In "Perfect Saturday Night In", Paul Merrett made thrice cooked chips to go with his fried fish. And for another dish he made fried chicken. The interesting thing about both these was that he pre-cooked them and fried them from cold. The chips he made over three days, the chicken over two. And I have to say that they both looked absolutely delicious. I decided I would give it a go. One day. When I was being sufficiently organised!
Now it has to be said that the likelihood of me thinking that we would have chips for dinner three days in advance is quite remote. However, one evening The Builder peeled far too many potatoes for us to eat in one evening so I decided to cut the excess into chip shapes and boil them up with the potatoes for that evening. When they were cooked I drained and dried them and put them in the fridge. The following morning I jointed a free range chicken and cut it into eight pieces. I put the pieces and the left over bones in my stock pot with carrots, onions, parsnip and celery and simmered it all for about an hour. I should probably have simmered the chicken pieces for a bit less. The recipe calls for 30 minutes and that would have been better for the breast pieces which were a bit overcooked in the finished product. Anyway, I dried the chicken pieces and put them in the fridge too, for the rest of the day.
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| Chips waiting for their second frying |
That afternoon (you can tell this was a Saturday, can't you!!!) I fried the chips for the first time and left them to go properly cold. Meanwhile, I dredged the chicken pieces in plain flour seasoned with black pepper and paprika, then coated them in crispy breadcrumbs.
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| The chicken is ready and is waiting impatiently for the chips to be ready too |
At dinner time I fried the chicken until it was heated through and then popped the chips back in for a final crisp up. We had the chicken and chips with red cabbage and baby sprouts, and a gravy made with the chicken stock which was the result of the simmering in the morning.
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| Fried chicken and chips, veg and gravy - a Perfect Saturday night in! |
It was all a bit time consuming, but not especially difficult and the resulting chicken and chips were absolutely lovely.
The rest of the chicken stock went to make a really rather lovely vegetable soup. We ate the leftover chicken for lunches with baby new potatoes and a salad of finely shredded red cabbage, pieces of pink grapefruit and pomegranate seeds. It might have been a bit time consuming, but the chicken kept on giving in various ways. And I have made chips that way again, when once more The Builder was a bit over enthusiastic with the potato peeling!!
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| Lunch on Monday |
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