Chicken choices – definitely not boring!

You should be feeling very pleased with yourself – you've used every last morsel of the chicken and it's not taken you three weeks of preparation, cooking and the aftermath.

I say every morsel, what you were left with, literally, was the carcass of the bird. If you have the time and are sufficiently enthusiastic you could make a stock. Making stock from scratch is a worthy but long winded process, not appropriate for the time saving, speedy stuff we're talking about at the moment.

I should mention the cost of the chicken. I bought mine as part of a meal deal i.e. choice of starter or side, main meal, dessert and a bottle of wine or a non alcoholic alternative. This is the best value – you may think you don't want a meal deal and you probably don't on that occasion, but you may in the future. Choose wisely – with the exception of the liquid refreshment of course, you can store it in your BFF – your freezer!

Chicken choices

Stir fries are great - they are quick, you can choose noodles or rice, use up your leftovers – why not throw in roasted cashews, roughly chopped. Use a plum sauce to fold through the stir fry – live dangerously and add a glug (another technical, culinary term) of sweet chilli sauce too.

Who doesn't love a pie – how about chicken and mushroom. You get to use your chicken stock – it's now called liquid gold in my kitchen. It's intense and rich and what better way to show it off than by making the sauce for your chicken and mushroom filling. I apologise, I should have said that you get between 250/300ml of stock depending on the size of your chicken.

How about a hearty chicken soup – using your stock as a base. Serve your soup with home-made soda bread.

It's what you put with the boring stuff that turns it into delicious home cooked food - produced in the blink of an eye after a hard day at the office – a magician.

P.s. You can delete the takeaway delivery numbers you have on speed dial!