Marmalade Chicken – Hands Up Who Saw THAT Coming!

Two recipes today! Often I use the Honey Lemon Marmalade I made yesterday, to baste a roasting chicken.  I could make this one for you but it is just as easy to describe. Simply stuff the bird with chunks of onion, lemon, apple and thyme.  You will not eat this stuffing so no need to peel or prep anything. Cut a lemon in half and a whole garlic in half to roast alongside the chicken. Then in the last 30 minutes of roasting, brush with the marmalade as often as you think about it.  Pop your potatoes around the roast for the last 40 minutes and you have Celi’s favourite chicken roast. It is the gravy that will make you sigh though. I love the gravy from this chicken!

Anyway yesterday I made some pastry and constructed the Marmalade Chicken pie! Oh you knew I was going to do that!  You know how I love to make hot pies. But it is SO GOOD! But  impossible to make the shot look as pretty as it tastes!  Plus as you can see my pastry was a disaster!! Then my big camera refused to shoot at all, so this was taken with my purse camera! 

Marmalade Chicken Pie is for special occasions. Though to my mind every day is special!

First gently cook  3 finely sliced onions,  when they are soft add a big slug of  balsamic vinegar and cook down until they are caramelised and  melty.  Then pick a peck of pickled peppers (1 teaspoon of pickled jalapeno – finely sliced – you knew that!).  Add to the onions.  The heat of the peppers lifts the sweet onions. Rest. Not you -the onions!!

Cook a pan full of  chicken  fillet, diced into cubes, salt and ground pepper, until golden. Add a scant 1/2 cup honey lemon marmalade.   Toss above the flame until hot and shiny.  Deglaze with a good glass of dry white wine.  (or whatever is in the open bottle!) Render down until saucy.

Make the pie. Line your pastry dish with half the pastry. (You can blind bake, though I did not this time as I was HUNGRY!) Dot the pastry with small cubes of feta cheese. (The salty cheese is perfect with the sweet chicken)  Add marmalade chicken then the onion  mixture. Then wilted spinach. Add your top layer of pastry. Sprinkle the top of the pastry with a little chunky sea salt.

Cook at 375 for about 30 – 40 minutes.

And now to the junkyard. I am so sorry.  By the time I got to the junk yard yesterday the fog had rolled in so thickly we could barely see what we were looking at.  All the sheds were dark. No light at all.  This is when my camera went on the blink and no amount of shaking  and growling would make the shutter release. I call this a ‘God said NO’ day!  Yes, I attended  a convent school!

So no images. But I found a wonky old work bench. An even wonkier but potentially stunning kitchen table that has a leg going the wrong way but fantastic peeling green paint and a good heavy top.  John found two old glass windows for the cold frame!  Actually John did a lot of slow head shaking, as the delightful elderly junk yard man and I zoomed from one end of the yard to the other, BOTH clad in tall green gumboots. Me exclaiming over wonky stuff. The old fella pointing out more wonky stuff.  I was in heaven.  This old codger has everything. TonTon is seriously in love with the man and we will return on a sunny day with the camera.  He collects cupolas from collapsed barns. Can you imagine!

Plus and here is the thing that raised Our John’s interest – the Junk Yard Man has a solar water heating panel still in it’s disintegrating wrapper, sat waiting just for us in one of his barns. Perfect for my solar heated outdoor bath and shower room (without walls). More on that another time.

This morning we have freezing fog. Plus it is Ground Hog Day, though John’s research has said that the ground hog is only right about thirty percent of the time. And Jean tells me that it is The Festival of First Light in our hemisphere so from now on it gets lighter and brighter! That deserves a dance! A nice convent girls dance, naturally!

We are surrounded in freezing fog. So I shall skate over to the barn and see what’s what!

Good morning!

c

PS A really easy way to wilt spinach: Spread a thin tea towel over your colander placed in the sink, load your washed spinach in. Pour a jug of boiling water slowly all over the spinach, gather the ends of the tea towel and squeeze the water out of it. Now it is wilted and drained and ready for a pie or quiche.