My sister has always maintained that chicken is a waste of a meal. I’m not exactly sure what that means but I think it has something to do with it being bland and boring. And true, if I go to one more wedding and see as my alternate drop main a stringy chicken breast with ” insert pesto/ semi dried tomato/balsamic glaze” here while The Hungry One tucks into a hearty rump I’m going to be tempted to eat the bridesmaid’s bouquet.

But there is something about roast chicken.

I have no idea how to carve it, the action of shoving something indelicately up the chicken’s rear end almost makes me feel …

I never grew up with chickpeas. They just didn’t make it into the shopping trolley. In fact, I’m not sure we even went down that aisle of the supermarket. There were frozen peas in the magical tinned salmon casserole that Mum made with noodles. There were tinned tomatoes in the bolognaise and there was plenty of fresh fruit and veg. There was always an apple in the fruit bowl somewhere.

But pulses didn’t really raise ours.

Until a couple of years ago when I found that white things didn’t suit me so well. The beloved oodles were gone. The potatoes were put on the back boiler. The pulses came to the fore.

Everything …

Chicken filo rolls. Not chicko rolls , but Chicken Filo Rolls.

It’s classic Tuesday night at Dad’s fare.

What do you do when it’s 1995, you’ve got two hungry teenage girls who spend the front half of the week with you, a collective date with “Mad about You” at 8pm on Channel 10 and you were never really the one who cooked? ( Barbeques and the signature dish of french toast aside).

If you’re my dad, you sensibly turn to Lenards. The chicken florentine filo roll is a modern marvel- A skinless chicken breast, hugging a pale green mysterious centre we can only assume is some kind of pureed spinach, padded with cream …