Day 92: your favourite loungewear

I’m keeping this super short: it’s Saturday morning, the sun is shining(ish) and I’d like to get out with the dogs whilst it’s still dry (or to the sofa to watch the week’s cooking shows).

On the days you need a great big warm hug and something to lift the spirits, your bowl of reassurance - certainly mine - is likely to be found containing a soup or stew of some kind; either way - solo spoon sustenance (as in you need nothing but a spoon to convey it from bowl to mouth). Said sustenance, on this particularly gloomy Thursday (3 days ago), was Nigella’s Chicken Barley.

I found much comfort in any soup or stew containing barley in my uni days; a grain I’d forgotten much about after graduating. On student loan payday, I’d splash out to cook up a tomato and lamb stew, rich in barley, as my ‘let’s go to the student union for pound-a-pint-night, forget about the overdue coursework, and wind-down’ alternative. As a student, and indeed at any point in our lives, we find comfort takes many forms depending on how we need it delivered.

Nigella’s Chicken Barley

This was lunch on a rather gloomy, wet, and depressing Thursday, and the hardest part of the whole process - from prep to bowl - was sitting languished in the office whilst the broth-sweet aromas worked their way up the stairs and into the back of my nasal cavity.

Skins from the thighs were obviously transfigured into salty, smokey chicken crackling.

Flavour musings

Tucking into a bowl Nigella’s Chicken Barley is the equivalent to slipping into your favourite loungewear and collapsing into the deepest, squidgiest part of your sofa. If the Instagram age wants to leave food like this behind, then good luck to it. More for me! Just to look at this makes me feel good, and even the sun shone for its photo.

Needless to say, a bowl of this perked spirits and induced smiles.