Recipes: Organic fantastic

Organic chicken soup with tarragon garlic bread (pictured above)

Cooking Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Serves: 4

Helen Graves uses organic chicken drumsticks as the key flavour in her warming chicken soup recipe. Cosy up with a big bowl of the richly-flavoured broth and dunk in her easy garlic bread, flavoured with fragrant tarragon.

Ingredients
Chicken soup
1kg organic chicken drumsticks
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
3 carrots, finely chopped
2 onions, roughly chopped
800ml of chicken stock
2 bay leaves
5 peppercorns
small bunch of flat leaf parsley

Tarragon garlic bread
1 baguette
1 bunch of tarragon, leaves roughly chopped
100g of butter, at room temperature
3 garlic cloves, crushed

1) To start the soup, add the chicken to a large pan along with the vegetables, bay leaves and peppercorns. Separate the parsley stalks and leaves, reserving the leaves for garnish and adding the stalks to the pan

2) Pour cold water into the pan to cover everything then bring to the boil over a medium heat on the hob

3) Once simmering, use a spoon to skim off any scum that appears on the surface of the soup (this will help improve the final flavor of the soup)

4) After an hour, strain the soup and set aside the chicken pieces, discarding the other flavourings. Place the soup back on a gentle heat

5) Preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3

6) When cool enough to handle, remove the skin from the chicken and shred the meat into the soup. Stir together and season with salt and pepper

7) To make the tarragon garlic bread, use a serrated knife to slice into the baguette, cutting deep grooves but not cutting all the way through

8) Mix together the tarragon and garlic with the butter to create a flavoured paste. Spread this into each slice and wrap the whole baguette in foil

9) Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes then serve with soup, garnished with the reserved parsley leaves

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Organic slow roast shoulder of pork with grapefruit and scotch bonnet chilli

Cooking Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Adding a bit of spice to a traditional Sunday roast, Helen Grave's roast organic pork shoulder is inspired by the zingy flavours of Mexico. With grapefruit zest and juice and spicy scotch bonnet chilli, it's a perfect feast for sharing.

Ingredients:
Roast pork
2kg organic pork shoulder, boned and rolled
1 scotch bonnet chilli
2 onions, thickly sliced
sprigs of thyme
4 bay leaves
1 pinch of salt

Spiced rub
6 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tbsp of cumin seeds
2 grapefruit, zested and juiced
2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 1/2 tbsp of light brown sugar
1 tbsp of salt
1 tsp black pepper

Grapefruit drizzle
1 grapefruit, juiced
1 scotch bonnet chilli, very finely chopped
2 spring onions, green part sonly, very finely chopped
1 tsp caster sugar
1 pinch of salt

1) Preheat the oven to 150°C/gas mark 2

2) Use kitchen paper or a clean tea towel to pat dry the pork skin. Score a criss-cross pattern over the skin using a sharp knife to help create crispy crackling (alternatively, you can ask a butcher to do this for you)

3) Place the garlic cloves, cumin seeds and salt in a pestle and mortar and mash together, then add the zest from the grapefruit (keeping the juice to one side) and mash again. Mix in the pepper, paprika and sugar to create a paste then rub all over the pork

4) Get a large roasting tin and add the pork, scotch bonnet chill, onions and herbs. Dilute the reserved grapefruit juice with 200ml of water and pour into the tin. Season the pork with a little extra salt and wrap tightly in foil. Roast for 3½ hours

5) Uncover the pork and return to the oven to roast for a final hour, or until the crackling becomes crisp and golden. By this time the meat should be tender and cooked through

6) During this last hour of cooking, make the drizzle so it has time to mellow. Mix together everything in a bowl and set aside until ready to serve

7) Serve the drizzle with slices of the cooked pork and the crispy crackling

Recipe courtesy of www.greatbritishchefs.com