There are few meals as satisfying as a roast chicken. Even if you’re having a REALLY shit day, a roastie can turn tings around. What’s more, there are always leftovers, which means there’s always another meal or two to be eeked out of the carcass.

We roasted a particularly big bird last weekend, so I decided to do the leftover chicken justice by making a few pies. It’s a pretty easy recipe, especially if you buy ready rolled puff pastry from the supermarket. The below will make 4 small pies or one biggun. Here’s how it’s done.

Ingredients

250g roast chicken – mixture of white and brown meat

1 large leek, finely chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

1 large clove garlic, chopped

2 rashers smoked bacon, chopped

70g chestnut mushrooms

300ml chicken stock

1ooml single cream

100ml white wine

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon plain flour

1 pack ready rolled puff pastry (around 350g)

1 egg, beaten

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method

Wash the leek and then chop finely. Add olive oil to a heavy bottom pan, turn on the heat and then add the leeks. Peel the carrot, chop and add to the pan along with the chopped bacon and garlic. Fry until soft and then add the mushrooms to the pot.

Once the mushrooms have cooked down a bit, add the flour and stir in. The flour will coat the veggies, and the mixture will become a bit pasty. Now add the wine, stir in and burn off the alcohol, before adding the chicken stock and the roast chicken. Stir all together, and then season with salt and pepper to taste.

You should have the makings of a fairly decent gravy by now. Reduce the liquid by about a quarter, and then add the tarragon. Stir in and then add the cream. Have a taste. If you’re happy, turn off the head and set aside to cool. If not, adjust the seasoning until you are.

Once the mixture is room temperature-ish, turn on your oven to 200 C, and start assembling your pies. Decant the mixture into whichever pie dish or dishes you’re going to use. Next, crack and beat an egg and get your ready rolled pastry out of the fridge. Using a pastry brush, paint the lip of your pie dish with the egg wash. Now cut a piece of the pastry sheet bigger than your dish, and lay it over the top of  it.

Press the pastry down around the egged lip to seal the pie. Using a sharp knife, cut of the excess off the side, and then ‘crimp’ the edge with a fork. Finally, make a little ‘chimney’ hole in the centre of the lid with a tooth pick and brush it all over with the egg wash.

The pies are now ready to cook. If you’ve made small pies they’ll take around 15 to 20 minutes, a bigger one more like half an hour. Either way, the pastry lid should be dark golden brown and puffed up when they’re done.

Eat immediately with new potatoes, steamed broccoli or a green salad with a mustardy vinaigrette.

Pretty good, although maybe not as good as the missus’ chicken pie, but thats another story.

So, catching up, the second course of our valentine’s dinner was baked cod and baby leeks straight from the pages of Jamie at home, which if you don’t have it is a brilliant book (IMHO). The cod is marinaded in a lemon and herb mix before cooking. We had ours served with garlic mash.

Ingredients

10 baby leeks, trimmed

2 x 200g fillets of cod (with skin and sustainable if possible)

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Juice of 1/2 a small lemon

Olive oil

1 large clove garlic finely chopped

2 sprigs rosemary

2 sprigs thyme

2 bay leaves

Salt & pepper

For the mash

400g potatoes

1 large clove garlic

Butter, milk salt & pepper to taste

Method

First, make the marinade for the fish. Bash up the thyme, rosemary and bay in a pestle and mortar with a good pinch of sea salt. Add a couple of glugs of olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper and the lemon juice. Chop a large clove of garlic finely, then add to the herby mixture and stir. Pour the marinade over the cod fillets in a bowl, rubbing it in and making sure it’s well coated.

Bring a pan of mildly salted water to the boil and then parboil the leeks for 3 minutes, pull out and then pat dry. Add them to the bowl the fish is marinading in, and toss.

Now put on your oven to 200 degrees C with a baking dish inside. At the same time, add your spuds to the same pan you cooked the leeks in with a clove of garlic and simmer gently. After 15 minutes, your oven should be up to temperature. Remove the dish, and remove the two cod fillets from the marinade and place them skin side down in the pre-heated dish, you should hear a nice sizzle. Then pour in the leeks and the remaining marinade. Finally place the rashers of bacon on top of the fillets before placing the dish back in the oven; it’s going to cook for 15 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the potatoes should be cooked, remove from the heat, drain, mash and add butter, milk, salt and pepper to taste. Beat with a spoon until nice and smooth.

The fish should now be ready. Remove from the oven and serve with the leeks and some of the marinade and cooking juices, and a good dollop of mash. Quite a tough dish to make look really attractive, but very tasty. Thanks Mr Oliver.

They were made on dough base that was smeared with tomato puree, then topped with a triangle of Dairylea style processed cheese, and an egg. They were then baked in a bread oven until the egg was cooked all the way through. Like the hostel, the pizzas were pretty basic, but I remember them being very tasty, and after we’d been there a couple of times, the guy let us make our own and put them in the oven.

This breakfast pizza is a more sophisticated version of the above, and uses some of the same basic ingredients as the pizza recipe featured in this earlier post.

Ingredients (per pizza)

Around 200g pizza dough

Tomato sauce

2 cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced

Teleggio cheese

prosciutto ham or cooked bacon

An egg

Salt and pepper

Method

First of all, turn your oven on to as high as it will go, and then roll out the pizza base into a roughly circular shape and create a crust by turning up the edges. This needs to be high enough to contain the raw egg once you’ve cracked it on top. I make and cook mine in the small frying pan pictured which has a 20cm diameter. This not only helps maintain the right shape and edge, but I also start the cooking process off on the hob before putting the pizza in the oven.

Leave the base for 15 minutes to prove a bit, and then spread on the tomato sauce. Add the thinly sliced tomato, and tear over the taleggio. The taleggio may smell quite strong, but it has a pretty mild flavour, and goes beautifully creamy when melted. Chop up the ham or cooked bacon and place on top, crack a raw egg on the centre of the pizza, and then season with a few grinds of pepper and a small pinch of salt.

Next, put the frying pan on the hob and turn on the gas. This gets the base going in the absence of a pizza stone. Leave on the heat for a minute or so, and then put the pizza in the oven. The pizza should be cooked in around 6 minutes or so. It’s ready when the egg white is cooked through, but the yoke is still soft.

Take out of the oven and eat immediately, either on it’s own or with a bit of rocket. Seriously tasty, and a bit different.

Going to Peter Luger’s pretty much as soon as I get off the plane in in NY has become a bit of a tradition. The routine goes. Land in NY. Head to Williamburgh. Dump bags at my mate Matt’s place. Head to Luger’s with him. Eat large quantities of meat. Drink a couple of beers. Sleep. Come round smiling the next day.

Peter Luger has been rated New York’s number one steakhouse for twenty four years in a row. For a town that prides itself on good food, that’s a serious accolade. They have two outlets, one in Williamburgh and one in Long Island, but it’s no chain; it’s an institution.

When I went a few years ago, former New York City mayor Rudy Guilliani walked in with some dolly bird and got a standing ovation from the whole restaurant, and that sets the scene pretty well. It’s a place for ’stand up guys’. A no nonsense temple to meat, styled a bit like a Bavarian beer hall, and staffed by old timers who have clearly been working there for years.

The menu is short, and not surprisingly, meat focused. To start with, we ordered an extra thick slice of Luger’s bacon and a tomato and onion salad, followed by the porterhouse steak, German fried potatoes and spinach.

The bacon is really satisfying. About the thickness of four standard rashers, sweet and smokey. The perfect accompaniment to the salad, especially when drizzled liberally with Luger’s own sweet, tangy and mildly spicy steak sauce.

The main event is the steak. The cut they specialise in is the porterhouse, or short loin. Served on the bone, it’s charred and crispy on the outside, and sweet and moist on the inside. The meat has great flavour, and is as tender as something very tender indeed. They serve it of a red hot plate, cut into strips, with melted butter to baste the meat with to keep it moist. It’s making my mouth water just thinking about it.

It’s not cheap, but its worth it. The portions are generous, and anything you don’t eat, you can take home in a doggy bag. If you’re planning a visit, I’d advise booking a table, and remember that they only accept cash, although there is an ATM outside.

The only downsides to Luger’s is that I only get to eat there once a year. But I guess that’s one of the other things that makes it special.