Chicken Margaret and Guiness 0.0

This dish was named in memory of my late mother. She was a child during the war so always had a sense of the value of chicken, especially one roast as a part of a feast day meal like Christmas or Easter. She never had much time for the idea of cheap chicken, it was always a luxury to her. Further to this, she had a liking for Black Pudding which bordered on obsession. Black pudding is a blood sausage, and so, not to everyone's tastes but it is part of "nose to tail eating". A full English breakfast is incomplete without Black pudding, and my Mum would agree. This is one of the few dishes on my YouTube channel and a demonstration of how to cook it can be seen on there:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdIfWRJNUmU&t=4s

Serves 2

Please note that the sauce is different from the one in the video

• 2 Chicken legs (just the thigh and drumstick)
• 2 slices of Black pudding
• A handful of Bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• 150 mls vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 tbsp redcurrant jelly

Cut the bone out of the thigh of each leg. This takes a bit of time so please don't hurry and do not try and take the drumstick bone out - you'll be at it for days.

Blitz up the Black pudding, breadcrumbs and egg in a small blender to produce a rough, dry paste. Roll two fingers of the paste and put it where the bone has been removed from the leg. Wrap the flesh and skin around and secure it with two or three cocktail sticks. Put the legs in the oven at 180 for about 20 minutes until it is cooked through and the skin looks brown and crisp.

Meanwhile, reduce the stock in a pan until it becomes a little bit syrupy. Stir in the jelly and allow it to melt to create a sweet, rich, shiny sauce.

Carve the thighs into three or four pieces and place neatly on the plate. Gently run some of the sauce over and create a small pool.

I always serve this dish with a puree of cauliflower (more of this in a later post). This time I also added buttered cabbage and roast potatoes.

The Match

At present I am partaking in Dry January so my beers will all be without any alcohol and doing some research into this, increasingly important, type of beer has been a revelation. Guinness 0.0 is genuinely lovely. It is a really good approximation of the "real thing". Obviously, it is Malt forward and has the thick, creamy head that makes this style of beer so famous. However, I was not expecting the level of depth in the maltiness or the dryness in the finish. It is not exactly like the real thing but a few pints into an evening I would defy most people to tell the difference.

The richness stood up well to the black pudding and the depth of flavour in the chicken. The redcurrant sauce with the Guinness took me back to my student days when some of my misguided friends used to have a shot of blackcurrant cordial poured into the top of their Guinness claiming it was the next big "thing". I look forward to matching stouts (Irish, Milk, English, Oyster and American) with food in the forthcoming weeks.