ramtops

Oct. 3rd, 2010

A friend of mine told me he “roasted” a whole chicken in the slow cooker, and I didn’t think it would work. But I was prepared to give it a whirl, so I bought a free range chickie! for the purpose.

Did my usual trick with a chicken, of cutting a lemon in half, putting one half inside the bird, and squeezing the other half over it. Rubbed the chicken’s skin with olive oil, seasoned it, put it in the slow cooker and switched it on, on high.

Then left it completely alone for about 8 hours. It was gorgeous, and it left some very nice chickeny juices in the bottom of the dish. We’ll be doing that again!

We ate it with lots of steamed buttery cabbage, and some carrots with star anise, and Pete had some potatoes too.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We normally have this without the pancetta, but I’m trying to cut my carbs at the moment so I added some meat.

I make this in a frying pan with a lid.

Chop and onion and some garlic, and fry it off in olive oil. Add the pancetta (I used cubes – you could use bacon too) at this point. When the onion is soft, add quite a lot of shredded cabbage; anything does – I’ve made this with hispi, with white, with savoy … they all work well.

Stir it all around, then add either some water – about maybe 1/2″ at the bottom of the pan – or a splash of wine. We used about half a glass of home made pineapple wine last night! Season to taste, put a lid on and leave it for about 10 minutes.

Then add some mozzarella – I usually just cube a whole one – and stir it around till the cheese melts.

In the bad old days, I would stir the pasta into this, but last night it went in separately, as Pete had a “normal” helping, and I just had a spoonful. I’ve discovered cabbage is great for bulking up if you’re avoiding carbs.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

There’s always some scratty chicken left after a roast … so today I have fashioned a Pie.

Made a pastry with 9oz wholemeal flour, 2 tsps baking powder, 4oz of Trex and some water. That’s now in the fridge, chilling (man).

Then chopped a leek into slices, 2 carrots into small dice, and 2 cloves of garlic finely (Pete did garlic and carrot). Fried that lot off with a rasher of bacon that needed using up. In went some finely chopped sage from the garden too, then I put a lid on the pan and left it to cook for ten minutes. Then added a couple of spoons full of wholemeal flour (we always use wholemeal these days) and a teaspoon of grain mustard and stirred it all around.

Then added milk bit by bit till the consistency was right, lobbed in the chicken (all shredded up), seasoned it, and left it. I shall marry pastry and filling later, and bake at gas 5 for about 35 minutes.

This will be followed by rhubarb with an oaty crumble topping, which I know is bad, but Pete brought some home yesterday – what can I do?