Slowly does it

Autumn is upon us. I bought a slow cooker. These two things are not unrelated.

First efforts were:

River Cottage North African squash & chickpea stew

Winner! Does what it says on the tin. Squash, chickpeas, red lentils, warming spices, and the usual suspects of tomato, onion, garlic, celery, stock, herbs. This was very good, end result was a lovely consistency with the lentils and some but not all of the squash broken down - that's what you get with a bag of inconsistently-sized frozen chunks (I hate peeling the buggers). I can't fully comment on the taste due to a ridiculous cold, but family consensus was that it was good. My only quibble is that in no way, shape or form does this serve six, unless they are six fussy four year olds. Chuck in the whole 500g of squash and another tin of chickpeas and you might get close. Don't forget to reduce the liquid by a third or so to make this in the slow cooker (3-4 hours on high was plenty for us).

BBC Good Food slow cooker Spanish chicken

Has potential. Tasted good (as much as I could tell - see above) but way too much liquid, and this recipe is designed for slow cooking so I didn't reduce it. Still, tasty soup for lunch tomorrow! I didn't put enough peppers in, so would fix that next time. I did cook the onions in the slow cooker pan first, with smoked and regular paprika, which boosted the flavour. Could consider putting potatoes in this to thicken it, but we had ours with paprika roasties and the texture contrast was good. Maybe put canellini beans in the stew? Hmmm...

Version 2: Made in cast iron casserole dish.
I used: an onion, an end (finger length) of chorizo, 6 skinless, bone-in thighs of varying sizes, a can of canellini beans, 2 peppers, a mug of stock made with a Knorr pork cube (nice smoky taste), smoked and normal paprika, thyme, and some Sacla sun-dried tomato paste. No wine.
Slowly cook the onion and the chorizo (sliced not chunked this time) with plenty of paprika and some thyme and black pepper, adding some pork stock to loosen if needed. Remove from pan. Brown the chicken, in batches, and remove from pan. Soften the peppers in the residue from the meat and onions, then put everything back in the pan with olives and a tin of rinsed canellini beans. Add the stock and 3-4 good spoonfuls of the sundried tomato paste. I then cooked at 140°C (fan) for 2 hours and it was perfect. We had it with plain boiled potatoes.


More trials (hopefully not many tribulations) to come...

Also bookmarking/highlighting this page of useful slow cooker conversion tips.