Chicken leftovers....Chicken Fricassée?

This is a great dish to use up all those roast chicken dinner leftovers, including the roasted vegetables.  I came across this recipe in the M&S bible and it has been a firm favourite ever since, not only does it sound very sophisticated but it also can easily be doubled or tripled to feed the 5 thousand.  As always I have added my own twist to the recipe and I encourage you to do the same.

 Ingredients (feeds 2-4)

Leftover cooked chicken pieces

1 onion diced

4-5 floz chicken stock

2 carrots, diced

2 celery sticks, diced

8oz frozen peas

1 pepper, deseeded and diced.

4oz mushrooms sliced

4floz natural yoghurt (crème fraiche or soured cream is absolutely fine)

3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Salt and Pepper

Rice (50g per person)

Parmesan or other hard Italian cheese, grated (25g)

All the vegetables in the above list are optional; if you don’t like them you can remove/replace them.  I also find that butternut squash, sweet potato, new potato and courgette all of which have been previously roasted, work really well in this dish also.  The Marks and Spencer recipe doesn’t include rice, but I always do, it goes really well and you can either make a big risotto type dish, or you can add the rice on the side.

 Method

§  Put the rice in boiling water and cook according to the instructions on the packet, drain in a sieve.

§  Heat some oil in a pan and add the onion, carrots, celery and pepper and gently fry off for 5 minutes.

§  Add the cooked chicken pieces and stock and bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer away for 5-8 minutes more until the liquid has reduced by half.

§  Now add the soft vegetables – the left over roast vegetables, the mushrooms and the peas and then add your yoghurt.  I find that it really doesn’t matter whether you use yoghurt, or crème fraiche or soured cream, whatever you have in the fridge.  I do think cream is a little rich, but add a dash or two of lemon juice to give it some bite and this would be ok too.

§  Add the cooked rice to the dish and heat until everything has warmed through.

§  Finish with stirring in the Parmesan and sprinkle over the fresh parsley.

 Absolutely scrummy!