My
dear sister and her husband welcomed their first baby boy into the
family in June so we were all very happy and excited to be able to
spend some quality bonding time with the little bundle this summer. I
was in the UK for about a month, dividing my time between London and
my sister's house. I've always liked visiting the UK because of
particular produce items that are rare or ridiculously overpriced in
my hometown. As a result, I can be frequently found foraging the
refrigerated shelves of food-filled supermarkets, specifically for
dairy products and berries. I adore good dairy and the UK has plenty
of it. When I was younger I was allergic to cows milk, but as the
years progressed I seem to have shed those ailments (that or I'm just
ignoring any discomfort, which is much like how I allow my affinity
for four-legged friends to overthrow the fact that I am completely
allergic to pretty much all of them. Whatever. Puppies and kittens
for all!).
Whilst
in London, I was residing in a short-stay apartment with my brother.
The cost of eating out for every meal in the city will eat through
your wallet so we like to cook ourselves whenever the opportunity
arises. On this culinary occasion, we had chicken thighs. It's so
much more worth it to get those big packs of bone-in chicken thighs
than it is to get those individually packaged filleted breasts, and
they pack so much more flavour and moisture, I have no idea why
people don't use dark meat more. Plus the stores frequently have
offers on chicken legs or thighs and I think when we got our packs
they were “buy 1 get 1 free”. The thighs were pan-seared with
lemon thyme before being finished in the oven with some cherry
tomatoes. This was served with a side of mashed potato and drizzled
with pan juices. All this was done in a small apartment kitchen with
a dodgy oven door suffering from dislocated joints, a dinky fridge in
which every shelf was broken and a flat glass stove top with a raised
metallic rim which prevented the largest frying pan in the world (the
only pan that was in the apartment) from fitting in a sensible spot
over a single stove (in order to cook anything you would have to
place it in the corner of the pan that was receiving heat or
constantly rotate the pan to try and even it all out). But regardless
of the issues, the scrumptious lunch was a success. The chicken was
very tasty and tender and went great with the sweet juicy sunshine of
the warm tomatoes and garlic-spiked spuds. It even temporarily took
our minds off the fact that there was no hot water for three days due
to a broken boiler (also the world's largest). Temporarily being the
operative word. Washing up was not as nice.
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