Chicken Casserole

What an unromantic name for what was a gorgeous dinner. One of the great things about being single (i'd count on my fingers to find the others but strangely i find myself mittened) is that you cook what you want ALWAYS. My Always tends to include multiple cloves of garlic (memo to self-please cross reference with being single....).A great recipe for the workin goyl with an oven timer is the following:

chicken thigh and drumstick, skin banished to the bin where it belongs if you want to wear the trousers you wore last year. I rarely use breast cos it's basically chicken cardboard.

2 cloves of garlic, crushed _buy a a microplane grater-expensive but you'll never regret it

about 6 cherry tomatoes, halved, or use 2 normal ones cut in quarters

salt n' pepper-try to use sea salt and freshly ground pepper

3 shallots, cut up roughly or use an onion

lots of fresh herbs plus a half tsp of fennel seeds-use a chopped fennel bulb if available-more about that anon

separate the leg and thigh and put it in Pyrex dish or any ovenproof dish that has an accompanying lid (tinfoil will work too but just not as well-wrap it tightly if using). Add the other ingredients plus a dash of any kind of wine-i usually have a slug left over from my nefarious doings the nite before when i have come to my senses and think that as long as i don't drink the whole bottle, my GP sister won't give out to me...  Add in about 2 oz or about 1/3 cup of rice (I used Arborio this time-great!) Put the lid or tinfoil on. Put in oven and don't do as i do and go to work and forget to set the timer. If you don't know to use the timer-learn!!

About 1 hour cooks this wonderfully. You come home to gorgeous smells and voila, you can watch Dr. Who and feels smug at the same time. What's not to like? This works also with a pork or lamb chop. Adapt your herbs accordingly-mint or rosemary for lamb-sage for pork. 

About fresh herbs: i buy them fresh and then chop them up with a mezzaluna-try to get double bladed but a big knife will do. Then i freeze them in little bags in one big herb bag.  Just ladle them out with a spoon-they retain all the freshness of fresh herbs.Thyme will separate after a while from its stalks so just bung it all in and wait! Rosemary-not so good but will do for a casserole. Basil will only chop with a knife. Roll it into cigars first. Use everything with coriander-stalks and all. the same applies to ginger -peel it and chop it into 1" chunks. Chillies- chop up with mezzaluna!! Use gloves or wash your hands and don't touch your eyes (or balls so a male friend tells me-better not ask...) for ages after. Between the herbs, chillies and ginger, you can make all sorts of stuff and only buy the meat and veggies for it. I also always have a tin of coconut milk in the house, likewise naam pla, chinese rice wine, dark soy sauce and sesame oil.

It's funny to write this knowing that no one's reading it! Who cares? Better that way than i should set myself up as some kind of blog clown. 

On a completely different note, i included the above recipe cos it's really low fat and i am currently a Weight Watcher slave.  Have lost 21 lbs since January and god, i'd really go a round of my Mum's roast spuds right now! Down 4 lbs at WW yesterday-went shopping for holidays clothes as a result. As usual, arms like hams but eventually found 2 tops. Buoyed up by this, i insouciantly entered the 3/4 length trouser nightmare. Emerged 20 minutes as a size 20 having gone in as a size 14. Will i never learn?? As Etta James could well have put it (judging from her photos)-I'd rather go blind, than to see those treetrunks, walkin away with me...

Oh well, bring on the Melba toast-bet Nellie Melba never envisaged herself as a WW flagbearer-weren't those Edwardians toasting this rather rotund soprano for her voice rather than her rotundity?

Christina

Good Lord, I've deactivated my Luddite gene!

Well I blame Brian and his CDubya (my sister Louise, aka Current Wife).

I hop round to their flat after work to have a Friday cocktail, as Brian so winsomely puts it in his text invite, (oh rather!, as i put it) and there, over goat's cheese, stufffed vine leaves and some oily artichokes, i somehow become taken with the idea of beginnning my very own blog (the vodka and beer might have played a role but, seeing as i could quaff for Ireland, the jury's out on that one-and anyway, it's still only half past 7) and, after a furious cycle home, head full of ideas, i have actually gotten started, which surprises me as much as anyone. Brian and Louise have had me round a few times on a Friday after work and i really enjoy it. One of wonderful things about my sister moving back to Ireland for a year after so many years away is that i get to see her and her kids (Kate, 6 and Jack, 2) all the time. I've also gotten to know Brian properly which has been a pleasure. In our family we all know the background history there, which is a fairly sorry one, so although they're moving back to NY soon (pause for a little cry), it will be on a solid footing, with Brian now a good friend and myself and herself even closer than before.

Not that i've stopped bitching or anything. Just as well i went to the English Market beforehand and got some goodies (see above). 2 kids eating their dinner out of Nutella jars, ony 3 icecubes between the 3 of us, forcing them through polite humiliation to wash out 3 glasses so we wouldn't be drinking V & T's out of mugs, and then Brian ordering a ham 'n' pineapple to go as i left. Shocking stuff. i was frankly glad to get home to the comfort of my own ordered existence where Friday nite dinner at mine has the decency to include a bottle of wine. It may not necessarily include any actual foodstuffs but hey, i'm a single lady in her 40's who lives alone-if i can't spend my love on a cat, why shouldn't i spend it on a bottle of Zinfandel?

It's good to get over to the rellies on a Friday. My professional life is filled with prostate cancer and urinary incontinence so Jack's little joyous face is wonderful to see and keeps me grounded. 

Well, it's my virgin blog so i will try not be bloring and will sign off. It's a Bank Holiday Weekend -Whitsun to be precise, Jesus did something important this weekend but, unfortunately for him, this weekend has always been important in my life as when the season in Ballybunion started, and as anyone from North Kerry knows, that's when summer life, as a 15 year old, used to really kick off. It was the weekend you started work. I started as a waitress in the Castle Hotel. i was deemed too young and stupid to be a chambermaid which, considering my chronic shyness and clumsiness, frankly beggars belief. I had the dubious distinction of serving Racy at the height of their fame (if you are under 30, take a wee nap for this bit). The head chef was a not so closet paedophile who once threw a teapot full of hot tea at me as i exited the doors into the dining room, and who was not averse to washing the bluebottle eggs off a steak and throwing it onto the grilll. Everyone knew the potboys would serve their ultimate apprenticeship in his bedroom but he got fired in the end only for serving food to the illegal gamblers in the equally illegal casino in the hotel bar. I earned £30 a week and, most of all, lived in a house across the road from the hotel-cue much drunken fumbling with the hard lads from Dublin who came down every season to work the fairground attactions.Louise was up the road in Allen's chipper (sadly, i found out  years later through the hospital where i work, they all died young of cancer almost without exception) and was enduring "I'll have a LARGE breast and curry chips every nite-such is what passed for innuendo in those days.

Well it seems i didn't sign off that fast did i? I warned B & L that i could waffle for ages. Just as well, only about 5 people are going to read this thing-5 you say?-well i do know where they live and i babysit for pretty much all of them-they're not stoopid,knoworra mean?...

Christina