While I was out one evening, my husband bought himself a pre-made meal from the supermarket. It was, or was supposed to be, jambalaya. When I came home he remarked that it was one of the most horrible dinners he'd eaten in ages. I thought I'd cheer him up by making a version at home, using the remaining roast chicken leftovers.
First of all sort out your spices: two teaspoons each of hot chilli powder, garlic powder and paprika. One teaspoon each of salt, oregano, thyme and cayenne. And three teaspoons of turmeric.
Then chop up some peppers, celery, onion, carrots, chilli and lots of garlic. I took a load of peas out of the freezer to defrost and measured out a teacup of rice.
Heat up a pan with some oil and start to fry the onions, celery and half of the garlic. When they are softening, add in a load of chorizo, sliced into half-moon shapes. When that has started to brown, add the rice and spices, stirring them up until they start to smell strongly. Then add a pint of stock, the carrots and the rest of the crushed garlic, and leave to simmer with the lid on for a while, ten or fifteen minutes maybe, depending on what rice you're using. Add more stock if needed.
When the rice is almost cooked, add in the peppers, peas and chilli. Leave for five minutes or so, they don't take that long to cook. Then season with salt, a squeeze of lime juice and a big handful of chopped coriander.
This isn't a purists version of the dish, but it tasted great. I didn't have any prawns but, if I had, I would have put them in towards the end.
Ingredients summary: long grain rice, chicken stock, leftover chicken, chorizo, bell peppers, chilli, onions, garlic, celery, carrots, peas, turmeric, paprika, cayenne, chilli powder, garlic powder, dried oregano, dried thyme, salt, coriander, lime juice.
Leftover roast chicken has lots of uses but I think risotto is one of the more obvious ones. Saying that, risotto is a bugger to get right and I'm definitely still learning the trade.
For years I've ignored the requirement for some kind of special rice (arborio, carnaroli) and, fair enough, my risottos have tasted wonderful... but they took 3 hours to make. Here is an attempt with arborio rice, I'd say it took about 45 minutes. Yeah. Fair enough then. I'll pay for the stupid special rice in future.
I used up some of the stock that I made earlier in the week, if you made some you'll see it's all wobbly and a bit like jelly - that's a good thing. I had about 700ml, which went into a pan on the hob to heat up.
I chopped up a couple of onions and sticks of celery, heated up a large frying pan with oil and butter, and cooked them until they were soft - thinking about browning but not going brown. In went a teacup of rice, stirred until coated in the oil and butter and warmed through. Then a teacup of white wine, which sizzled and bubbled when added to the pan. I stirred that until the wine had disappeared.
At that point, in goes a big spoonful of stock (I think my ladle was in the dishwasher) and stir stir stir until it's all absorbed, before adding another spoonful. Keep going until all the stock is gone. The rice wasn't quite entirely cooked yet, the grains still had just a little too much bite to them, so I added a little hot water to finish it off.
I popped some broad beans on to simmer, ready to skin them. They are a beautiful peircing green when you take off their jackets, the only issue we had with them is that they were quite elderly beans, picked late off the plant, so they did have a slightly mealy texture to them. Lovely young peas or beans is what you really want.
Then stir in the leftover chicken, the broad beans and lots of grated parmesan.
Finally, when the risotto was hot through again, I stirred in some chopped parsley and seasoned with freshly cracked black pepper and a knob of cold butter.
