Finely chop the parsley leaves and stir into the potatoes with the butter. Once the surface is clean, push the four vegetables under the surface, together with the bouquet garni and wine. Return to a simmer, skim again when necessary, and poach quietly for an hour.Cautiously lift out the chicken and vegetables and keep hot, ticking away inside a steamer, for instance. Discard the exhausted bouquet garni and the trotter, if used.Now put the potatoes in a small pan and just cover them with some of the chicken stock. When surface scum resembles river effluent, methodically remove with a large spoon and put it down the sink.

Once again, try to get a decent chicken.1.5kg free-range chicken12 chicken stock cube1 pig's trotter, split in two lengthways by the butcher (only use if you wish to make a jelly from the resultant stock)2 celery hearts, the outside ribs trimmed with a potato peeler4 medium leeks, trimmed and well washed, left whole4 medium carrots, peeled and split lengthways2 medium onions, peeled, left whole, and each pierced with 2 or 3 clovesa bouquet garni, consisting of a fat bunch of parsley stalks, 2 bay leaves, 3 branches of thyme and a length of string to tie them together200ml white winefor the potato slurry:4 large floury potatoes, peeled and cut in half1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves only (see bouquet garni)50g butterPut the chicken and halved stock cube in a suitably large pot (with trotter if using) and cover with water Gently bring up to a shuddering simmer. Yet another, I know, but some really good things are coming up and out of down-under cooking culture just now, and I feel you should have the benefit of my recent culinary travels. Though this should be about it, for now.The recipe comes from a restaurant called ecco, in Brisbane, which last year won the Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year Award. The judge was none other than Ricky Stein, and I suspect that if this especially good terrine was one of the dishes he tried when he ate there, this alone would have secured the award. It's worth searching out a pedigree chicken for the terrine, even though the creature will be skinned, dissected, boned and packed away in an oval-lidded porcelain vessel.Poached chicken with vegetables, and potato slurry with parsley, serves 4Slurry is not the first word one thinks of in terms of dinner, but it is an accurate description here. This will help the resultant broth to set if you then wish to clarify it and make a shimmering pot of chicken jelly.I will certainly make that jelly, because I am eager to serve it with a truly delicious and simple chicken terrine This is a recipe I recently came across in Australia.

If my local butcher, Sid, has a spare pig's trotter, I'll ask to have it swiftly cleaved, and then it's into the pot with the chicken. Literally "boiling" any sort of meat or foul is going to render the meal tough, stringy, dry and dull. A gorgeous slab of salt beef brisket should languish and float in a carroty broth that merely shudders for a couple of hours, with two clove- studded onions bouncing alongside resembling a couple of menacing mines. The other very important point to consider when poaching is the stock or broth the meat is cooked in. It has always been - after roasting - a favourite way to eat a tasty fowl, though I would tend towards the word "poach". (My mother's favourite when ailing was always a tomato sandwich made with white bread and no butter, the damp slices turning a blotchy pale pink as she nibbled at them.) Of course, boiled chicken need not be thought of as invalid food alone. The whole shebang makes Blazing Saddles look like Gibbon's Decline and Fall This supremely silly show is destined to become a cult.

It deserves to run and run.The Rosemary Branch, Shepperton Road, N1 (0171-704 6665) Tue-Sat 8pm, Sun 4pm to 22 Mar. I endured a particularly nasty tummy bug recently. Once I had rid myself of most of my bodily fluids (resulting in a weight loss of nearly 7lb - the only bonus of a very nasty time indeed) and was starting to feel marginally better, the only things I felt inclined to restore myself with were the inevitable cups of sweet tea, a steaming mug of Bovril, ice-cold Ribena and, gingerly, the thought of a dish of boiled chicken and potatoes. Danny Charles is also memorably daffy, doubling as Hank and dangerously high-pitched Black Jack Jackson.

Yes, a little cutting wouldn't go amiss, but the sense of fun is completely infectious thanks to the cast As naive Luke, Nick Atkinson is superb. He gives the whole kit'n'kaboodle a bizarrely truthful centre. He has split-second timing, but instead of using it for cheap laughs, he builds his hilarious double-take bafflement and innocence into his character. What these varmints have cooked up is Unforgiveable but a heck of a lot funnier. Mind you, what can you expect from a director who lists previous career highs as Ibsen in IKEA "which caught the pine essence and functional morality of the piece" (Furniture Monthly).Yes, the choreography is a little cramped.