The Challenge Tuesday Week 4

Today begins the final week of my Pantry & Freezer Challenge. All my freezers are beginning to look a bit bare, especially the chest freezer.

Yesterday, I made chicken stock with the carcass of the chicken cooked earlier in the week. I added a miripoix (diced carrot, celery and onion) and bouquet garni and cooked it on low for about 3 hours.

Last night's tea was a delicious concoction of Creamy Chicken with Vegies and Pasta.

I had three bone in chicken thighs and three people to feed. This actually fed three of us and made two meals to freeze.

Creamy Chicken with Vegetables and Pasta
3 bone in chicken thighs or a couple of marylands
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine
2 cups of vegetables - I had carrots, red and green capsicum, snow peas, mushrooms and zucchini
1/2 cup cream
30g butter
salt & pepper
extra stock
Cornflour to thicken
Cooked pasta - about 2 cups

Poach chicken in stock and wine until well cooked. Allow to cool and then remove meat and dice. Place cooking liquid in freezer to set fat.
Saute harder vegetables in butter. Add cream and other vegetable and cook for a couple of minutes. Add extra stock and seasonings.
Add pasta, chicken and skimmed stock/wine from freezer and cook until vegetables are to your liking. Thicken with cornflour if necessary.

Sorry, no photo as camera not working. Lucky, darling son gave me his top notch camera for my birthday!

Tonight's tea is Curried Sausages. With only one packet of sausages (Lake Grace Butcher ones - the best!) and the whole family to feed tonight, I have to make them go a long way.

Dessert is Lemon Meringue Tarts. The reason I'm splashing out with dessert is because I have a jar of home made lemon butter in my pantry. Also, I made Hollandaise to have with my poached egg yesterday morning and had some left over egg whites.

Only thing is, when I opened the jar, it didn't taste the best and I realised it was a year old....  Pastry tarts already cooking in the oven, so I had to make another batch of Lemon Butter! Now I have even more egg whites! Meringues coming up, I think!

Here's the Lemon Butter recipe converted from a CWA one for the Thermomix:

Lemon Butter
500g sugar
250g butter
Juice of 4 lemons and zested rind of 3

Cook the above for 6 minutes/90/speed 3 to dissolve sugar and make a syrup.
Reduce heat to 80.

4 eggs - 2 with the whites, and 2 with yolks only

Beat the eggs and add slowly to the Thermomix bowl while on speed 3. Continue cooking for about 10 minutes until the mixture looks like honey and coats the back of a spoon.

Refrigerate in jars.