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.

Slow-cooker pork and sweet potato

A recipe from Ultimate Slow Cooker which I adapted to suit available ingredients.

Ingredients (2 generous servings / 2 moderate servings and a littl'un):
300-350g pork shoulder, large dice
1 large sweet potato, peeled, 2cm dice
1 bramley apple, peeled and cored, 2-3cm dice
1 medium to large onion, 1cm dice
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 stock cube of choice
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch chilli flakes (optional)
salt, pepper, oil as needed

Method:
Brown the meat and remove from pan/slow cooker inner
Soften onion and garlic with spices.
Add crumbled stock cube, sweet potato, apple, and return pork to pan, mix well to distribute.
Add chopped tomatoes to cover.

Cook on high for 3-4 hours or longer on medium.

Even without the made-up stock cube as per the recipe, there was plenty of liquid. I ladled some out to put in the long-grain rice I cooked to go with it. Super tasty!

Pork casserole

Didn't do this in the slow cooker but I think it is ripe for conversion to do so. One from Holly Bell's fab blog, it got the thumbs up in this house.

Lean pork shoulder (350g) browned in flour, an onion and a stick of celery chopped and softened along with a couple of carrots, sage and black pepper, chucked in a pot with a chunked bramley (or maybe two if smaller), a couple of bay leaves and pork stock (350ml) to round it out. I also popped in some chestnut mushrooms. An hour at 160°C (fan) did the trick.

Served it just with kale and courgette that we had knocking about and needed finishing. The kale worked especially well with the zingy sauce. There was a lot of liquid so at the end I also put in some leftover mash we had, which helped a bit. I think next time I'd put dumplings on the top, maybe made with a dab of wholegrain mustard, or serve with mustard mash. Savoy cabbage would be another good accompaniment.

More slow stuff

Mixed bean chilli - left to bubble while we were out trick-or-treating.

I did my usual basic recipe (onions, courgettes, peppers, tinned tomatoes, sweetcorn, chilli powder, and whatever beans I can lay my hands on - kidney, blackeye, canellini, black in this case). Hard to reduce the liquid when there's no added water, and indeed this came out a bit soupy. Next time I think I will bung some red lentils in to thicken.


Slow cooker lamb curry (BBC Good Food)

Oddly this said to put everything in the slow cooker pot and refrigerate overnight. I didn't read that in time, but I don't have room in my fridge anyway, so I skipped that stage. It didn't seem to matter. I also used korma paste as that's what we had. The kale was OK but left a bit of a cabbagey aroma while cooking so I might consider a switch next time, maybe mushrooms for bulk and spinach for greens. And, ironically given the above, I forgot the lentils and it was again a bit soupy. But that meant plenty of sauce for naan breads to soak up :)

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.

Porotos granados (squash & bean stew)

This is one from HFW's Veg Every Day! book that for some reason I didn't blog before. It's become a bit of a favourite - a good tasty one-pot meal and a nice veggie recipe to add into our rotation. Can be done stovetop or in the slow cooker.

The recipe is online here but essentially it's a stew of squash, green beans, sweetcorn and tinned beans (we usually use black-eyed or pinto but any will do), in an onion, garlic and stock base, with smoked paprika and oregano plus a bay leaf. My only amendment to the recipe is, if I'm cooking on the hob, the usual pre-cooking of the peeled and chopped squash (I microwave it on high for 8-9 minutes while I do the onions and garlic) which ensures it's nice and soft in a reasonable cooking time on the hob. Nothing worse than being all ready for a comforting stew and finding hard chunks of squash that need more cooking :(

Slow cooker: it's fine after about 5 hours on high, depending on the squash.

I find it really benefits from plenty of herbs and black pepper, but the combination of soft squash and beans, and crunchy greens and sweetcorn, is great. It's a good winter warmer and goes well with dumplings on top!

When out of both green beans and sweetcorn I added (frozen, shelled) edamame. They keep their texture a bit more when slow cooking. A good squeeze of tomato puree and a dash of cumin also work well.