chicken risoni

Thanks for all the encouragement for my little carved block. I'm still working on the finished product and I promise I'll share more soon.

Tomorrow is the next instalment of my Show & Tell interviews and its another great one. Such a creative blogger (hint) I know you are going to love it!!

Since we bought a little upright freezer a few months ago Mr F. and I have been trying to cook in bulk more often using our Make Two/Freeze One theory. Its so wonderful to pull a meal out of the freezer on those days you don't feel like cooking. So far we've mostly been making pies, slow cooks, stocks and tomato sauces.

A while ago we made up a new simple recipe of our own and I thought I'd share it here. It's easy, child friendly and delicious. We were cooking prawn risotto with a home made chicken stock one night and had about a litre of hot stock left. There were some chicken thighs in the fridge too that were on their last legs use by date so we threw the two together in the oven. The next night we heated it up, added some risoni pasta and ta da, dinner. You can also do the whole thing on a stovetop and finish it in a camp oven over a campfire, like we did last week.

I've added some pics too of the dessert we made when my sister was here - bread and butter pudding with cut up croissants instead of bread. I used a Jill Dupleix recipe from her book 'I Hate to Cook' and just used the croissants instead of buttered bread. It was dangerously good!

Apologies for the quality of the pics, both dishes went too fast for food styling!

Chicken Risoni

Cut about eight chicken thighs into smaller pieces, season and fry off in a frypan. To make 12 thighs add another can of tomatoes and a bit more of everything else.

Chop and fry two onions and some garlic. Add chicken and onions to casserole dish.

Add one can chopped tomatoes, 2 carrots cut in rings and about a litre of chicken stock with salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 45 mins at 180c.

At this stage you could freeze the base or use half and freeze the other.

To serve, add handful of black olives, some frozen peas, about a cup and a half of risoni and a dash of worcestershire sauce cook until pasta is ready, 20 minutes. Season to taste and serve with crusty bread.