Chicken casserole with dumplings

 So good! Based on BBC Good Food recipe for chicken casserole with herby dumplings. All made in a hob-to-oven casserole dish.

Onion and carrot fried off with lardons and (this time) some scraps of leftover salami plus mixed herbs.

Chicken drumsticks, skin pulled down and trimmed, coated in seasoned flour and browned. Add a splash of red wine and deglaze the pan before adding the veg back in. Top up with chicken stock and tomato puree, add in some whole baby mushrooms and chopped parsley.

Cook (170° fan) for 20 mins covered, 10 mins uncovered. Meanwhile make dumplings: 100g SRF and 50g any butter/spread. Mix to breadcrumbs, season (I used a coffee-spice rub geared for tomato sauces), then add just enough water to bind. Divide into six and add on top of the casserole for another 10 minutes (uncovered) at the end.

Could be done in a slow cooker but the dumplings are better in the oven.

Amatriciana chicken traybake

Nice easy dinner party recipe from BBC Good Food. The potatoes were a bit undercooked, which is odd as we cook new potatoes in the oven for a similar time when we do a roast and they are browned, soft inside and perfect... next time cook them in their own tray perhaps.

Top tips:

• Don't forget to add the bacon lardons (d'oh)
• Add some chopped red and yellow peppers to up the veg count, and use some multicoloured tomatoes for extra colour
• Slash and marinade the chicken thighs (or use leg quarters), and make sure the marinade is nicely garlicky
• Add some olives right at the end

Spicy mango chicken tray bake

A good one-pot, oven-cooked dinner here: mango chicken, bean and rice bake, from BBC Good Food. For once, I don't have any major additions or suggestions!

Marinade: whizz up 4-5 spring onions, 2 large garlic cloves, a thumb of peeled ginger root, a deseeded chilli (optional), stalks of a small bunch of coriander, 1.5 tbsp allspice, juice and zest of a lime, and 2 tbsp oil.

Use this to marinate 8 skinless, boneless chicken thighs for an hour or more (or go skin-on, bone-in for more flavour but more fat).

Place 240g rice (I used brown) and a rinsed can of kidney beans in an ovenproof dish, add a peeled and chopped mango, and lay the chicken on top. Make 500ml stock (I used 2 cubes, chicken + ham), use it to gather any remaining marinade (especially if you used a bag rather than a dish), and pour it over in between the chicken. I also added the pulpy scrapings from the inside of the mango peel, so as not to waste any!

Cover the dish with foil, tightly, and bake for 30 mins at 180°C. Then uncover, spoon mango chutney (amount to taste) over the chicken, and bake uncovered for another 40 mins at 200°C. Scatter with the coriander leaves to serve.


Delicious and filling! We served it with peas for some extra veg. As I said, no major changes, but next time I might try it with black beans instead of kidney, and some coconut milk replacing some of the stock. I omitted the chilli as I didn't have one, so would try it with that next time.

Khoreshteh Fesenjan (Persian chicken & walnut stew)

I made this for a friend's themed party - it peeked out of the November 2013 edition of BBC Good Food I was browsing just a day or two before the invitation arrived, so I took that as a good omen!

This is an easy dish, utterly unlike anything I have cooked before, and it turned out well. I think it works best as part of a bigger spread as it's too rich on its own. Essentially it's chicken thighs and browned onion simmered in a sauce made of walnuts, water and pomegranate molasses. It needs little prep and a long cooking time, and tastes best if left overnight.

8 skinless chicken thighs (I used thigh fillets and diced them, to make it more of a sharing dish)
1 large onion, chopped
Olive oil for browning

1 tbsp flour
550g walnuts, finely chopped/ground in a food processor
300ml pomegranate molasses (= 2 x 210g bottles from Waitrose)
1.2 litres cold water

to serve: pomegranate seeds, chopped walnuts, parsley

Brown the flour slightly in a dry (large) pan, then add the walnuts and toast gently, stirring often so they don't burn (this is important!). Add the water, stir well, bring to the boil, then simmer for 1hr. (I wondered whether in future I might toast the walnut halves before whizzing them, as it was hard to stir such a large volume of ground nuts.)

Meanwhile, season and brown the chicken and set aside. Slowly cook the onion in the remaining oil/chicken juices, then add chicken and onions to the main pan once the hour is up on the walnut sauce. Also add the pomegranate molasses. Simmer on a low heat for 2 hours, stirring occasionally (I'd uncover for the last hour if it hasn't thickened much). Serve over basmati rice or with flatbread, plus a nice crunchy salad - the BBCGF feature recommends tomato, cucumber, red onion and more pomegranate seeds, plus a dressing of lemon juice, sumac, mint and dill.

I was surprised there was no other spice or seasoning apart from what's put on the chicken, but it works fine. The pomegranate molasses is a nice blend of sweet and sharp, and rounds out what tasted like a worryingly thin walnut sauce. It did become much darker and richer over time, so definitely plan to make it ahead.

Spanish roast chicken

Hot off the press - this is a BBC Good Food magazine recipe, and I'm a subscriber so this issue has only just hit the shops :)

It's paprika-covered roast chicken, but with potates, chorizo and chickpeas in the roasting pan with lemon, garlic, stock and white wine. I really don't think quantities are that vital, but it was a 1.4kg chicken, 800g potatoes, 200g chorizo, 2 tins of chickpeas, 2 lemons, a whole head of garlic, a glass of white wine and the same of chicken stock. All pretty standard - for reference, I used Revilla chorizo and it was fab, not too spicy but very tasty.

Rub the chicken with paprika, oil & salt, and stuff with 1 lemon, halved. Cook the chicken, chorizo (chunks) and potatoes (chunks or use small ones) in a big pan under foil for 30 mins (180°C fan). Remove foil, baste chicken, add other lemon (in wedges) and garlic (peeled cloves), roast for another 30 mins. Add stock & wine, mix everything around, and do a final 30 mins. Garnish with chopped parsley before serving. Original recipe suggests serving with yogurt with paprika, lemon & saffron (and adding saffron to the stock) but I didn't do that.

I found that 90 mins was not enough, and we usually do chicken for 1h40-1h45, so would increase the cooking time next time. There was quite a lot of liquid but we ate it from bowls with the chicken carved on top. Some of the potatoes were a bit solid (which seemed odd having been roasted for so long) so I'd chop them a bit smaller next time, maybe 1" or so. Hubby felt there was too much garlic in terms of whole cloves, but it didn't seem to add to the taste. Next time I would remove the chicken for carving then squish a couple of the roasted cloves and stir them in before serving.

When we'd finished, I stripped the chicken carcass and put the meat in with the other leftovers for the next day. It was even better - tangy and juicy, and reheated well.

For a really easy version I think I would use bone-in chicken thighs (and lose 1 lemon), parboil the potatoes, and make the other changes above. I wonder whether a few salty black olives stirred in before serving would also be good?

Something different

A friend lent me a Patrick Holford cook book - not to follow the diet, but just for a few different recipes. We tried:

Chicken with creamy tomato sauce: bake chicken breasts on cherry tomatoes, at the end remove the chicken and stir some creme fraiche into the tomatoes to make a sauce. Delicious, and would be better (OK, and more calorific) with more flavoursome chicken thighs. We broke the Holford principles by having it with mashed potatoes and braised cabbage. But a good easy recipe.

Smoked mackerel and lentil kedgeree: basically make a dhal with red lentils (225g) and an onion, turmeric and curry powder plus stock (690ml), then add flaked smoked mackerel and quartered boiled eggs. The dhal was a bit runny but only because I let it get a bit burnt on the bottom and then added more water to rescue it. With the stock and the mackerel it was a bit salty. Next time I would pay closer attention and stir it more to end up with a thicker dhal, and add some fresh coriander. And again, contrary to the low carb idea, it would be yummy with naan bread...

Chicken and vegetable one pot

Dinner the other night was kind of based on this recipe for one-pot chicken pilaf from BBC Good Food - but with so many tweaks it's only a distant cousin really.

I did at least use chicken thighs! Veg-wise I used green beans, broccoli, onion and mushrooms. All fine, but I also chucked in brown rice rather than white... which needs more cooking... which pulps the veg a bit, sadly. Next time, part cook the rice first. Rather than a bog standard curry powder I used garam masala, turmeric, and crushed coriander and cumin seeds.

Otherwise, a great one-pot dinner, easy to double up.