Summer Fennel Chicken and Rice.

All measurements and notes approximated from memory, adapted from two different recipes with the ingredients on hand.

Take a good stewing chicken - an old, tough hen is best, but a rooster would be fine if you can find one - and cook it for a few hours with bay leaves, rosemary, red wine, and other aromatics. Garlic stalks, the ones so tough and fibrous you can't really cut them, are excellent here, as are fresh onion leaves. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover, walk away, and don't skim off the fat. You'll need it later. Add water if the liquid starts to get low in the pot.

When the meat's cooked through, strip it from the carcass and set it aside. Put the remains of the chicken back into the pot and let the bones, skin, tendons, and other parts render down with the herbs and liquids for another couple of hours. You'll be left with a few cups of dense, delicious chicken stock. Remove all the solids you can manage.

While the stock is cooking down, prepare the vegetables:

- A whole fennel plant or two, depending on their size, with the fronds chopped up fine, the stalks diced up, and the bulb thinly sliced.
- A couple of good spring onions, bulbs and stalks thinly sliced.
- Whatever garlic didn't make it into the stewing liquid, the cloves, blossom, and scape sliced fine.

When stock is ready, first add the fennel fronds and garlic, cooking until fragrant. Then, the fennel stalks, cooking until soft. Then the bulb, also soft. Then the onions, cooking until clear.

Add some red pepper flakes, lemon juice, and capers. Some freshly cut parsley, too, if you want. Let everything get to know each other.

Add two cups of long-grain white rice. Mix it all up and cook according to package directions. Imagine you're making a hands-off risotto if it helps. Add a bit of water if you're feeling nervous.

When rice is cooked, add the chicken back to the pot, and mix up everything. Salt and pepper to taste.

Eat it while it's good.