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Spicy buttermilk chicken with pickle relish recipe

Pour off the juices and reduce them for an obscenely good sauce - Eleanor Steafel
Pour off the juices and reduce them for an obscenely good sauce - Eleanor Steafel

It is day 74 and my family have run out of things to say to each other. We are now incapable of mustering a conversation that doesn’t revolve around what we’re next going to eat. Mealtimes follow a predictable pattern. There is some initial debate over what we’d do differently next time – why you could have used coriander instead of parsley, lamb in lieu of beef, or, if you’re my brother, how the whole thing could have been improved with the addition of some sort of niche chilli sauce. Once we’ve exhausted that thread, it’s on to what we might cook next. This can go on for hours as we turn over all the various ways we could use up the sausages in the freezer. Eventually someone shrieks: “For the love of God can we just eat this dinner before we talk about tomorrow’s?!” There is a brief attempt to discuss something else, but inevitably ten minutes later someone will muse, “I tell you what we could do with those sausages…”

I sincerely hope we are not the only ones experiencing this particular brand of groundhog day in lockdown. The truth is, it’s a great luxury to be able to fritter away as much time as we do discussing what we’re going to eat next. But for the hour we sit around the table each night to eat, “what shall we have for dinner on Friday” is as useful a distraction as any from the chaos.

This meal was borne out of a lengthy discussion about what to do with five chicken supremes taking up space in the freezer. Full disclosure, it featured a pot of past its best cream that had been in the fridge for an indeterminate amount of time and was turned into an improvised buttermilk by mixing it with lemon juice (do feel free to just buy buttermilk). Marinating the chicken for a few hours in the resulting concoction made for the most juicy, flavoursome meat and left us with my favourite kind of roasting tin – one with a puddle of sauce and gnarly bits all round the sides just asking to be scraped off with the crispy edge of a potato or a crust of bread.

Speaking of potatoes, when you come to roast the chicken you could pour off some of the marinade, toss it with a few new potatoes and roast them in a separate tin (best not to cook them in the same one as it’ll make it harder for both the chicken and potatoes to brown). Once the meat is cooked and resting, you could also pop the roasting tin of juices on the hob and reduce them to make an obscenely good sauce. Play with the relish depending on what flavours you like and what you have in stock — finely chopped green chillies and spring onions would be great, and coriander would be lovely in lieu of parsley.

Prep time: 10 minutes | Cooking time: 1 hour

SERVES

5

INGREDIENTS

For the chicken

  • 500ml buttermilk (or the same amount of milk/cream left to sit with the juice of half a lemon for 20 minutes)

  • 4 garlic cloves, grated

  • 1 tsp smoked paprika

  • 4 dried birds eye chillies, finely chopped

  • 1 heaped tsp fine salt

  • 5 chicken supremes (or another bone-in cut)

For the relish

  • 2 large pickled gherkins (the chip shop kind), finely chopped

  • 1 small bunch chives, snipped

  • 1 small bunch parsley, roughly chopped

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil

METHOD

  1. Mix the buttermilk with the garlic, paprika, chillies and salt. Place the chicken in a roasting tin on a sheet of baking parchment (this will stop the sauce cooking off too quickly when you roast it later). Pour the buttermilk over it. Cover and refrigerate for at least five hours, more if you can. Take the chicken out of the fridge an hour before you want to cook it.

  2. Preheat the oven to 190C/gas 5. Roast the chicken in its marinade for 45 minutes, basting occasionally. Then turn the heat up to 220/gas 7 and let the chicken brown for another 15 minutes or more. You want the chicken to be cooked through and moist, but the skin browned.

  3. Meanwhile, mix the ingredients for the relish, and sprinkle over the finished chicken when you serve, along with some of the cooking juices.

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