The other night, when I faced leftover roast chicken and leftover peas, the memory of a lovely way of combining them popped into my mind. This fricassee is actually one of my earliest recipes and last night’s version with plenty of herbs, microplaned lemon zest and ‘garnish’ of little new potatoes tossed with lemon juice and mint, comes highly recommended. It’s quick, easy and mindless to make and could be adapted for one portion or scaled up if there is plenty of roast chicken available; in fact, it would be a good dish to make for 4 or more with a rotisserie chicken.
Serves 2
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 20 min
300g small new potatoes
40g butter
bunch spring onions
300g roast chicken
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp Dijon mustard
300ml chicken stock (half a cube in 300ml boiling water)
1 lemon
150g cooked peas
25g flat leaf parsley
8 mint leaves
Scrape or scrub the potatoes and boil in salted water until tender. Drain and return to the pan with a generous knob of butter. Cover to keep warm. Trim and thinly slice the spring onions, green and all. Melt remaining butter in a spacious lidded sauté/frying pan and stir in the onion with a generous pinch of salt. Cook over a medium heat, stirring regularly while you tear the chicken into bite-size pieces. Season the pile with salt and pepper. When the onion is soft, stir in the flour followed by the mustard and add the stock. Microplane half the lemon zest into the pan and bring to simmer stirring continuously. Add the peas, establish simmer again and fold in the chicken. Chop the parsley and stir into the chicken. Transfer to a serving bowl. Chop the mint, stir it into the potatoes and tip potatoes and buttery juices over the chicken. Serve with fork and spoon.