Chicken stock for the soul

I do it every weekend to reconnect with my inner Luddite.

How long before something electronic in the kitchen starts talking back? "If that bowl isn't spotless, your egg whites won't stiffen." "Add lime juice if you must, but your Spanish chicken will taste like Thai curry." Like a digital spouse.

Tech in the kitchen has been on my mind lately. First I had an extended test session with a press-and-play pasta machine, relatively low on the artificial intelligence front, I'll grant you, yet a quantum leap from toothless crones in black making pasta by hand.

Now I'm having fun with the Magimix Cook Expert (Road Test, page 58), an induction-powered cooker/mixer (like a Thermomix) and a sophisticated food processor, too (unlike a Thermomix). The key word here is processor. A series of programs control three variables heat, blade-speed and time - in myriad combinations. Set, forget.

It's a little like a modern camera:

you can control the focus and exposure manually, but why bother when there's computing horsepower to do it for you?

OK, so it won't teach you anything about "feel", or technique, but anyone capable of following instructions and pressing the right buttons will get results.

And I feel sure future models will come with interactive voice systems and WiFi capability. To be honest, I love it. But not enough to buy one; it is, after all, worth more than one of my cars. I'm not the target audience anyway. I'm not time poor; don't have groups to cook for, a family, a constant demand for decent meals on the table at 7pm.

More importantly, I like old-school cookery too much. Chopping with a good knife, sauteing, deglazing, braising. Smelling. Messy cooking. Journey and destination.

These tech-laden cookers - the Magimix and Thermo are the tip of this product segment iceberg - are all about the destination. If making a curry in the Magi gives you as much pleasure as doing it the oldfashioned way, you probably don't like making curry much.

So what I do just about every weekend to reconnect with my inner Luddite is make chicken stock. It's the most basic, undemanding yet profound thing: a very gently simmering pot of bones and aromats steaming away all weekend; the smells through the house; the straining, filtering, removal of fat. It's comforting, satisfying, and having a few litres of frozen chicken stock ready to go is the home cook's equivalent of a drinker knowing there's wine in the fridge. But it's not something I'd typically follow a recipe for.

Then I got inspired by The Natural Cook, a book by Matt Stone; he's a wonderful chef and the book has a point of view, a raison d'etre, which is more than you can say for most Australian food publishing. It's about minimising waste, doing things from scratch, connecting the environment with your kitchen.

It's good stuff. I cannot see a carp tagine in my future, but Matt's chicken broth is quite the biz: garlic, spring onion tops, ginger, apple cider vinegar, a whole bird and water. Very different to the old carrot/celery/onion/parsley/bay/peppercorn version I make, and a wonderful soup base.

And all you need, other than ingredients, heat and a pot, is a timer. Nothing that talks back. For now, anyway. Long may it last