This weekend my partner and I were child free for the first time in months. Which obviously meant long lie ins and lots of laziness. But it also meant I could spend some time in the kitchen.
Friday night I popped to Sainsbury's and bought a small whole chicken. When I roast a chicken, there's a few rules I stick too and my method doesn't fail me. I put a lot (and I mean a lot, I never said this was healthy roast chicken) of seasoned butter underneath the skin of the breast and cover the skin in butter, making sure you tuck a some between the legs. I sometimes mix the butter with fresh herbs (if I have any) or smoked chilli paste. This time I just went plain and simple and then added a lemon, cut in half, and a few garlic cloves into the cavity. I always roast my chickens on a bed of thickly chopped onions and cover with foil until the last half an hour. This way the onions can properly caramelize without burning. I usually cook the chicken for 1.5/2 hours and rest for 15 minutes.
As we had more time to spare and I had more time to cook, I decided to make a quick roast dinner. We had new potatoes in so why not! I used boxed stuffing because, as much as I love homemade stuffing, I just did not have the energy or the money for ingredients.
Sainsbury's also have spring greens for 70p which is ridiculously cheap. I fried and onion, seasoned it, added the greens and then braised in chicken stock - adding more stock as I go as it cooks down. I added the zest of a lemon at the end. I love my greens fresh and lemony but if you're not keen, try the zest of half a lemon and increase to taste. I'd also recommend frying bacon first and then cooking the greens in bacon fat but unfortunately my Crohn's does not like bacon or pork so I was unable to do so.
Saturday morning was weird. It's usually my job to wake up Saturday mornings with Freja and get her breakfast. I usually let James lie in as he works all week and I don't. But this time we both slept in until late which was lovely but confusing.
We decided to go to Gourmet Burger Kitchen for lunch and then headed home for a quiet afternoon.
As we had the chicken carcass leftover, I went through my trusty Delia cookbook and found a recipe for homemade stock.
So into a large saucepan went the chicken bones, skin and any scraps we had (we saved the rest of the chicken for dinner) as well as an onion (skin on and chopped in half), a large carrot roughly chopped, two celery sticks roughly chopped, three skin on garlic cloves, fresh rosemary and fresh mint (we had some leftover from the roast so in the spirit of not wasting things I threw it in), dried mixed herbs, peppercorns and sea salt. I then added two pints of water and brought everything to a boil. I then simmered it for 3-4 hours which made the house smell like Christmas and it was wonderful.
Once finished, I strained it through a sieve and froze half for later use... Chicken noodle soup maybe?
Saturday nights dinner was a little easier on me than the roast. We'd gone to the shop earlier in the day for vegetables and grabbed a roll of ready to use shortcrust pastry that had been reduced to 75p! Considering I was exhausted and in pain, I couldn't be dealing with making my own pastry so this was a bonus for me. We also found some podded peas discounted, so I sat watching quiz shows and podded them on the sofa. The smell reminded me of podding peas with my nan.
The simpler the recipe the better in my opinion and this was as simple as it could get - I don't know the quantities of anything as my cooking style is instinct and guess work.
I fried some frozen leeks in butter, they tend to cook down a lot so I'd recommend putting more than you think into the pan, then added flour to create a roux. I then added my homemade chicken stock to form a sauce, seasoned and added the leftover chicken. The beauty of this recipe is the stock brings all the flavour. The pie is essentially just leeks and chicken so using homemade stock makes it something special.
Once the chicken was added, throw it into a pie dish and top with pastry. Egg wash, decorate as you wish (James tried to make a ghost out of pastry but was less than successful!) and put into a preheated oven for 30 minutes. I served ours with fresh boiled peas and that was it. James absolutely loved it!
Okay so confession time! I don't actually like savoury pies... I know it's awful. But even I liked this one. I think the fact I'd made my own stock swayed me a bit but it was delicious and I'm definitely going to be making it again soon.
The things I learnt from this weekend are that I do actually like certain savoury pies (if they're homemade) and that making your own chicken stock is absolutely worth it. I couldn't recommend it enough. I'm rather excited to use my next batch which is sat in the freezer waiting to be used. Pre-bought stocks are an amazing help in the kitchen but if you're making something extremely simple and you want the most flavour a chicken (or any animal really) can bring then try making your own. It's relatively cheap to make - you only need one of each vegetable. I was lucky and found fresh herbs reduced. I am the discount queen when it comes to grocery shopping! But if you can't find fresh herbs or even afford fresh herbs, dried are fine but just not as flavourful.
I'm now trying to come up with ideas for the remainder of my stock.... Ideas welcome.
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