The Recipe Shed challenge for the week was Chicken. There’s nothing finer than taking a fresh roast chicken out of the shopping bag and simply devouring it. Bread and butter optional. However, if you can wait a little while, this takes that cooked chicken and turns it into something the whole family enjoys. And it does it quickly.
Ingredients:
- Chicken, 1. Pre-roasted. You can either roast it yourself (Beerroaster optional) or get it from the supermarket. I love the convenience of grabbing a roast chicken while shopping. 1 chicken does for at least 8 people as long as it’s a decent size.
- Lemon. 1 or 2 depending on how lemony you want the end dish.
- Pasta. Enough to serve however many people you want to feed. We usually use twirls but shells, twists, whatever shape you fancy.
- Wholegrain mustard
- Chicken stock (cubes, jelly things, whatever). 1 pint for 6 people.
- Double cream, small pot. You can use single cream, you just add it later in the dish.
- Plain flour, a few tablespoons
- Oil
Right. In true 30 minute meal style, get your preparations done first:
- Boil a kettle – you’re going to need water for the pasta and for the chicken stock.
- Make 1 pint of chicken stock
- Remove all the meat from the bones of the chicken and tear it into bite-sized pieces. Eat the skin and make sure to do some quality control on the chicken meat.
Preparations done (that was tricky).
- Get the pan for the pasta on and up to heat, add the pasta. Everything else will be done in the 11 minutes it takes to cook the pasta.
- Juice and zest the lemons into the chicken stock, add a generous tablespoon of the grain mustard.
- In a second, fairly large, pan, heat the oil and add the flour, stirring until it’s all combined.
- Add the stock mix to the oil & flour, stirring constantly. Keep adding until you’ve got all the stock in and the sauce is thickening. If it gets too thick, add more stock. If it’s too runny, add more flour. You’re aiming for something the consistency of yoghurt.
- Cook this for a minute or two, then add the chicken meat and (if you’re using double cream) the cream. Stir until it’s all warmed through.
- Turn down the heat and wait for the pasta to cook.
- Once the pasta is finished, drain it. If you’re using single cream, add this to the chicken mix and stir it through.
- Add the drained pasta to the pan of chicken mix and stir everything. If your chicken pan isn’t big enough, empty the pasta into a large serving bowl and put the chicken on top of that.
- Serve – bowls, forks, spoons.
20 minutes max from start to finish, shorter if you’ve done the chicken the day before and you’ve got a jug of stock from the last pressure-cooked bird in the fridge.
There’s more chicken goodness over at the Recipe Shed, so head there and enjoy!
3 responses to “#RecipeShed – Lemon Chicken & Pasta”
That sounds so quick and easy and really tasty… might just see if my munchkins will try it (they are a really fussy pair… trying to eradicate this rather irritating trait of theirs)
On a side note, am loving the new look & the header picture is gorgeous, but then again you have a plethora of subject matter round your way…
Dude, So not only do you write, yer a cook too? Damn that sounds good. However, I have a question. Since I’m only a poor uneducated yank, wth is double cream? 🙂
Hey! Good to see you over here. Yep, I write, code and cook. Never all 3 at the same time though 2 out of 3 isn’t unusual.
As for double cream, I believe you’d call it Heavy Cream, that looks like it’ll do the job nicely. If you’re going to use half-and-half, add it right before serving and just stir it through. Heavy/Double stands up to heat better and can be added earlier. Half-and-half would be healthier 😉
Think I might start up a glossary of these alternatives/substitutions.