Don't Sweat the Aubergine

this treatment.
    Put the gammon in a stockpot. Cover with cold water. Bring slowly to a simmer; following the same principle that cautions you to heat a stew slowly ( see here ), you can allow a good half an hour for the bubbling to start. Skim off the scum, and throw in the vegetables. Simmer, uncovered and on the lowest possible heat (with just a few bubbles breaking the surface), for a further hour.
    Remove the gammon from the stock, carve and serve with mustard, mashed potato ( see here ), and cabbage. You can leave the meat to rest for a while before carving; or allow it to rest in the stock after the heat has been turned off.
    The purpose of the onions and leek is not to be eaten, nor to flavour the gammon (they won’t), but to add flavour to the stock. The liquid may look insipid, but it will form the base of delicious soups.
    You can also use the stock to make a sauce. Pour a couple of ladlefuls into a saucepan, boil it to reduce it to about half a dozen tablespoons, check that it won’t be unbearably salty, and pour in a 284ml pot of double cream, with 1 tsp mustard. Allow this sauce to bubble and thicken a little, and serve it with the gammon. You might want boiled potatoes, or rice, instead of the mash.
    Or make a béchamel-type sauce with half stock, half milk ( see here ). Say, 150ml stock, 150ml milk, 28g butter, 28g flour – or larger quantities of all these ingredients if you like. Throw in a chopped tablespoon of parsley, or stir in some cooked spinach ( see here ).
    My butcher sells bacon hocks, each with enough meat for about 3 people. They’re cheap. The meat can withstand long simmering: I usually give it a couple of hours.
Sautés
    ‘When dealing with chickens,’ Richard Olney writes in
Simple French Food
, ‘a sauté is not a stew, because a true sauté, it is claimed, never contacts a liquid during the cooking process.’ (Actually, the book has ‘a true stew’, but that must be a misprint.) Some authors ignore this distinction, or perhaps disagree with it. Anne Willan, in
Classic French Cooking
(an old Sainsbury’s book), offers a sauté of chicken with tomato: you brown the jointed chicken, then make a sauce with shallots, garlic and tomatoes; then you put the chicken in the sauce to finish cooking. You might as well call that a stew. Here , I did. It’s related to such dishes as chicken Basquaise, with tomatoes and peppers, or chicken cacciatore, with tomatoes and olives. What I’m describing here is a dish in which you brown the chicken, remove it from the pan, pour away most of the fat, and make a sauce that accompanies the meat.
CHICKEN SAUTÉ
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4
    4 chicken legs
    Olive oil, or butter/oil mix
    200g button mushrooms, sliced
    1/2 garlic clove, chopped
    Butter for sautéing the mushrooms
    Small glass white wine
    Put a small knob of butter and a little oil in a heavy frying pan (large enough to contain the 4 pieces of chicken) over a low heat. Season the chicken pieces with salt and (if you like) pepper. Cook gently for 25 minutes, uncovered. 1 Turn over; the skin should be browned and crisp. Cook for a further 10 minutes. 2 (Rearrange the chicken in the pan if some pieces are cooking faster than others.) While the chicken cooks, sauté the mushrooms and garlic with some butter in a separate pan ( see here ).
    Remove the chicken to a warm plate. Pour away the fat from the chicken pan (not down the sink, where it will solidify), and deglaze it ( see here ) with the wine, stirring and scraping to get the tasty residues in the pan into the sauce. Bubble the wine until it reduces by half ( see here ), add the mushrooms , and check the seasoning. Serve the chicken with this mushroom sauce.
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VARIATIONS
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    Liquids for sauces: red wine, brandy, cider, calvados, sherry, marsala, vermouth … ; or vinegar (2 tbsp, reduced by half); or chicken stock. You could add cream (a 284ml pot) to these deglazing liquids, or deglaze the pan with cream alone; let it bubble a little to thicken. 3 If using alcohol or stock alone, enrich it once it is reduced with a small knob of butter, added away from the heat. 4
    Other garnishes: shallots (onions would be too assertive for this dish – although small, sweet ones would be good), also softened in butter with some garlic; dried porcini, soaked in tepid water for half an hour or so and warmed through with the deglazing liquid (and their own flavourful soaking liquid); sliced, sautéed courgettes; roasted asparagus