I rarely spend all afternoon cooking something because quite frankly I just don’t have the time. Like this afternoon, there were plenty of things I could have been getting on with, some pleasurable (I have several finished pieces of embroidery that need sewing into their new homes) and some not (I have lots of laundry to sort) but no, I thought I’d take the time to cook something nice, Leon 2′s Chicken with 100 Cloves and Potato Leon-aise. The chicken with 100 cloves (actually it was 93) smelt absolutely amazing as it cooked, the Potato Leon-aise probably smelt nice to, it’s just the smell of the chicken was so overwhelming. So I was really really looking forward to this and yeugh, where shall I start? The potatoes were the worse, sort of like dauphinaise without the cream, the top was over cooked, the bottom undercooked and a thin layer of the middle edible, but not really worth the effort. The chicken at least was cooked properly but you really wouldn’t have thought I’d cooked it with so much garlic, so not worth the effort either. Two recipes I will not cook again (for the record Nigel Slater does do far nicer creamless daphinoise recipes, so the idea can work, I should have stuck with Nigel!).
