I was really interested, and contacted the Hen Welfare Trust, to find out more (my next article will cover considerations before keeping hens, and an equipment needed list.). I found out after an initial outlay for a hen house, chickens are an extremely cheap animal to keep. They love kitchen leftovers and they earn their keep by laying eggs.  Ex-battery hens which tend to be the large brown hens, are by nature very good egg layers. The idea of giving the birds the opportunity to stretch their legs and see sunlight in their old age really appealed to me.

After sorting out the accommodation for the birds, buying some feed and equipment, my Wife, daughter and I arranged to visit the next battery hen pick up. We had been warned the hens would be in a poor physical state because of the conditions that they had been kept in and there would be no guarantee all the hens would make it through the shock of becoming free range, let alone lay eggs. I don’t think anybody could have prepared us for seeing the hens in such a sorry state. Nearly all hens had vast amounts of feathers missing and their comb (the red sideways crown on top of their head) was a light pink colour and dropping to the side, which is a sure sign of an unhealthy hen.

My daughter picked out four hens and we placed them carefully into a straw lined box, and with great excitement we drove them home. We put the hens into their new enclosure and probably for the first hour, they stood rooted to the spot like statues, occasionally clucking. We had the feeling the outside world was just too much for them. We named the hens after old soul singers, Dusty, Lulu, Cilla and Aretha and then decided to give them some time to settle in without us staring! My Wife and I returned an hour later to find all four hens scratching around and Lulu with a worm hanging from her beak….we knew from that moment that we had made the right choice to rescue these hens! I found it amazing to think that although these hens had been enclosed in a battery farm for the first year of their lives, within and incredibly short period of time some deeply rooted, natural instinctive behaviour must have taken over, proving just where these hens should be.

Over the months the hens became stronger, their feathers started to grow back, their comb standing upright bright red and proud and they laid countless eggs! The hens have proven to be great pets, all developing different characters, sociable following you around in a pack and rewarding not only by laying eggs every day but by watching them flourish and enjoying their well deserved retirement.

Our hens lay amazing eggs which can be eaten in so many ways. I was given a tip from my late father – a few slithers of beetroot helps to turn the yolks a wonderful rich orange. And he was right, lovely to dip your soldiers in!

My next article will focus on some considerations and recommended equipment for keeping hens. In the mean time, I am off to create some egg-celent food…..groan!

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Ingredients:

• Minced chicken – approximately 250 grams
• 1/2 Onion, chopped in to medium-sized pieces
• Green beans – sliced in to bite-sized pieces
• Baby corn – sliced in to bite-sized pieces
• Holy basil leaves – a good hand full
• 1 Tablespoon of crushed garlic

Sauce Ingredients:

• 1 Tablespoon of fish sauce
• 2 Tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1/2 Tablespoon of dark soy sauce
• 1 Tablespoon of sugar (palm or brown, preferably)
• Between 1 and 15 fresh, finely chopped red of green hot chillies (for example, Thai Finger Chillies) – obviously this is dependent on how hot you would like the dish to be

Add all of the sauce ingredients in to a bowl and mix.

How to cook:

1. Add a little olive oil (or vegetable oil) in to your wok and fry the garlic until it starts to change colour and look yellow
2. Add the chicken and cook
3. Once the chicken is cooked, add the onion, green bean and baby corn and stir for 30 seconds to 1 minute
4. Add the sauce
5. Check the taste and adjust if required
6. Add the holy basil leaves and cook for 10 – 20 seconds
7. Serve and enjoy!

This can also be made using Thai Sweet basil, which gives a completely different perspective of flavour and is fantastic, especially if you like aniseed flavour!

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Sweet ‘n’ sour is, by nature of it’s title, a combination of flavours that leaves your palet semi-confused with each mouthful, yet somehow they combine perfectly to perform a merry dance across the taste buds; just fantastic!

The problem with most traditional take away sweet ‘n’ sours is that the sauce seems somewhat radioactive in colour and ever-so slightly plastic in flavour. This recipe provides the ability to create a really fresh combination of flavours, whilst not compromising on aesthetics or aroma and, from start to finish, takes a mere 15 minutes or so to cook. I cooked this for my daughter and she ate every last mouthful, which in my eyes is a great testimony to the recipe – a big thank you to the cooking school in Thailand from which I was fortunate enough to learn this from.

Ok, the ingredients are as follows and as with every other recipe, feel free to ad-lib:

• 1/2 Onion, cut into bite-sized pieces
• Several tomatoes (nothing scientific here, as many or few as you wish), cut into bit-sized pieces
• Several bite-sized pieces of pineapple (again, down to personal taste)
• 1 Pepper (red, green, yellow or orange) cut into bite-sized pieces
• Chicken – usually I use 2 or 3 thighs, de-boned and cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 Tablespoon of chopped garlic
• 1 or 2 Spring onions sliced into approx. 1 inch pieces

Make the following sauce in a seperate bowl:

• 1 Tablespoon of fish sauce
• 1 Tablespoon of sugar (palm or brown)
• 2 Tablespoons of tomato sauce
• 1 Tablespoon of lime juice
• 1 Tablespoon of soy sauce

If you wish, you can spice up the sauce and add an extra dimension to the dish a little by adding chopped, dried chilli – I tend to include 2 or 3.

And on to the cooking:

1. Heat up your wok with a little oil and fry the garlic until it turns yellow
2. Add the chicken and stir-fry until cooked
3. Add the onion and pepper and stir-fry for about 30 seconds or so
4. Add the sauce and stir in
5. Add the pineapple and tomato and stir in
6. Add the spring onion and stir in
7. Turn off the heat and sprinkle in some freshly ground black pepper

Serve imediately with either steamed basmati rice or medium noodles and enjoy!

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I was keen to learn as much as possible during the visit, because going out to eat good Thai food here is seriously expensive and has always come across to me as being a form of alchemy to concoct. With this in mind, we arrived in Northern Thailand and promptly booked ourselves on to a local cookery course. On the morning of the course, we arrived at the school feeling slightly nervous about how difficult this could be – after all, Thai curries are bursting with flavour and surely, must be pretty complex to create? Well, we couldn’t have been further from the truth and I noted down a number of the dishes we had the delight of cooking and sampling to share with you and hopefully dispel with this myth of ‘complexity’ (unless this myth was self-created, of course….).

In addition to this, my brother’s wedding was scheduled to take place during the trip; he has married a local girl from the Lisu Hill Tribe, who reside in the middle of the jungle, on the mountains near the Burmese border. During the wedding, we we honoured to be invited to to stay for 3 days in my brother’s wife’s village and during this, were able to sample some fantastically simple, yet incredibly tasty indigenous food. I think I shall dedicate another article to this, as it probably merits its own – it is the first time I have ever eaten raw pork, but as it was slaughtered not ½ hour before being consumed, then its also the freshest pork I have ever tasted too!

Ok, so here’s a recipe I noted down for Thai Red curry; its incredibly easy to put together, seriously flavoursome and the paste can be stored in the fridge for about a month (if you put oil over the top to seal it).

Red Curry Paste

So first of all, you need to make a paste – just up the amount if you want to make more for storage in the fridge:

• A couple of fresh red chillies (if you want spicy paste, then leave in the seeds)
• 1 tablespoon of lemon grass
• 1 tablespoon of galangal (if you can’t get hold of this, then double up the lemongrass)
• 1 teaspoon of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of shallot
• ½ Teaspoon of lime skin
• ½ Teaspoon of coriander root (or, 1 teaspoon of coriander stem)
• ½ Teaspoon of coriander seeds
• ½ Teaspoon of black peppercorns
• ¼ Teaspoon of cumin seeds

Ok, so start with the seeds and dry fry them in a wok until they become fragrant (they may even begin to pop) and then put them in to your mortar and grind them in to a powder.

Now there are 2 ways you can produce the paste:

1. Place all the ingredients in to the mortar, with a pinch of salt and grind together to make a paste, or
2. Place all the ingredients in to a blender and whiz up for a moment until its a paste

I’ve used both methods (usually the blender if I’m running short on time!), but they both produce good tasting paste. Obviously the traditional method is using the pestle and mortar and there is something pretty satisfying about expelling energy pounding the ingredients, rather than flicking a switch….!

Red Curry Recipe:

As with any recipe, this is just a guideline so feel free to use other vegetables – I’ve thrown in mushrooms, green beans (these added another dimension of texture as well as flavour), pepper and used fish such as cod rather than chicken. I also find that using chicken thighs rather than breast means the chicken remains moist.

• 1 Onion, chopped
• Eggplant (I tend to chop these at the very last minute, otherwise they turn brown)
• A couple of baby corns, chopped
• 1 Kaffir lime leaf chopped
• 4 or 5 mushrooms chopped
• 20 or so sweet basil leaves
• A couple of chicken thighs, de-boned, skin removed and chopped in to bite-sized pieces
• 1 Cup of coconut milk (about ¾ of a can)
• 2 or 3 Tablespoons of curry paste (to taste)

You also need to prepare a sauce to add at the end of the cooking, which is made of:

• 1 Tablespoon of palm sugar or brown sugar
• 3 Tablespoons of fish sauce

Ok, so now the fun bit!

1. Heat some oil in a wok
2. Add the curry paste until it becomes fragrant (only takes a matter of seconds)
3. Add the chicken and cook
4. TIP – if the paste or chicken start to burn, then just add some coconut milk
5. Add the onion, eggplant, baby corns (and any other harder vegetables you’re adding) and cook for about 30 seconds or so
6. Put in the coconut milk and stir, then wait until it starts to boil
7. Add the sugar and fish sauce
8. Throw in the mushrooms
9. Turn off the heat and add the basil leaves

I tend to cook either Thai fragrant or basmati rice to go with this. Enjoy!

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