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Ella Risbridger has been hailed by Nigella Lawson as “the most talented British debut writer in a generation”, while Nigel Slater has described her book, The Year of Miracles, as “an extraordinary, heart-warming book with gorgeous recipes”. High praise indeed from some of the most eminent food writers of our time.
The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things (published by Bloomsbury) is a cookbook like no other. It’s a deeply personal, rambling memoir of a year in which food plays a central role.
Risbridger is a 20-something writer in various genres, and a keen cook who gleaned much culinary prowess from her late partner, the writer John Underwood. In a story reminiscent of Nigella Lawson’s, whose journalist husband died of cancer at the age of 47, Underwood died of cancer in his 20’s, leaving Risbridger grief-stricken.
“I know now that it’s no use waiting for miracles; you have to make them,” she writes. “You have to choose to find them from what you have, and where you are. And so you start with a carcass. You start with the scraps; you start with what you have.”
The scraps become a Leftovers Pie, the leftover chicken becomes delicious Cardamom Cinnamon Chicken Rice, and plump American pancakes see her through the bad dreams and grey rain of January.
The book rolls on through a year of “miracles” as cooking gets her through grief and sorrow. A year of fancy Fish Pie, Pork Belly & Parsnip Puree, and sticky toffee Guinness brownie pudding provides hope and even love. Recipes and delightful watercolours weave their way through the story.
Risbridger writes from the heart in a distinctive voice. “My grandmother’s house smells like cumin and Imperial Leather and soil, and I miss it very much,” she writes as she is toasting the cardamom, cinnamon and cumin in the recipe below. And of the 30 minutes to one hour it takes to cook the onions: “Anyone who tells you to cook onions quicker than that is wasting your time, and making you eat bad onions.”
Risbridger’s first book, Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For), was a bestseller, praised by Nigella Lawson as “a manual for living and a declaration of hope” and by Diana Henry as “a moving testimonial to the redemptive power of cooking”. The New York Times lauded it as a “cookbook you need for 2020” and it won Cookbook of the Year at the Guild of Food Writers’ 2020 Awards.
Buy your copy of The Year Of Miracles from Book Depository (free delivery worldwide).
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Cardamom Cinnamon Chicken Rice
Serves 4
Big pinch of saffron + 2 tsp milk (optional)
2 big red onions
2 tbsp olive oil
10 black cardamom pods (if you can’t get black, green is fine)
1 cinnamon stick
2 tsp cumin seeds
8 smallish chicken thighs (skin on, bone in)
500ml hot chicken stock
300g basmati rice, washed
30g dried sour cherries
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsp chopped coriander
4 tsp sesame seeds
If you’re using the saffron, soak it in the milk and set aside. Slice the onions into half-moons, and then into half-rings.
Add a tablespoon of the olive oil to your biggest oven-proof heavy-bottomed skillet, and heat over a low flame. When it feels warm, add the cardamom pods, cinnamon stick and cumin seeds. Toast until you can smell them: warm and inviting and familiar. Toss the onions into the skillet and stir them through the spices.
Cook for a long time. Longer. We’re talking at least 30 minutes just on onions, 40 even, maybe closer to an hour if you’ve got an hour. Stir them occasionally to stop them sticking, but they’ve got oil, and should be fine. Just keep an eye on them.
When the onions are ready – a bit caramelised, a bit sticky – add the remaining olive oil and then the chicken thighs, skin side down. Let the skin get crisp and golden, then flip them over and brown the other side. This is an annoying bit, but necessary: lift the chicken out of the pan, and set aside; it just can’t be done any other way without getting dry rice stuck to the crispy skin. If using saffron, stir the saffron-infused milk into the stock.
Add the rice to the skillet and stir thoroughly. Add the cherries and stir again. Make little hollows in the rice for the chicken thighs and sit them in, skin side up. Pour the stock directly over the rice, around the chicken, then cover tightly and cook over the lowest heat for about 20 minutes.
Taste the rice. Is it tender? If so, a quick grill, and you’re there. If not, leave for 5 more minutes and try again.
Brush the tops of the chicken thighs with sesame oil, and bash the skillet under a hot grill for 4-5 minutes, or until the chicken skin blisters and chars. Scatter with the parsley, coriander and sesame seeds; serve directly from the skillet.
Recipe and image from The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things, by Ella Risbridger, published by Bloomsbury. Reproduced with the publisher’s permission.
This story originally appeared in PS News.
