Navarin d'agneau printanier (Spring Lamb Stew)

Of course when we student/young folk speak of 'Lamb stew', what we really mean is that slightly cheaper type of lamb...'Chicken' stew. (It'll be an improvement I'm sure) Even Rachel Khoo says she likes to add a little something different to her traditional French recipe's. That's license to experiment, isn't it?

So this is the first of many French recipes that we'll be tackling together in our little English Kitchen/Dining Room. Julia is a fitness instructor and lifeguard whose days consist of a constant cycle of eating and exercising. She's also my lovely landlady. I am the student lodger that does slightly less exercise but probably eats the same amount... :P

Tonight, Julia is a little under the weather: exhaustion through too many cycles, squats and suicides i reckon. Slow down girl! As a result, we're cooking 'something brothy' as the lady calls it: Navarin d'agneau printanier...or 'ragout de poulet' rather. We've stayed true to the little Paris Kitchen method and all the other ingredients are exact. We figured that chicken was perhaps a softer meat for those of us that have only just popped their meat cherry! (Julia recently broke free of vegetarianism...a disease I'm told effects About 3% of the UK population. Just kidding...don't bite me Julia! Or worse still, take me back to boot camp at half 6 in the morning!)

So our chicken stew was a great success. I don't think we could have wanted it more after finding out it took 1 1/2 hours to cook! First lesson of cooking like real adults: always check the timings and start cooking accordingly!

I've never made a stew before so I wasn't really aware of the difference between a stew and a soup.

I still don't really know.

In my inexperienced imagination, I envision soups to be thick pastes of blended ingredients and stews to be thinner with chunky chopped ingrediants and an awesome mixture of herbs and spices, each one complimentary of the others in a way that only real chefs can determine.

Well our stew was well worth the wait! Onions, chicken, crushed garlic, olive oil, we chopped, cried, browned our meat then simmered in water with chunky chopped carrots, thyme, stock and a bay leaf. (It's true, the Paris kitchen recipe states that stock in not necessary. However, our chicken lacked the juicy flavours of the lamb neck marrow bone used in Rachel's Khoo's show).

We popped the pot into our warmed oven and waited, strained butter beans and chickpeas and prepared the sundried tomato loaf we'd cooked in the trusty bread maker earlier that afternoon. Other than dumplings, I couldn't think of a more perfect accompaniment to a good stew than teared chunks of freshly baked bread with a generous spread of butter dunked and devoured. Thanks very much!

Towards the end of the the baking time (thankfully Chicken cooks quicker than lamb!) we chucked in some fresh greens and beans, waited until they softened and then swallowed two rather large helpings for two very hungry hard workers, with a bowl of bread between us. The combination of flavours made a seriously tasty broth of juices, which filled our little kitchen with a teasing aroma all evening. It almost dissuaded me from having a bowl of Ben n Jerry's karamel sutra ice cream to finish off...but it didn't...and we did...

Sorry Rachel Khoo...but would you resist it?

One recipe down...success!!! How many more to go Jules?