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Chicken and other broths

      I am totally hooked on chicken broth. It is so wonderfully nourishing and with carefully chosen ingredients can be as smart as anything you will serve. I eat it throughout the year, varying the ingredients depending on what is in season. For the success of this recipe, a really good well-flavoured and preferably clear chicken stock is vital. This can be a bit confusing, as in some parts of the world stock and broth mean the same thing. That is not the case here.

      On the subject of broth versus stock, Alan Davidson, author of the indispensable Oxford Companion to Food, wrote: ‘It could be said that broth occupies an intermediate position between stock and soup. A broth (e.g. chicken broth) can be eaten as it is, whereas a stock (e.g. chicken stock) would normally be consumed only as an ingredient in something more complex.’ That is exactly the case here.

      Chicken broth has not been given the title ‘Jewish penicillin’ in some cultures without good reason. You can almost feel its goodness coursing through your veins as you eat it. My mother would make it for us when we were young and feeling a bit under the weather. We actually liked it regardless of whether we were unwell or in robust health. Sometimes she would add extra chicken necks and gizzards to the broth when cooking and we loved these delicious extras. We would pick up the necks with our small and nimble fingers, perfect for the task, and nibble the tiny little sweet morsels of flesh off them. The gizzards were chopped into small pieces and consumed with equal pleasure with her brown soda bread, thinly sliced and lightly buttered, the hot gizzards melting the butter, making for greasy chins and much giggling.

      I love how a simple broth can, with the addition of carefully chosen ingredients, be transformed into an elegant dish that combines both humbleness and sophistication. This is comfort food certainly, but that does not mean it can’t be smart and acceptable at any table.

      Keep this broth firmly in season and you will get splendid results and each changing season will give you many options to choose from. In spring use wild garlic leaves and flowers when the countryside is covered with them. Either of the two different types of wild garlic will do. The long skinny-leaved one, sometimes called three-cornered garlic, with its bell-like flowers, or the wider-leaved ramsons, with its allium-shaped flower heads, are both perfect. Watercress is vibrant, peppery and fresh-tasting. Sorrel, wild or cultivated, is tart and slimy.

      If you are a forager and interested in wild foods, this recipe will give you lots of opportunities to use the many wild greens you collect. Wood sorrel, dandelion leaves and ground elder are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is available to eat from the wild. Arm yourself with Roger Phillips’s marvellous book Wild Food, and get out there collecting.

      Cavolo nero, from the winter garden, is deep-flavoured and slightly brooding. Pea and broad bean leaves are fresh and summery. Spinach is salty and lovely and chard leaves are silky and sophisticated. Beetroot leaves and stalks when combined with dill give a lovely result. The list of possible additions goes on and on, and though I generally urge caution with experimentation, this is as good an opportunity as any to put your own stamp on a dish.

      I generally use chicken bones when making stock for a broth; however, there are several other options. A turkey carcass makes a rich and wonderful stock, a perfect base for a broth or, on another day, to be used in a risotto. Guinea fowl and quail are also excellent, though it has to be said that having enough guinea fowl or quail bones to make a stock is generally the reserve of restaurant kitchens.

      A duck carcass also produces a good stock for a broth, but you have to be a bit more focused on removing as much of the fat as possible from these greasy little creatures and I tend to add lots of robust and earthy flavours like root vegetables and lentils to the stock extracted from the duck bones.

      Chicken stock and roast chicken stock

      Keys to success

      Start with good-quality ingredients consisting of chicken bones, raw or cooked, or a combination of both.

      Frozen chicken bones work perfectly and in this instance, due to the long cooking time, can be used directly from frozen.

      I also freeze leftover carcasses from a cooked chicken, wings raw or cooked, in other words any bits of chicken raw or cooked with the exception of the liver and wing tips. The liver and wing tips should never go into the stockpot, as over long cooking they will make the stock bitter. This is a form of stockpiling of the bones and bits until you have enough to make a pot of stock. You can of course make stock with just one chicken carcass and still get a worthwhile quantity.

      Chicken necks are also wonderful in a stock, as is the gizzard, though these can be hard to get nowadays.

      I sometimes use a combination of frozen bones and fresh bones. There is nothing to worry about here, due to the long cooking time of the stock.

      Place the bones in a saucepan they fit into snugly. Leave 4cm free at the top of the saucepan so that the stock does not spill out of the pot.

      If your saucepan is too big, you may have too much water, ending up with a stock that is too thin in flavour.

      Even

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