There’s no reason for confit to be saved just for duck legs.

You can confit just about any meat in the same way – all you’re doing is cooking meat slowly in fat.  I’ve previously tried rabbit with great success, and these chicken legs are another excellent alternative.

Confitting is a two stage process – salting and mild curing followed by long, slow cooking in fat.  It sounds complicated, but it’s very straightforward, and the basic method holds true for whatever meat you’re using.

Start by mixing a dry brine mixture of two tablespoons of salt, two teaspoons of ground black pepper, ten roughly chopped sage leaves. the coarsely chopped leaves of four big sprigs of rosemary and a whole head of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped.  Yes, that is a lot of garlic, and there’s more to come.

Rub the dry brine mix over four free range or organic chicken legs, cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.

The next day, take the chicken out of the fridge and brush off any excess salt before arranging the legs in a deep, heavy pan.  Cover the meat with vegetable oil – you may need up to two litres – and add another bulb of garlic, sliced straight across into two halves, along with a tablespoon of salt and five or six sprigs each of rosemary and thyme.

Put the pan in the oven and cook at 150c for a good two to two and a half hours, until the meat is very tender but not completely disintegrating. Turn the legs over half way through, and make sure they’re completely covered by the oil.

The accompanying bean stew only takes about a quarter of an hour to prepare, so leave it until the last minute.

Read more about the stew here…

The recession might be technically over, but these things have a long tail and there’s more misery afoot, especially once the new occupants of Downing Street start to swing their cross-party scythe.

Austerity has crept back into fashion.  People want – need – their money to go much, much farther than it ever has done before.

Extravagance is out, frugality is in.

The cookbook industry has started to catch up, with a clutch of ‘thrift’ minded titles hitting the shelves recently.  Jason Atherton’s is one such book.

Gourmet Food for a Fiver has a simple proposition – that it’s possible to cook a two course meal for £5 a head, and that that meal should still have a sense of culinary style and, well, a bit of glamour.

My first thought was that the food was likely to be terrible, too straitjacketed by the budget…a ‘fifty ways with a cabbage’ type of thing, but that wasn’t – thankfully – the case.  There’s only a single cabbage recipe here, and it actually looks quite good.

More Gourmet Food for a Fiver here

This version of the classic rogan josh includes ground almonds to both thicken the sauce and give it texture and substance.

The curry is made with lamb or mutton shoulder, cut into one inch chunks and browned in hot oil.  Before you start to brown the meat, add ten whole cloves, twelve peppercorns, one or two dried chillis and six whole cardamom pods to the hot oil and let them sizzle for a few seconds.  These spices flavour the oil and start the dish as it means to go on.

Fry the meat in batches and set aside when properly browned. Recipe continues here…

Making cheese has always seemed difficult and outside of my capabilities, something best left to other people who know what they’re doing.

Like the French.

If you think that, this recipe could change your view.  Paneer is a type of Indian cheese that’s used as the protein element of several classic vegetarian dishes from the sub-continent.  It’s very soft and fresh, and doesn’t need  pressing or aging in the same way that hard cheeses do.

Paneer has a very mild taste indeed.  It’s best thought of as a blank canvas for a wealth of Indian spices.  The cheese bursts into life when you combine it with cumin, coriander, turmeric and the like, soaking up their flavours.

Most importantly, though, it’s easy to make.  Embarrassingly so.

Find out how…