FLOWER POT KITCHEN: BUTTER SEARED COD WITH MIXED BEAN AND CHARD BROTH

1 Mar 2022

BUTTER SEARED COD WITH MIXED BEAN AND CHARD BROTH

A rich and sumptuously rewarding good for you dinner, butter seared fillet of cod served on top of a full flavoured chicken broth loaded with mixed beans and chard.

Hands on time 10 minutes / Cooking time 30 minutes

Ingredients

(serves 2)

2 large pieces of fresh cod

2 tbsp butter

2 glugs olive oil

1 can mixed beans drained

6 leaves of chard sliced

1 ltr chicken stock (homemade recipe below)

4 okra fingers chopped

1 small onion finely diced

2 cloves garlic sliced

1 rib of celery finely diced

1 leek finely diced

1 small carrot finely diced

1 bay leaf

2 sprigs of thyme

2 tbsp fresh parsley chopped

Sea salt

Black pepper

Heat a shallow casserole dish, add one tablespoon of butter and a glut of olive oil, heat medium, add the okra, onion, garlic, celery, leek and carrot soften gently for 15 minutes, add the chicken stock, bay leaf the thyme and bring to a simmer, add the beans, season to taste with salt and pepper.

Heat a skillet medium hot add the remaining butter and olive oil, sear the cod for 3 minutes until a golden crust is established, turning over and finish cooking the cod by turning the cod over and gently placing in the broth, add the chard at this time too, leave to simmer for a couple of minutes, serve immediately and enjoy.

HOMEMADE CHICKEN BONE STOCK

1 organic free rooting chicken

1.5 ltr water

1 onion quartered

2 carrots

3 sticks celery

4 cloves garlic crushed

1 bay leaf

2 tbsp parsley stems and leaves

3 sprigs of thyme

1 sprig rosemary

10 black peppercorns

Pinch sea salt

Place all the stock ingredients in a deep pan and gently simmer for an hour or so, take off the heat when you can pull on a bone and it gently pulls away from the chicken. Leave the chicken to cool in the broth, this will allow some of the stock to soak back into the chicken ensuring you have the juiciest chicken ever for other meals. Strain the stock ready for use.

Good For You Geeky Food Facts About Jewish Penicillin Stock

Chicken bone stock is so good for you, the broth water has calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, trace minerals, chodroitin sulphates and glucosamine, these latter two ingredients are expensive to buy as supplements, but they are found naturally in bone broths. You need magnesium so your body and convert vitamin D into it's active form so that it can in turn be used to absorb calcium. We only need around 400mg of calcium a day, but the RDA says 1200mg, the reason for this is that we do not absorb all the calcium we eat, but if you have a balanced diet the extra calcium you absorb can lead to kidney stones and calcium in the blood stream and heart disease, chicken stock is anti viral, anti bacterial and scientifically proven to be 25% as effective as penicillin.

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LIFE MY PASSION

Welcome to my daily life of cooking, one winters day many years ago my family and I were all inspired by a back to back rainy day of River Cottage this got us to stop talking about and start actually doing, suddenly three weeks later eight vegetable beds were dug, greenhouse erected and our first vegetables were propagating, this was the start to raising and growing our own food, our fabulous son Oscar changed our path in life which lead us to sell our small thriving restaurant of 10 yrs and to start our new life (Terrifying!) a life of the self sufficient in touch with nature and seasons, taking a step back and looking forward to a slower change of pace and making the most of every moment.

My passion for cooking was stronger than ever and having time at home with Oscar I found I had a new direction and I was no longer striving for perfection, I was suddenly very passionate for the enjoyment of the other side of food, something I had not realised, being the Chef/Cook and every other duty of your own small restaurant made me see that I never actually took time to cook what I wanted!

So there I was muddy boots and hands digging deep in more than one sense and I found myself transported back in time to where everyone grew some of their own food, it is a wonderful world with a real sense of achievement and loss, Slugs Snails and Caterpillars! But thats another story! Childhood memories of summers when I lived with my grand parents reminded me of so much that I had learnt about the make do and mend generation that I had forgotten.

Now as a family we love our free wild food days where we gather what nature has provided, have gone from being mini mini garden urban small holders, who did raised pigs at home because we could not wait to find land and supporting ourselves from our garden to now owning a very small farm that allows us to grow more vegetables for the whole of our family and neighbours, raise our own gorgeous Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, (Sausages!) and pets! Dorset Down sheep, chickens for eggs and pet goats! Suddenly having large quantities of produce started to wake up the Cook in me!

The Cook was awake that part of me that wants to cook for the masses and I found myself setting up Flowerpot Kitchen, a Farmers Market Stall, I wanted to use our honest raised meats and make old fashioned pork pies, rabbit pies and game pies from the local game keeper along with old fashioned techniques and the best hot water crust pastry. This in turn grew to a small cottage industry from home weekly supplying three farm shops and a deli along with also attending three farmers markets A few years later there came a time when my son Oscar's health changed and it was an easy decision to stop.

I still hold the occasional pop up 40 seater restaurant or gourmet lunch which we do for local charities for the love of sharing food and to remind that Cook in me why I love our go slower self sufficient life!

So here I am sitting amoung the vegetables watching the chickens loving that every season nature teaches me something new and that nature is in charge! She has taught me to just go with it and grow. Give it a try from a tray of salad on your windowsill to a few tomato plants it all counts.