I won’t spoil his sales by repeating the recipe, but this is a great use of left-over roast chicken meat with stock made from the carcass, finely-chopped carrot and leak, peas, plus small pasta stars and onion. Instead of using olive oil, I fried the veg in the schmaltz, the chicken fat scraped off the stock once it had solidified in the fridge. Full of golden flavour.

I was lucky enough to meet Claudia Roden in 1997 when I was working for NPR and I am pleased to report that she was charming, gracious, and chatted to me for way longer than she needed to.

This is a simplified version of Claudia’s recipe. Fed 2 hungry boys and their dad.

• pack of 4 chicken thighs (I used fillets but this would be even better with skin-on unfilleted chicken)
• 1 onion
• half a big pack of smoked bacon lardons
• 2 fat cloves of garlic
• 500ml apple cider
• as many salad / waxy potatoes as you want, halved
• 2 handfuls of frozen peas
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Chop & gently fry the onion in a casserole dish until it starts to go soft, then add the lardons and then the chicken on a higher hear. Season well with salt & pepper. When the chicken is browning nicely, add the chopped garlic and continue to fry. Before the garlic can burn, add the cider, and the peas. We cooked the potatoes separately but I would suggest adding them to the pot now. Reduce heat to a simmer and put a lid on.

Cook for 30 min and serve on soup plates with crusty bread to mop up the sublime juice.

Tilly likes these so much we’ve added this to the menu in our Imaginary Café.

You will need:

• Some chicken thighs (or breasts, but thighs are cheaper and tastier. Cheaper and tastier in the Suppertime way.) – 1 per person.
• Some buttermilk – or and egg / milk mix.
• Spicy sauce of your choice, e.g. a Mexican chilli sauce.
• Some polenta or semolina
• Plenty of salt, freshly-ground pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder / granules
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp dried oregano

Bash the chicken flat with a rolling pin. Put it in a bowl for a while with the buttermilk and spicy sauce mix to marinade.

Meanwhile, in an old ice cream tub, mix all the dry ingredients, then put the lid on and shake like a Polaroid picture.

When you’re ready to cook, take the chicken out of the marinade bowl, add to the dry mix, coat and shake. Then shallow fry for about 10 minutes on each side until golden brown. Serve with veg or in a sandwich.

Cooking al fresco:

• 1 medium or small chicken
• 1 bottle of full-bodied red wine
• 1 onion
• 3 miserable carrots, chopped chunkily
• a few manky bits of limp celery
• 1 chicken stock cube or stockpot
• some sprigs of thyme
• 3 bay leaves – if you have three leaves left
• a few chunks of celeriac (optional)
• 1 tablespoon brandy
• 2 tablespoons flour
• salt’n'pepa (push it)
• 100g lardons/pancetta/bacon
• 1 fat clove garlic

Put the oven on around 170C. In a casserole with a sploosh of olive oil fry the bacon chunks with the onion, carrots, celery, cleriac until soft. Remove them from the casserole and then brown the whole chicken (seasoned with salt’n'pepa mmm baby baby) all over. Remove the chicken and put the other ingredients back in the dish. Add the flour and stir as you gradually add the brandy, stock cube and the wine. A whole bottle. Do it. You will thank me.

When your mix is bubbling and getting a bit thick, chuck the chicken back in with the bay leaves and thyme. Cover and cook in the oven for an hour or two, turning the carcass twice during the process.

Remove the chicken and reduce the sauce on the hob for 10 minutes or so. Pull the chicken apart and serve with lashings of the rich red wine sauce, vegetables – and I made some small rosemary roast potatoes to go with this, which absorbed that delicious red wine sauce just beautfully.

Nigel Slater: you showed me what to do. You showed me what to do…

Serves 2

• 2 chicken breasts, cut into strips
• 2 or 3 tsp of zatar (a mix of thyme, marjoram, oregano, sumac and sesame seeds)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 tsp seasalt
• 1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika
• 1 tsp cranberry jelly (don’t ask why – it just worked!)
• squeeze of lemon juice
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp agave nectar, or other sweetening agent
• 1/4 onion

Pound the garlic and salt into a paste and add all the other ingredients. Mush up into a thick gloopy paste, which you then smother over the chicken meat. Leave it marinade for as long as you can, then fry in olive oil on a high heat to begin with with a quarter onion cut into thick slices. Reduce the heat and turn the chicken to ensure it is cooked all the way through.

We had this with warmed pitta bread, salad, couscous, home-made hummus and falafels. Utterly divine.

Only 2 of us for supper in the ever-diminishing household tonight – I had a chicken breast and a couple of steaks. I know my daughter often finds steak a bit tough, and a grilled chicken breast sounded boring, so I thought I’d have a go. I didn’t look it up, I just made it up as I went along. Serves two. If you have two chicken breasts.

• 2 chicken breasts
• some polenta – 6 tablespoons perhaps
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp paprika (not smoked)
• 1 egg

Bash the chicken breasts flat with the end of a rolling pin. I ended up with something covering about twice the area of the original chicken breast.

Mix the polenta, herbs, salt, pepper & paprika well on a plate. One a separate plate, whisk the egg. Coat each flattened chicken breast with egg, and then cover really well in the polenta mix. Fry each escalope on a fairly high heat until crisp & golden. Delicious and very child-friendly.

• 1 large egg white
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 tsp salt
• splash of mirin (optional)
• splash of clear  rice vinegar (optional)
• chicken breast meat
• 1 cup of peanut oil or similar

Whisk the cornflour and salt into the egg white with a fork. I added a bit of mirin and rice vinegar purely because I had some in the cupboard and hadn’t found a use for them yet.

Cut the chicken into stir-fry-sized chunks and marinade in your gloop for up to half an hour. Then fry the chicken in quite a lot of oil – I used sunflower oil with a dash of toasted sesame oil added. Once the chicken pieces are white on the outside, you can drain it and add it back to the main stir fry wok to continue cooking – or in our case we cooked it longer in its own pan as we were making separate veggie and meat stir-fries.

The chicken was a huge hit – beautiful texture, and it stays moist inside.

Serves 4. You will need:

• 200g cous cous
• 2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
• 2 x teaspoons harissa paste – more if you like it hot
• 2 x large teaspoons of garam masala ground spice mix
• 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas
• 1 very large or 2 medium onions
• 1 large clove of garlic
• 3 chicken breasts
• 2 handfuls of chopped dried apricots

Chop the onion and fry in a little olive oil with the garam masala spice in two separate pans. The spices should cook a bit and flavour the oil. After the onion has cooked a bit add half the chopped garlic to each pan. Add a teaspoon of harissa paste to each pan and give a good stir.

Cut the chicken breasts into strips and add to one pan, stirring so they get coated with the spices and cook all over. Add one third of the drained, rinsed chickpeas to the chicken, and then put the rest (two thirds) in the veggie pot.

When the chicken strips look cooked, add a handful of apricots and a tin of tomatoes to each pan, season with salt & pepper, top up with a little water if needed, put lids on and simmer for half an hour or so. Make the cous cous up by following the instructions on the packet – I just poured on boiling water to slightly more than cover the cous cous in a bowl, left it for 10 minutes and fluffed it up with a fork.

Give everyone two large spoons of cous cous and put the stew on top – serve with a dollop of yoghurt if it’s extra spicy, or and / or some chopped coriander leaves.

It was delicious. The veggie one ended up much spicier than the meat one for some reason – I must have put more harissa in it. I’m having the leftovers with Turkish flatbread for my lunch tomorrow. Can’t wait.

• Small whole chicken – small enough to fit in a casserole with a lid
• Enough new potatoes, carrots and parsnips to feed your family
• 1 or 2 onions
• stick of celery
• glass of white vermouth or wine (Noilly Prat for preference. The French must be on to something. The smell of Noilly Prat and the sound of Fauré’s Requiem are by far the best arguments I’ve ever found for the existence of God.)
• clove of garlic
• sprig of thyme
• bay leaf

Heat a small amount of olive oil in the casserole and brown the chicken whole on all sides. Remove the chicken and rest on a plate.

Then slice the onions finely and fry in the casserole. Add the garlic, sliced celery, thyme and roughly chopped carrots and parsnips and halved new potatoes. When they’ve fried for a bit and started to stick, chuck in the vermouth or wine. Inhale deeply. Put the bay leaf and chicken back in the pot and top up with some water. Season with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Bring to the boil on the hob then put in a coolish oven for up to a couple of hours – I think I started at 180C and turned it down to 140C after about half an hour.

The chicken should just fall apart – I put all the veg in a warmed serving dish with a slotted spoon, and sat the chicken on top.

Skim as much fat off the juices as you can, and simmer to reduce and serve the gravy with the veg and chicken. Delicious!

Post script: I had the left-over dark meat the following day on some soda bread with a bit of mayonnaise and pepper – the best chicken sandwich ever! The meat was suffused with the divine taste of the herbs from the Noilly Prat.

You will need:

• left over roast chicken meat
• half a box of mushrooms
• 250ml double cream or just over
• garlic
• 150g parmesan cheese
• 250g or more of linguine or spaghetti
• a glass of white wine or Noilly Prat vermouth
• basil

(Made enough for 2 adults and 3 small children).

Cook the pasta. Put the grill on.

Thinly slice the mushrooms and fry in a little oil with the chopped garlic. Add the cooked, diced chicken and fry for a bit to warm it through. Turn up the heat and throw on the wine or vermouth. Inhale deeply. Reduce the wine a bit then pour on the cream and brink to the boil. Add some salt and a lot of freshly ground pepper.

Take the pan off the heat. Stir in most of the grated cheese and the chopped basil. Mix in with the pasta in an oven dish sprinkling some parmesan on top. Zap under the grill until golden brown on top.

2 out of 3 of my children wanted seconds.