rick stein's chicken chettinad

It’s amazing how quickly you can develop a routine from scratch, and one that everybody is relatively happy to follow at that.

Saturday’s no longer stretch out in a seemingly never-ending day of relentless child entertainment from the moment Milo gets up until we the point we wrestle him into bed. Instead everybody gets some quality time to do their own thing, stuff is achieved and fun is had by all. How come it’s taken us six years to work this out? The surprising scientific secret is ‘rugby’, and I highly recommend it. All you’ve got to do is:

• Saturday morning: I get up; make breakfast for me and Milo, tea in bed for Ana, and then the boys cycle to the mighty Barnes RFC minis for training. Ana has stays in bed.
• After minis we go for a ‘pint’ in the club house and the boys run about some more before cycling home.
• Lunchtime handover: We get home, Ana makes lunch and I get my kit and go and play for the mighty Barnes RFC Vets. Ana wishes she’d stayed in bed.
• Post-match pint, and then I go home via Waitrose to get ingredients for Saturday night dinner. Plus wine of course. Ana and Milo watch Strictly

Generally this works like clockwork, Milo is knackered, Ana’s had a lay-in and I get to play rugby.

The only variable is what we have for dinner, but this variable – let’s call it ‘X’ – is dependent on Ana (‘A’) having an opinion on what she wants other than wine (‘Y’).

Broadly the Saturday night formula should be A+Y+Y (if thirsty)=Y. However A’s value tends to be zero (0), other than wine of course. So because I’ve got no time for maths, we have Rick Stein’s Chicken Chettinad because I love cooking it, and it’s blydi delicious!

It’s another Saturday tick in the box. If only they’d hurry up with the Bridge 2 or some more Wallander our weekends will be complete.

sources
chicken chettinad - Rick Stein's India, in Delicious August 2013, p47