One Chicken Four Dinners

I know, there are only three pictures up, haha, I forgot to photograph the second day's dinner. Which was a pasta dish.

So, What I did was I started with a beautiful organic chicken and made 40 clove chicken the first night. I will share the recipe at the end of the post.  This chicken dish produces the most flavorful, and moist chicken with lots of juice so that you can make a nice pasta dish with it. The first night we ate the legs and thighs with some veggies and roasted Yukon gold potatoes. With this dish, you need some yummy bread to spread all the gooey yummy garlic on it. It's a must and you will be really sad if you skip the bread.
On the second night I shredded a quarter of the breast meat and some of the wing meat, and chopped up some veggies and greens, then heated up the left over juice from the night before, and tossed it into some whole wheat pasta. The juice is so lovely and broth like from this dish, and you can skim any extra fat off of it before you heat it up. A very quick dinner and yummy because all the wonderful flavors have married themselves all night long in the fridge.

The third night I made mini chicken quesadillas. I bought some Organic tortillas from Whole Foods, and some Anaheim peppers. I roasted the peppers until charred, then peeled and seeded them. I shredded some more of the breast meat and some Monterey Jack cheese and heated them up. Made some Mexican red rice(which I should share in another post), and my own pico de gallo with organic heirloom tomatoes. The quesadillas were so good, I want to make them again soon! I even had a little leftover for my lunch the next day.

Fourth night with the remaining breast meat, I made pizza with some Yukon gold potatoes that I sliced on the mandoline real thin, and sautéd  until almost cooked. Then added chanterelles  and made some "gremolata," which is finely chopped  raw garlic, lemon zest, parsley. You add this after it's out of the oven. I also used buffalo mozzarella.  I wanted to by some fresh whole wheat dough from Whole Foods, but they were out. I ended up buying some thinner crust ready made whole wheat organic pizza crust instead)

There you have it! four dinners with one chicken. I probably only spent 50 bucks for the whole week with all the ingredients, and most of them were organic.

I find with chicken you can decide for the first dinner, how you want to start as far as flavors. This week, I started the chicken with braising it and giving it a tomato base with Italian flavors to it. Then you can let your creative juices flow with all the possibilities. Pasta, quinoa, or brown rice with it. I'm already trying to plan something interesting tomorrow for it.

Here is the recipe for Chicken with forty  cloves of garlic

2 Celery stalks, including leaves

2 Rosemary sprigs

4 thyme sprigs

4 flat-leaf parsley sprigs

1x1.6 kg chicken  ( a little over 3 1/2 pounds)

40 garlic cloves, unpeeled

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 carrot, roughly chopped ( I sometimes add more)

1 small onion, cut into 4 wedges

250 ml white wine

1 baguette, cut into slices

small herb sprigs to garnish

serves 4


Preheat the oven to 400 F. Put a chopped celery stalk and 2 sprigs each of the rosemary, thyme and parsley into the chicken cavity. Add 6 cloves of garlic. Tie the legs together and tuck the wing tips under.

Brush the chicken liberally with some of the oil and season well.Scatter  about 10 more garlic cloves over the base of a large casserole dish ( I use my le creuset oval dutch oven). Put the remaining sprigs of herbs, chopped celery, carrot and onion in the casserole.

Put the chicken in the dish. Scatter the remaining garlic cloves around the chicken and add the remaining oil and the wine. Cover and bake for 1 hour and 20 min. ( adjust this if your chicken is bigger) or until the chicken is tender and the juices run clear when the thigh is pierced with a skewer.

To serve, carefully lift the chicken out of the casserole dish. Strain off the juices into a small saucepan. use tongs to pick out the garlic cloves from the strained mixture. Spoon off the fat from the juices and boil for 2 to 3 min. to reduce and thicken a little. *( I skip this part and leave the juices as they are)

Cut the chicken into serving portions, pour over a little of the juices and scatter the garlic. toast the baguette slices, then garnish the chicken with herb sprigs and serve with the bread to be spread with the soft flesh squeezed from the garlic.

Enjoy!

This recipe is the best version and comes from a cook book called "Food of France." It has special memories for me, since I bought it when we lived there, and I cooked many recipes from it there.

You can tweak this to your taste as well. Sometimes I add more carrots or extra wine than it says. It's pretty forgiving. The garlic it the best part.

If you have any questions about it let me know, I would be happy to help!