Dinah Sheridan's Chicken

Key Ingredients: chicken, Taragon, garlic, rind of 2 lemons, butter, breadcrumbs

  Keepin' it simple with Dinah this week, as we follow the Chancellor Flavia wench's instructions for stuffing chicken. Here we have Lady P-Bal managing to enigmatically grate a lemon.

Unfortunately our Tesco, who delightfully sold us some rotting vegetables to go with this dish, don't stock dried breadcrumbs so we had to make our own. One clove of garlic was peeled and crushed, and some bread crumbled to make the breadcrumbs

Next, adopt a camp pose and stare quizically at the Taragon

Some confusion over Dinah's recipe here. The mad old bat has specified "7.5g or one teaspoonful of Taragon". The herb is basically old leaves, which means that it weighs next to nothing. In fact a whole jar weighs only 5g, so what to do. In the end we adopted our own methodology and chucked half a jar in.

The Taragon was placed in a bowl with the butter, grated lemon rind and crushed garlic

Next the chicken breasts were slit and stuffed. Here's the hand of P-Bal fingering the mixture into the delightful looking flaps.



Finally the breadcrumbs are sprinkled on top. Dinah forgot that breadcrumbs will brown immediately in a hot oven, and issued no instruction to cover her dish. We remembered though, and thus saved having to burn the meal to ashes

Finally, Dinah's meat was served up with new potatoes and vegetables. Voila!

To go with this treat, we decided to make a tasty-sounded beverage from one of the most powerful beings in the Universe...

Cyril Luckham's White Wine Cup

Key Ingredients: 27 bottles of white wine, sherry, apple, tonic water and cucumber (cucumber! Mad old fucker!) 

Flushed with the success of Nicola's Nectarine Juices a few months back, we hoped Luckham's punch would offer the same blend of fruity goodness and drunken incapability. Alas it was no treat!

Upon pondering that Luckham's Fluid is, in fact, just lots of wine and a bit of cucumber IN A BOWL, we mixed the various juices together

Lady P add's a dash of Kakko for good measure!

Finally, the fruit was added to the blend! Mmmm!

Luckham's Cup was no beauty to behold, and the finished beverage got a big thumbs down from HaRpi!

The Verdict!

Dinah's Chicken was a surprise hit! Although it was essentially just chicken, and the old Dame's Taragon stuffing did actually form a self-renewing film on the sink that devoured turps, it was actually quite nice. The secret was in the breadcrumbs, a crunchy topping that complimented the lemonny flavour perfectly. The inner council of HaRpi were unanimous that this was a fine dish - and indeed we are!

Unfortunately Cyril Luckham's punch was less of a joy. We now guess that Luckham died of alcohol poisoning from drinking a punch bowl full of PURE wine every night. Unfortunately our wine was also a cheap vintage from Tesco, so no love to be had there. HaRpi offered up strict disapproval and moved onto the vodka instead.

Health Factor: For a long life and a tasty treat, choose Dinah's Chicken! For a burst liver and an early grave, make Luckham's Wine Punch of Death!