Chicken run

Most weekends in winter, I start cooking about two and finish about eight, with breaks for my children’s dinner-bath-book-bed, and then I go to bed early, safe in the knowledge that the family is fed for the following week with curry, soup, and ideally some kind of slow-cooked meaty casserole, usually hunter’s chicken from Clelia D’Onofrio’s excellent The Silver Spoon, which was originally published in 1950 and has every Italian recipe you might ever like to cook in concise, useful prose.

Then Josh, came over my desk. It’s excellent — a compendium of definitive classic recipes, including a splendid, though complicated, version of coq au vin which I was keen to give a whirl. “It’s still one dish that I cook and put in the freezer so we’ve got a quick TV dinner,” said Emett when I rang him to get some tips. The key, he reckons, is twofold. You need really good bacon, and you need to soak the chicken in red wine, preferably overnight.