A chicken in the pot

Starting a blog, posting twice and then abandoning it for a fortnight really wasn't the plan. But life is what happens when you're making other plans, so onwards and upwards. 

When life gets hectic, which it has been recently, cleaning is the first thing to go in my life. Anyone who has seen my bathroom would correctly surmise that life is usually hectic. Tidying clings on for a little longer, but eventually that goes and I even lose the ability to put things away.

But one sure sign that everything has gone utterly tits up round here is when I stop cooking "real" food.

So after a fortnight at the Gin Palace involving five takeaways, two sets of leftovers, a dinner skipped in favour of canapés and several ready meals, when life calmed down and I'd had some sleep, it was time to get in back in the kitchen and wrestle culinary order out of calorific madness.

On Thursday night, the Husband worked late, and I was home alone. On Friday afternoon, I took back some of the overtime I've been putting in at work. With hours alone in the house, there were a thousand pressing admin and cleaning tasks to do. So I ignored them and cooked. Two cover-the-kitchen-with-vegetable-peelings, stuff-the-freezer-full cooking sessions. I cooked chilli, I cooked bolognese sauce and I cooked two types of soup, now safely stored in the freezer for work packed lunches and weeks as hellish as this one. And as I chopped, stirred and tasted, everything settled into place in my head, as well as in the freezer. Order restored.

So to keep it that way, on Sunday night we cooked a chicken, which is now feeding us for the whole week.

Normally we roast it, carve it all but only eat one breast, and then pop the rest in tupperware to feed us for a week while the carcass simmers in the stock pot late into the night.

But this week, frankly, I couldn't be arsed. So we poached it instead - boiling the chicken in the stock pot with the stock aromatics for 90 minutes, fishing it out and eating it with potato dauphinoise, and then saving the succulent, gently scented meat which fell off the bones and the dark, rich poaching liquor which became the most amazing stock.

Tonight, Tuesday, we're having straight forward leftovers - a bit of the chicken, warmed through in a few spoonfuls of the stock, and the remaining dauphnoise, warmed up, with carrots on the side. Bliss.

Tomorrow, we'll have risotto, frying up onion, bacon and garlic, before adding the rice, some wine, and ladleful by ladleful the rest of the stock, stirring in the chicken with the last spoonful of the stock, and a handful of parmasan just as it's all absorbed.

And on Thursday, we'll have an adaptation of what my mother calls "Swiss-style" chicken. I'm not sure if I can share the recipe without her hunting me down and killing me.

But yesterday, we had one of my favourite meals - chicken noodle soup. And here's what we did to make this fabulous, sweet, sour and hot steaming and delicious meal. An wonderful inauthentic hodge-podge. That just takes ten minutes.

Incidentally, to my mind there are two types of soups - the sort that make a very nice lunch, with some bread, healthy and virtuous but a teensy bit disappointing for supper. And this, which is in a class of its own.

Chicken noodle soup

Ingredients

Leftover chicken - two handfuls or so of meat, breast or leg or anything will do.

Two pints chicken stock - homemade is better, but cubes will do.

125g of noodles - I find very fine broken up soup noodles sold in the kosher section perfect, but failing that, the type sold for stir frys, or even little pasta stars, will do. 

2-3 tbls soy sauch

2 tsp Nam Pla (fish sauce)

Juice of 1-2 limes

LOTS of coriander

Small can sweetcorn, drained.

2-3 spring onions, or one small leek, peeled and sliced.

Dried chilli pepper

Serves 2-3 (2 round here)

1. Bring the stock to the boil and add the pasta, and the dried chilli. Boil for however long you're meant to - this recipe assumes 10 minutes, so if you're using the 3 minute type, bung everything in and *then* add the noodles.

2. Add soy sauce, nam pla and lime juice. If you're using bought stock, you'll need less soy sauce or it'll be too salty, homemade definitely needs quite a lot. Taste as you add - you want something that's salty, sour and lovely. Remember the heat will develop the longer you leave the chilli in - whack it out early if it's getting too hot for you.

3. Five minutes before the cooking time is up, add the chicken, leek or spring onions, and drained sweetcorn.

4. One minute before cooking time is up, sprinkle on the coriander.

5. Serve in large bowls and relish!