Making your food go further - roast chicken 3 ways

This was our fabulous roast dinner on Sunday, free range chicken, crispy skin, eaten with roasties, stuffing, veggies and gravy. But what do you do after that first lovely meal?

For me, one of the best parts of a roast is the leftovers, and working out what to do with them. I'm clearly my mother's daughter in that the first night of leftovers always feature an oven baked potato, more veggies and pickles if we have them (I love pickles - throw me the cornichons and pickled onions and I'm a happy camper). I often tart the potatoes up, by after an hour in the oven, splitting them in half, scooping out the middle and mixing it up with boursin and a splash of milk before putting the filling back into the crispy skins and topping with some finely chopped leeks and cheddar. Another 20 minutes in the oven and you have fabulously yummy middles and my favourites the crispy skin and leeks.

Then we have the dilemma - I've probably at this stage got enough chicken left on the carcass for 4 more portions of a meal. Over the years I've come up with a few options for what to do at this stage, mostly developed with the unashamed aim of saving money and making my food go further.

M's favourite is my chicken and mushroom risotto although he and I have a soft spot for my chicken and sweet leek pie

With some judicious freezing, both of those recipes mean another 4 portions. If I'm feeling particularly on the ball I sometimes extend that even further by turning the carcass into stock and the stock straight into soup.

What are your favourite ways to make your food go further?

With thanks to Sainsbury's for the voucher that went towards our roast dinner.   

Meal Planning Monday: The Back to Work edition (take 2)

How does this post come around so regularly? Seriously I swear in my head it's only Tuesday! Anyway, last week's meal plan went well - with the exception of no steak, and extended leftovers (ever the romantic, that's me) on St Valentine's and a take-away curry that was infinitely dissapointing on my birthday - mind you, I caught a Jamie 30 minute meals today that will hopefully change my Indian meal experience (update to come soon). I changed the enchiladas to quesedillas which worked well, and did two lighter dinners for us both. 

This week, I am hoping to go back to work (yes, again - as you will have realised it didn't happen last time) and pending a check up at the doctors on Tuesday, will be resuming training detail on Wednesday. Whilst I need to check with my manager where she wants me, I'm kind of hoping I'm office based until the end of this week at least. 

M and I had a lovely dinner last night. For my birthday we went here for an amazing three course meal. I had a beautifully rare steak, with fantastic triple fried chips (a note to our waitress. Please don't remove chips from the table as soon as I put my fork down. I had my eye on them), pudding was wonderful - I went for a retro delight in the form of a lemon meringue pie, with the softest meringue I have ever eaten, which contrasted beautifully with the tart lemon inside. That, a gin and tonic, and two glasses of a fabulous sauvingon were a wonderful way to celebrate. Please don't mention my age as it sets of what Seth Rudetsky calls a 'marathon crying jag'. 

Breakfasts are porridge, I've really got back into this, and half a cup of oats really does keep me full until lunchtime and beyond. I've got more stewed fruit to use up as toppings, and some more apples to stew again. 

Lunches: Monday I have leftover Beetroot and horseradish borscht, and from then I've not really thought about it. The easy option, is of course sandwiches, but I'm trying to keep my carbs as low as possible as since coming out of hospital I feel like I've put on a fair bit of weight. My jeans still fit though, but I feel - swollen almost. I have some frozen carrots, parsnip and swede that lend themselves beautifully to soup, perhaps with a ginger hit to offset their inherent sweetness. 

Snacks: we've got the cake I made for my birthday (post coming up later this week) and some of the banana bread still to eat up, and these should keep us going throughout this week and possibly beyond. 

Monday: Sausages, Baked Potato (for M) and steamed savoy cabbage
Tuesday: Chicken and sweet leek pie (on request from M) more cabbage for me, and roasties for M
Wednesday: Leftovers, and M is in charge of vegetables. 
Thursday: Fish with soy and sherry, and greens
Friday: All being well, we're hoping to go away this weekend to the New Forest, so cooking is on hold. I'm hoping for a cream tea and an epic roast after some pottering. I'll come back with pictures. Promise! 

Be sure to pop over to At Home with Mrs M to see what everyone else is up to this week. 

Who will buy? My leftover turkey surprise pie

So you've had your turkey, and now you're surrounded by leftovers. What do you do with them?

Sandwiches

Try adding mango chutney if you have some lingering around the cupboards or fridge, we find it adds a fruity edge to turkey. I like one with a good kick of chilli to it, but all the supermarkets sell them so you can easily find one to suit your tastes.

If you're trying to eke the turkey out further, try chopping it up small and mixing it in with something like mayonaise or salad cream (this is a bit of a Guiding trick to make things feed more girls). Don't forget to add a bit of seasoning.

I am a sucker for homemade bread, and over Christmas have been using the breadmaker (it's normally ignored in favour of doing it by hand, but y'know the wrist is still plastered and everyone's busy enough, it's so easy to run the breadmaker overnight while we are all sleeping. And you have the added bonus of waking up to the smell of fresh bread.

Turkey pie

I use this recipe as my basic guideline, as it's a favourite pie of ours. But.. it's not just any turkey/ chicken pie from the archives, but with the addition of a few more leftovers becomes

Boxing Day Surprise Pie

To the leek/ shredded turkey filling, add - fried up bacon snipped into little pieces, leftover stuffing, rolled into balls, and mushrooms (leftover from the Cottage pie on Christmas Eve)

Cook as for the regular pie, and serve with roast potatoes, and lightly cooked veggies. I deliberately piled my plate high with the veggies to balance out the heaviness of yesterday and todays dinners.

The fact that this has it's own gravy that's made as part of the cooking process made me feel less guilty for agreeing to throw the leftover gravy away yesterday

Turkey risotto

I'm a big fan of risotto, and it's always one of my go to's for using up leftover roast chicken, in the same way as I did above, you could add bits of bacon, extra veggies etc to the dish, as you soothingly stir quietly away in the kitchen whilst listening to Radio 2.  Just me then?

Here is the recipe for risotto bianco, just stir in your shredded turkey where I've used chicken in that post, and any other ingredients you have to hand.

Shredded brussels would cook down beautifully in this, and if you added some leftover smoky bacon would taste amazing.


Tomorrow I'm going to post recipes for Turkey soup and stock. Just to continue the trend and not make this an encyclopedia of 101 ways with leftover turkey!

Pie for Pi day

Typically tardy I know, but my intentions were there nonetheless.

Pi day wikipedia tells us, is a festival celebrating the number Pi. Being utterly appalling at maths, apart from where recipes are concerned - where it actually means something as opposed to being an abstract concept.  Pi day is the 14th March (3/14 if you're American) and to celebrate I, naturally, made pie.

I've been making this pie since Christmas when I saw it's inspiration on one of Jamie Oliver's programmes. Well I say I saw it at Christmas, I saw it towards the end of January when I was well enough to stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time. Since we had long finished the turkey by then I've used chicken thighs or leftover roast chicken each time. This is my rough recipe. I've done it with both puff and shortcrust pastry (I made the shortcrust, bought the puff) and serves 4 hungry people.

4 large leeks, finely sliced
Big knob butter
Salt
Pepper

Wash the leeks in a colander and whilst still damp put in a large pan with a lid that you've melted the butter in. I season with salt and pepper and then put the lid on and turn the heat right down. I let them cook like this for half an hour so they steam in the melted butter and water. It makes them sticky, sweet and impossibly creamy. So much so, my boyfriend who told me he hated leeks, really enjoys this.

500g Chicken thighs - skinned, de-boned and cut into peices
Olive oil
2 tblsps Plain flour
2 pints chicken stock (I've also used veg bouillon to no ill effect)
2 tablespoons creme fraiche
250g mushrooms (I cooked these in with the leeks actually)
More salt and pepper

The next stage is equally simple, if I'm using chicken thighs I cook them until they've started to brown in the olive oil with a little salt and pepper. If I'm using leftovers I just shred the cooked chicken into the leek pan (this is why I said a big pan!)
I then add the flour, and stir until it's mixed in (I know this sounds vague, but when it stops feeling grainy is the best way I can describe it)
Add the stock and stir again, the flour will dissolve into the stock and it will go cloudy and start to thicken, but slowly.
Add the creme fraiche and bring to a slow boil - at this point I taste and season again. I tend to let it boil for about 10 minutes or so, just gently.
Now, this is the slightly odd bit. You drain all of this in a big colander over a jug. There's no need to squish it down or anything, as it needs some moisture, but let the sauce drip out. This becomes your gravy.

Get your pie dish, and tip your filling in.
Then I edge the pie dish with a rim of pastry, which I brush with eggwash, and then stick a pastry lid onto that. Obviously when I've bought the pastry I've rolled it out to make sure it's big enough, and when I've made it I've done so in the food processor (yes I know I'm lazy) using half fat to flour and a tablespoon or so of water. Just blitz the Trex and flour to breadcrumbs then pulse in the water until the pastry goes into a ball. Chill this, wrapped in clingfilm in the fridge for at least half an hour, then roll out.
Once your pastry is on, cut some air holes in (use a pie bird if you have one. I lust after these) and again, egg wash.
Cook in a pre-heated oven at about 180/ Gas mark 6 for about half an hour to forty minutes.

When you're ready to serve, reheat the gravy until it boils, and serve with green veg. It's lush.



So that was my effort for Pi day. Chicken and sweet leek pie (with added mushrooms).