Saturday: pumpkin-leek soup, slow cooked chicken breasts on spinach

These were a couple of dishes driven by the contents of the fridge.

For the soup start a bit of chopped garlic, diced carrot, and sliced leek in rapeseed oil and cook this until the leeks soften. Add chicken stock, diced pumpkin (again, not clear what type), freshly crushed fennel seed, and herbs de provence and let it simmer until the pumpkin is cooked. Puree with the stick blender, adjust seasonings, and serve.

For the greens: cook some finely chopped garlic and onion in olive oil until the onions take on a bit of color. Add a good amount of marsala and let it reduce down almost to nothing. Add spinach, paprika (both sweet and hot varieties), ground cumin, and salt and let cook until the spinach has shrunk and most of the liquid is gone. Add almond slivers and set aside.

For the chicken: season a whole skin-on chicken breast. Sear this skin-side down in a heavy pan. Take a pre-heated plate from the pre-heated (90C) oven and spread the spinach in an even layer. Top with the chicken breast (skin-side up, of course), insert the thermometer in the thickest part of the breast, and put back in the oven. Cook until the internal temperature is 70C, about an hour. Serve on pre-warmed plates.

This was all really nice food, but I'm not convinced that the slow-cooking actually brought anything to the table this time. I think we'd have been fine with standard oven temperatures and paying careful attention.

Of course we also had a green salad.