The Three Meal Chicken

Melanie and I returned from another week of overseas hedonism and body abuse last weekend and decided it was time to start (again) returning to some sort of normal eating pattern. One way I like to do this is to buy a medium chicken and roast it.

For meal one, we sit down to a nice simple meal of roast chicken and salad or some steamed vegetables. Next day, once the chicken has cooled I strip the chicken of any remaining meat along with any meat juices I’ve saved from the pan, leaving me with all the bones and a stripped chicken carcass.

The chicken carcass goes in a large pot with the remaining meat juices, a large onion, two or three carrots, the same amount of celery sticks and a couple of bay leaves. The pot is topped up with water, to cover the bones and simmered slowly for a couple of hours, until all the flavour is extracted from the contents. As the stock simmers the kitchen is filled with the beautiful smell of the stock cooking.

Once the stock is made it can be cooled for future use or can be used immediately used for making some soup by just chucking in a variety of vegetables or using your favourite soup recipe. And there, served with some crusty bread, you have meal number two.

Now you’ve got that cold chicken waiting in the fridge. I love to make rissoles with left over chicken. Boil two or three large potatoes until soft and then strip off their skins. This is easier when they’re cold, so perhaps do this in the morning. Take the chicken and skinned potato and run through a mincer with what ever herbs or spices appeal to you. Take the chicken and potato mixed and on a floured surface, use your hands to make this mix into small balls – somewhere between a golf ball and a tennis ball. Roll in the flour and then carefully shape into small drums about an inch thick. Heat a pan with a little oil covering the bottom and fry off the rissoles gently until browned on one side. They can be a bit crumbly, so carefully peak underneath with a spatula. Then turn them over and do the other side. I love these served up with a side salad and put out all our favourite ketchups. And there you have meal three!