Easy Chicken Recipes

What do you do when you've roasted a large chicken for the family and then they call to cancel as a sudden problem has occurred? OK, you have it hot the first day and then cold cuts on the second. What then, there's still a huge amount left. Chicken pies and an easy chicken curry was my answer.

For the pastry:

450g self raising flour

150g cooking margarine

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg.

200 mls water

Mix the flour and salt together and add the beaten egg.

Bring the water up to the boil and add the cooking fat. Melt them together.

When they are boiling, pour them into the flour, egg and salt mix. Stir vigorously with a fork until you get a soft paste. Flatten the dough out and place it in the refrigerator. Leave for at least twelve hours. By leaving it, the fat will have time to crystallize and will make beautiful, crunchy pastry.

Fry some onions until soft.

Boil a few potatoes and carrots in salted water, allow to cool, add the onions and chop everything up small. Add some chicken stock and mix to a thick consistency. Chop up some of the cold chicken and add to the vegetables. This is the pie filling.

 When everything is ready, take the pastry out of the fridge.

Flour your worktop or board and roll out the pastry. It will be quite hard at the start but it soon becomes softer. Grease your pie dishes and line them with pastry, fill to about three quarters with the pie filling and put the lids on. Paint the tops with milk and put them on a tray in the oven.

They need to go just below the half way mark in your oven. If you put them at the top they will probably burn. The oven is set at 200C gas mark 6. Time them for fifteen minutes then take the tray out and turn it around so that the back becomes the front. (This is a peculiarity with my oven, it cooks very hot at the back but a bit cooler right at the front. You know your own oven.) I time them for another fifteen minutes, then they are done and I cool them down on a wire tray.

 The chicken curry is very easy.

I fry some onions in a saucepan, then add chicken stock. I put in a tablespoon of vindaloo curry paste, a squirt of tomato ketchup, a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. I add chopped up chicken to it and let it simmer for an hour, stirring occasionallt to prevent sticking.

To thicken the curry I add a tablespoon of cornflour to about 100 mls cold water, stir it up and add it to the curry. Let it simmer for another fifteen minutes and it's ready.

Serve with rice, pasta, fried potatoes or whatever you fancy.