What to do with half a chicken

Wednesday for me is a funny day for dinner.   It's the day I look in the fridge!!

What I mean is that once a week, usually about Wednesday, I check the fridge to see what has been put in there over the weekend and maybe needs to be dealt with.   Mostly it doesn't need to be eaten right away but it allows me to plan a meal in the next couple of days that will reduce my wastage by using up the left overs.

Some days I'm truly surprised at what I find.  Oh, sure, I can usually remember cooking it and know when it is from, but often I have completely forgotten about it's existence.

Today was just such a day.  This morning I dutifully checked the fridges.  For reasons I won't go into I have two fridges, one in the kitchen and another one in the utility room.  Today I found half a roast chicken.

I remember cooking roast chicken when a friend popped in at the weekend but I had completely forgotten that a whole half a chicken was residing in the cool spaces of my fridge.

and so the title emerged.  and to be honest I didn't really have a clue.  Oh, I know plenty of ways of using up chicken but nothing tempted my taste buds.

I didn't want to make a huge production but just do something different and, of course, tasty.

I considered the plethora of sauces that you can use to brighten up cooked chicken, but, to be honest, no, I just didn't want anything like that.

I turned to my even colder spaces and looked for inspiration in the freezer.  The freezer has a regime much like Fridge Wednesday... I really should start to do this on a Friday.  I like the idea of Fridge Friday! Anyway, the freezer regime is much less disciplined and I also realised that it too was due for a bit of a sort out.

There were, however, a few king prawns that needed using up in the next week or two.  I was supposd to be looking for inspiration and now I had just added king prawns to my.....

King Prawns and Chicken....    Paella

and so, just about an hour later I was on my way to the market to buy some more seafood.   I was feeling a bit lazy so I decided to buy a frozen mix of seafood and a few mussels.  I already had prawn and the king prawns and on checking in the fridge I had enough chorizo and some ham.   Most paella recipes call for some sort of bacon but I often substitute ham.

So with a few things from the freezer, and some stuff from the vegetable box I was on my way.

Here's the recipe for my paella.  It looks complicated but it's just a case of adding everything into the pan.

Paella

Ingredients

500 ml (1 pint) chicken stock 1/2 a cooked chicken, 110g/4oz chorizo, cut into thin slices 55g/2oz ham cut into small pieces 1 teaspoon of minced garlic 1 large onion, chopped fairly small 1 red pepper, chopped 1 tsp herbs de Provence ¼ tsp dried red chilli flakes 1 cup (250ml) short-grain rice 1 tsp paprika 1 small glass rose wine 150 g mussels 6 king prawns 450g/1lb bag of seafood cocktail 100g frozen prawns handful of frozen peas 2 large tomatoes, cut into small pieces Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparation method

Put the chicken stock in a pan and heat gently

Strip the chicken from the carcase, roughly cutting it into chunks.  remove the joints and cut them into drumstick, thigh, wing etc.

Heat some olive oil in a large heavy-based frying pan. Add the chorizo, ham and dried garlic and fry until meat is crispy.

Next add the onion and pepper and further cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the herbs de provence, chilli flakes and short grain rice, and stir well, coating everything in the juices.

Add the paprika and wine and leave a minute or so and then pour in the hot chicken stock, add the cooked chicken and cook for 5-10 minutes.

Add the mussels into the dish and then add the frozen seafood.   Sprinkle in the peas and chopped tomatoes and continue to cook gently for another 10 minutes stirring from time to time.

Add salt and pepper to taste

I served the dish with a hot baguette.

Paella with seafood and chicken

Preparation - 20 minutes
Cooking - about an hour
Serves 4 to 6

	This is not meant to be a true Spanish Paella but just my version of a delicious one.  It’s not as complicated as it looks!!!
Instructions	Ingredients
Mix together in a large bowl	2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tsp Basil 1 tsp paprika salt black pepper
Then stir in, cover and refridgerate	Cut chicken pieces
Heat in a large frying pan /casserole	2 tblsp olive oil
Then add and cook for about 3 minutes	3 cloves garlic 1 choppped sweet pepper (red) 1 large chopped onion 2 cups short grain rice
Stir the rice mixture to ensure rice is coated with oil, then stir in	1 tsp Turmeric 1 fresh Bay leaf handful of peas fish stock zest of one lemon
Chop and add to mixture	small handful flat leaf parsley
Bring to boil, cover and simmer on a gentle heat for  20 minutes
Meanwhile, In another frying pan, heat	Another 2 tblspns Olive oil
Then stir in the contents of marinade (chicken etc),  and cook for about 15 mins before stirring in	chorizo sausage cut into about 15 thin slices
Cook for 5 mins then add	1lb cooked shrimp smoked salmon cut into bite sized pieces ½ lb mussels a few shell on large shrimp
Cook for a further five minutes until mussels are open
Finally add the contents of both pans together and cook for the last few minutes
Arrange on a serving dish  and serve garnished with	Lemon Quarters

Fish in a kind of Provencal sauce

It was Friday and I was running out of food....  Well it would be an exaggeration to say running out of food....  My garden is loaded with salad stuff, I had the few last leaves of cabbage growing and the new crop of Broad Beans was ready for it's first picking.....  but....

So, it was Friday and I was running out of food and I had to prepare lunch.  The solution in my mind was take a look at what I actually had and then create something...which would hopefully be tasty.

There were the last couple of pieces of coley, which I quite like.  I had Courgettes (zucchini), lots, I found a fennel in the vegetable rack and as I dug into the freezer, I found the last few tomatoes from last year,  3 large Marmande, a tomato I find very tasty and which freezes and keeps well.

I could create a fish in a kind of Provencal sauce.

  I got down my big old heavy frying pan from the rack and set it on a medium heat

Provence is olive country so a good tablespoon of olive oil was the first thing in the pan, quickly followed by a generous dose of "Herbes de Provence"....(what else??)

Next I peeled and sliced 4 cloves of garlic and chopped a medium onion, throwing them in the pan as I went.

The pan had now warmed sufficiently to turn down to a low heat.

I chopped the onion and tomatoes and added those.  I really needed more tomatoes but I didn't have any so I opened a tin of Italian plum tomatoes and chopped them before adding them, along with all the liquid

I chopped half the fennel and added that.

When I found the tomatoes, I also found a small aubergine (egg plant) from last year...although, I didn't actually grow aubergine last year!!! so that got chopped and added

A few dates, pitted and chopped and the sauce was beginning to come together although it lacked something...  I added a teaspoon of sea salt and a generous cupful of a sweet white wine I have.

The wine is a home made wine made by a local farmer....  It is made in the same way that Monbazillac is made.  Sadly, he lives a few kilometres outside the Monbazillac Vignoble limits and as he isn't a registered wine producer it remains as a home made wine which he can't sell.   This particular bottle was 25 years old and beautifully mellow and smooth.

The fennel was added next and then the sauce left to simmer gently until the liquid had reduced quite a bit.

In the meantime, I lay the fish fillets in the bottom of an ovenproof dish and scattered a good handful of peeled prawns (shrimp) over them.

Once the sauce was ready I covered the fish with it and then baked in a medium oven for about 20 minutes (180C).

I started off calling this a "kind of Provencal sauce" but I'm not sure anyone from Provence would give it a seal of approval....