Nowhere near as good as Mum's

I bought a frozen chicken last weekend with the intention of trying out chicken creole (p136). I then spent the entire week forgetting to take it out of the freezer, so it was weekend again before I actually had the chance to make it.

Other ingredients required were a green pepper, purchased on Wednesday night when I made the impromptu trip to the supermarket for dates; a ham steak, which are available individually at my usual Pak N Save, but not at Pak N Save Riccarton where I went to buy one - I  ended up with a small packet of 'ham pieces' instead; and 50g salami, for which I substituted a bierstick, so I could chop it in chunks rather than using the paper-thin slices of deli salami.

You're supposed to place the chicken in "a large ovenproof dish" and then add all the other ingredients. I really didn't have an appropriate dish of a size and depth to fit a chicken. In the end I settled for a rather shallow dish and used tinfoil to cover it over.


Since there wasn't much room in the dish, I mixed up the rest of the ingredients in a separate bowl: chopped onion, a can of tomatoes, tomato paste, the ham pieces and the chopped pepper. I then spooned this on and around the chicken. It was a tight fit in the dish I'd chosen - I even considered moving the whole thing into my large roasting dish, but decided to go ahead with it as was.

After 1 1/2 hours in the oven, I pulled out the chicken again, which seemed to have cooked through. I had to take the chicken out onto a separate plate in order to stir through the final ingredients: the chopped bierstick and a bit of dried basil.

Then I turned my attention to the chicken. I was quite hungry, so I chopped off a drumstick, added a few spoonfuls of the casserole mixture, and sat down to eat. It was a bit disappointing, really. The onions and peppers weren't cooked through, possibly as a result of being packed so tightly into the dish, and the ham and 'salami' did not add as much flavour as I'd expected.

I really don't like eating bone-in chicken in a casserole. It's true that bones give the meat a better flavour, but it's tricky to eat with a knife and fork, and too messy to eat with your fingers. So I carved up the chicken, divesting it of as much flesh as possible, and mixed the chicken pieces into the rest of the casserole.


After a night in the fridge, the flavours of the chicken creole have improved a bit. Without the bones to contend with, and with the onion a bit more cooked from reheating in the microwave, it's actually quite a pleasant meal. The thing is, it's ended up as nothing more than a variation on a standard chicken casserole - and I'd choose Mum's chicken casserole over this one any day of the week!