Feeding the Folks

Mum and Dad were passing through Christchurch yesterday, and planned to be at my place for dinner. I reckoned I had just enough time to roast a small chicken with basic bread stuffing (p135) and do some curried vegetables (p161) to go with it.


I rushed home and got the chicken in the oven, and was preparing the stuffing when Mum and Dad turned up. I'd chosen to cook it separately from the chicken, which I find quicker and easier. I mixed chopped onions with breadcrumbs, sage, melted butter and egg, then rolled it in tinfoil and set it aside for a while.


There's no instruction that indicates how long the stuffing should be cooked for, since it's supposed to be inside the chicken, and there's timings given for that. I was doing a half recipe as well, so it was only a small package of stuffing. I bunged it in with about 45 minutes to go, and hoped for the best.


While the chicken was cooking, I prepared the vegetables. The base ingredients are potato and onion, then you just add in whatever else you've got. This turned out to be a convenient way of using up some of the courgettes, beans and carrots I now have in large quantities from the garden.


I allowed about 15 minutes for the curried vegetables, beginning by cooking the potato and onion gently for five minutes or so. After that, I threw in the rest of the veges, along with curry powder, lemon juice, flour, salt and pepper, and water. I bunged the lid on that and left it to simmer.


Meanwhile, the chicken had finished cooking. I carved it up (fairly ineptly, as usual, but at least it was in manageable bits) and cut the log of stuffing into slices. By the time that was done, the veges were ready and  I soon had dinner on the table.


This was a reasonably successful meal. The stuffing was quite palatable, and you can't really go wrong with a roast chook. I had expected the vegetables to have a stronger curry favour, but it was actually fairly subtle - just enough to impart a bit of warmth into a chilly wet evening, and quite a good accompaniment for roast chook and stuffing.