Dear Nigella

As a service to our readers, this week we bring you a guide in plain English to making all those dishes with intimidating foreign names.

Let’s start with pollo al ajillo.  What language is THAT?  Who knows how to pronounce it? Don’t even try. The important thing is, it means “garlic chicken”, and the other key ingredients are sherry and port.

It’s delightfully simple.  Carefully cut up a 1.15kg chicken, brown it in exactly 2 tbsp olive oil, then put it in a pot with 18 peeled, whole cloves of garlic, and precisely 3 medium  potatoes. Add 1.5 cups of sherry and 1 cup of port. Be sure to use a standard 240ml tea cup.

Ah, but what kind of sherry? Fino, amontillado, oloroso, palo cortado, or other? More pesky foreign words! But not to worry, we will taste each one for you and decide which is best. 

Well, the fino is nice and dry. Let’s try the amontillado. Maybe this one’s better.  Bit sweeter.  And actually the oloroso is not bad at all. Perhaps a touch too much raisin on the mid-palate? Let’s sip the fino again.  Oops, that bottle’s suddenly empty. The fino is finito! Geddit? Hahaha.

Know what, let’s just use some of each. Mix them all together, taste first of course, and, hey, if you use enough garlic you won’t be able to taste anything else anyway!  As for which port to use … doesn’t matter. Any port in a tea cup! Hahaha. Storm in a tea cup. Whatever. 

Next up is coq au vin which means … rooster! Rooster in wine. Sorry, I nearly used another word for a male chicken which is a bit rude.  So this is basically the same as the first recipe except with less garlic.  You’ll need about one entire chicken and some other stuff, which you should measure, if you can be bothered,  but let’s get the wine right first. The choices are white, red, or pink. With bubbles or without. Let’s try the syrah. Remember that poem? The syrah came down like a wolf on the fold, something something something.  

Or perhaps the cabernet would be better.  Wasn’t Lisa Minelli great in that? Let’s drink to Lisa. I wonder what her favourite chicken dish is?  And how come all foreign dishes include chicken? Like boeuf bourguignon – behind all that confusing  alliteration it’s chicken in wine, really, except with steak instead of chicken.

Julia Child has a recipe for it. She says you must use “a full-bodied Bordeaux or Burgundy”. I have some of that here. Mmmm. Very full-bodied.  I wonder how Nigella is? She must get lonely.  Now that she’s rid of that awful man.  If you’re reading this, Nigella, I’ve always wanted to tell you how much I admire your mouclade.

Mouclade is not a rude word. It is chicken in wine, but you have to substitute mussels. Always use a muscular wine for this dish! Geddit?? Hahahaha.  Bet you like a guy who makes you laugh, hey Nigella?

Oh look, I forgot to finish the oloroso so, so, so delicious sherry. Time for rinones al jerez! Or kidneys in sherry, which is very similar to chicken in sherry except chicken kidneys are too small so you have use lamb ones.

Next up is that famous dish from northern Spain, pollo al chilindron. This is … chicken in wine!  No wonder perfidious, perfectly hideous foreign cooks invented molecular cooking. It’s a transparent attempt to disguise the fact that everything on the menu is chicken in wine.

 Anyway, you need one cup of dry white wine, which is a good start. I’ve chosen a flinty chenin blanc. The problem is, once you’ve added it to the dish and cooked it, the wine ends up tasting of chicken. Try it, you’ll see.

So here’s a secret chef’s trick for avoiding contamination of the wine with unwanted notes of chicken fat. Take one deboned chicken, skin on, and give to the dog. Slice three bell peppers and put them in the compost. Chop a medium onion and discard. Mix the rest of the ingredients and toss them in the bin. Chill the wine and drink.