Simple roast chicken

I love chicken with all the trimmings - and at some point I must find out why the word "trimmings" is used to refer collectively to things like bread sauce, sage stuffing and pigs in blankets. But the apparent effort of producing these extra things, delicious though they are, I think puts us off having roast chicken on a week night.

Here, then, are my views about three essential ingredients to add to your plump raw chicken: plenty of salt rubbed into the skin; butter ditto; and a lemon stuffed inside. If I were allowed a fourth ingredient, it would be twigs of thyme, tarragon or rosemary, tucked all over the bird. (I am wondering while I write this whether an onion could also be fitted inside, and black pepper ground over the skin: enough!)

After five minutes' preparation, the chicken can then be put in the oven. Mashed potato and green peas to accompany the bird. A quick gravy can be made from the buttery, lemony juices.

Hot chicken salad with bacon and tarragon

Warm salads are counter-intuitive. I found this on a recipe card in Sainsbury’s and cooked it for many friends since. Simple to put together.

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts, skins removed

4 rashers of middle bacon OR lardons

1 teaspoon olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon tarragon

Ground pepper

1 lettuce

For the dressing:

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon wine vinegar

Salt, pepper

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan.  Chop the chicken and the bacon into bite-sized strips and add it to the oil. Fry until crisp.  Add the lemon juice, tarragon and pepper and allow the liquid to reduce.  Put the lettuce in a bowl and dress.  Add the chicken and bacon mixture, toss and serve.  Serves 4.

Grenadine

When Coleridge wrote about "a witch's oils", was he thinking of something like Grenadine mixed with Sirop de Menthe? For a long time, I was uncertain of what was in Grenadine: passion fruit, said my mother. Pomegranate, suggested my French dictionary. When, many years later, I looked at the bottle, it seemed to be a concoction of various red fruits.

It was my great aunt who introduced me to the drink at her house in Lorgues. She also introduced me to brandy at a similar age but that is another story. She will crop up again, I suspect, in relation to Oranzini and chicken with tarragon.

Although I remain fond of Grenadine, sugary drink though it is, I was very nearly put off it for life when given a glass of it by Mademoiselle Sagnier, an old lady in St Pons de Mauchiens, the village in the South of France where my parents owned a house. She lived next door and invited my mother and I in for a drink. There was mould growing on the grenadine - presumably attracted to the sugar - and out of politeness, I sipped the drink but through closed lips.