This recipe takes the grief out of stock – and while it’s not as complex or impressive as those you will find in the restaurants, it provides the home kitchen with a product that is better than water, far superior to the supermarket versions and a good way to make the most out of the organic chook you just paid an arm and a leg for. The starting point is the left-over carcass from a roast chook (or if you need chicken breasts for a recipe ask the butcher for a whole chook and get him to chop the breasts off – leaving you with a carcass for not much more). Feel free to throw in a chopped carrot, leak or celery (or leaves), a couple of sprigs of parsley or a couple of peppercorns to add complexity if they are to hand.
1 chicken carcass, post-roast
Water
Sea salt
Put the chicken carcass in a saucepan that will hold it snugly, and add water to cover by 2 cm. Bring to the boil and skim off any foam on the surface. Add a good teaspoon of salt and simmer for 1 hour. Strain the stock. Taste and, if it seems at all insipid, return to the pan and reduce by up to half to concentrate the flavour. Leave to cool, then cover and chill. Skim off any fat from the surface before use.
I like to freeze my stock in ice-cube trays. It makes last-minute defrosting much easier and the stock is available for use in whatever quantity you may need.
Living and Eating appeals to my logical, ordered side. The book is clearly structured, with a recipe for all the basics. This is just one of the seven different ways roast chook is represented; not to mention coq au vin, chicken breasts Escoffier and the chicken, spinach and lemon pie.