – but I make it just as often with boneless skin-on thighs, or with poached chicken, for when I’m feeling especially like a Tudor man.
