I've sort of stopped counting, but it is definitely, definitely five months of doing this now, isn't it? Life is cautiously, incrementally opening up. Lots of us have spent at least one Confined Cocktails elsewhere. Sometimes even with Other People. I've got an exhibition visit booked for next Friday which will require me to take *more than one train*, which is a first since March. As I've mentioned before, we're starting to talk about returns to office (cautiously, not imminently) and indeed revised working patterns now we know the ups and the downs of home working. I've had lots of lovely deliveries, and my power bill has just increased by 25% per month, which neatly encapsulates both. (Yes, yes travel savings, but those will evaporate once I'm travelling 2 days pw or more. Ugh.) But I'm also acclimatising - I never did any of that shower dodging/living in trackie bottoms early in lockdown, but I did do two major meetings on Friday wearing nothing I could have walked down the street in on my lower limbs (sturdy leggings though, perfectly respectable for online).
And I should apologise, because I Cocktailed last night. It's been a weird few weeks and it felt like the sort of Friday where opening a half bottle of prosecco and mingling it with different bits of my drinks collection would be a productive and not completely lethal way to spend the evening relaxing. (For the record, a Suze cocktail, negroni sbagliato and a damson gin kir - the latter leftovers from 2018 harvest, and I've only just decanted 2019's. Do I bother ginning again this year; will I regret it without?)
Anyway, tonight I'm on some excellent red wine instead of fancy drinks, but I shall be cocktailing at 7 on twitter as ever.
I also have to report that you people have led me into Experimentation. I really love Persiana, as recommended by so many of you, and my trust in it led me to re-visit saffron as a spice.
I don't hate saffron, but I don't much like it. And for the £££££££££ it costs, that doesn't seem like a reasonable deal. (I have a similar thing with lobster.) But still, this was a nice simple chicken marinade, for speedy cooking after evening yogas, so. Let's go with it.
Marinade is saffron, seasoning, loads of chopped garlic and LOADS of snipped rosemary. 40g said the recipe, for 4 people. You get 20g in a standard supermarket pack, and I didn't use all that tbh. It was very, very rosemaried. Not unpleasant, but punchy. It still didn't quite cover up the weird metallic backtaste I get off saffron, but it helped. The garlic too, obvs...
This is for mini fillets, sliced down a bit more if you like, so marinading is super quick to arrange. At least an hour, but longer is fine. And then it's a quick fry, 2-3 minutes a side really.
Nice summer food, again with a random salad of tomatoes and herbs (sorrel, dill and watercress today). Pretty yellow chicken, perfectly tasty. But that pinch of saffron was about a quid. Tell me... if I'd used 0.1p's worth of turmeric, wouldn't I have got the same feel?
Saffron peasant, that's me. No class. Sorry.
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