If you’ve ever seen a hen in the rain, you’ll know what “really miserable” looks like. After an absolutely glorious weekend, today is looking like a stinker. In addition to the steady drizzle there’s a nasty gusting wind that’s doing it’s best to whisk my polytunnel away to someone else’s garden, and the hens – in best British tradition – are determined to grimly stick it out in the rain. For crying out loud, girls! Go inside!

It’s the perfect day for a bit of comfort food and in our household we’ve developed something we call “Stewp” – a cross between a stew and a soup – that fits the bill perfectly. It was largely inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe which we saw him make on his Jamie at Home show. It’s an Italian Bread and Cabbage soup, which tastes an awful lot nicer than it might sound. Jamie makes his in a beautiful brick oven in his garden. I don’t have a brick oven, and my wife won’t let me build one, but it works in a regular oven as well.

As you’ll see if you look at his recipe, Jamie’s version is a mixture of some classic Italian ingredients – pancetta, cavalo nero, fontina and parmesan cheeses, garlic, and so on – but the basic method of the dish can be applied to a variety of ingredients. That basic method is:

1. Roast or grill your ingredients.
2. Slowly cook in chicken stock in the oven.

Here is our current favourite version, and it uses good quality free range chicken.

1. Roughly chop a couple of onions. Add to a baking tray with a sprig of rosemary, a couple or three whole garlic cloves and a few glugs of olive oil. Cook in a medium hot oven until the onions are starting to caramelize.
2. Cut your chicken into portions and add to the onions and garlic. Return to the oven to brown well.
3. While the chicken and onions are cooking, roughly dice some potatoes, chop some cabbage (savoy, or kale also works well) and grate some cheese (cheddar or an edam-type cheese work great).
4. When the chicken is well browned, remove from the tray and add some thick doorsteps of stale ciabbatta. Mix well to coat the bread in the oniony-garlic juices and return to the oven to brown (this will only take a minute or two.
5. Remove the tray and turn the oven down slightly. Now, in a casserole dish you want to layer your ingredients – onions, potatoes, cabbage, chicken, bread, sprinkle of cheese, onions, potatoes…. Make sure you finish with a layer of bread on top, and sprinkle the bread with the remaining cheese. Now fill the casserole with chicken stock so that it doesn’t quite cover the top layer of bread. Cook in the oven until the potatoes are tender and the top is golden brown.

This is a great, warming, comforting dish, and at least it got one of the chickens inside and out of the rain!

Have you tried a similar recipe? If so, leave a comment and let us know.

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