{"id":1444,"date":"2015-07-01T19:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T19:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwardpoet.co.uk\/backyard\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2020-06-13T15:18:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T15:18:28","slug":"austerity-chicken-with-colin-marshall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwardpoet.co.uk\/backyard\/austerity-chicken-with-colin-marshall\/","title":{"rendered":"Austerity Chicken with Colin Marshall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chicken\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"receipt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Pasties\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/markwardpoet.co.uk\/backyard\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Interview-with-Colin-Marshall.mp3.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

These are austere times for many families. The \u2018tightening of belts\u2019 is squeezing the life out of many of our communities. Minimum wage jobs, zero hours and short-term contracts, flexi-hours; coupled with welfare cuts which has reduced government borrowing while at the same time increasing household debt for poorer families. A million people regularly use food banks and the gulf between the haves and have-nots is increasing at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? If this applies to you help is at hand (providing you like chicken!) Musician and chef Colin Marshall using one large chicken and some assorted veg created thirteen dinners, enough to feed two people for nearly a week at a total cost of fifteen quid.<\/p>\n

Colin hails from Southport shrimping stock. He left school at sixteen to work in a sheet metal factory and later attended university where he read History and Politics, before going on to complete a post-grad at Bristol in Vocational Studies. He became a careers advisor before dropping out himself and living in a squat in Amsterdam for two years. He fell into chefing in his mid-thirties, but music is his real passion and when not working in the kitchen he\u2019s playing and teaching guitar in the area.<\/p>\n

He has a deep social conscience and the other week he set himself a challenge to create a week\u2019s worth of nutritious meals for the price of a takeaway. I went along afterwards to interview him.<\/p>\n

Colin\u2019s leftover chicken pasties<\/b><\/p>\n

First make a B\u00e9chamel sauce:<\/p>\n