The other day I talked about roasting a couple of chickens, one for that night’s meal and the other for something else later in the week. The first night we ate part of one chicken as our main meal with a few side dishes, the next night I used the leftovers from that chicken to make my Penne with Chicken & Peas in Cream Sauce.

The day after that I needed to do something with the other roasted chicken so while looking through my February 2007 edition of Bon Appetit, I found a Chicken and Hominy Soup recipe in their “Fast Easy Fresh” section and it was fast, easy and delicious.

A couple of changes I made to the recipe were substituting crushed tomatoes for the canned petite tomatoes and using regular paprika instead of smoked paprika. If I had those other ingredients on hand, I would have used them and they may have given the soup a different flavor but my version came out just fine.

This is one of those meals that can be made into a shortcut meal by purchasing a store-bought roasted chicken. I use them all the time if I’m not in the mood to cook and they really aren’t too costly especially if you can get two meals out of one chicken and use the bones to make chicken soup.

One of the keys to this recipe is once the meat is removed from the chicken, take your time and shred the chicken meat by hand. It will be tempting to quickly cut the chicken up with a knife and I’m sure the taste will be the same but you’ll loose something in texture and mouth feel. This is a much better recipe if you take the time to shred the chicken by hand.

The recipe also suggests serving with tortilla chips, avocado and/or sour cream as toppings. All great suggestions but trying to loose a few holiday pounds I opted not to. If I were serving this to guests as a starter or even main course with a salad, I would definitely serve the side toppings.

Chicken and Hominy Soup

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 bunches green onions, sliced
4 teaspoons ground cumin
2 ½ teaspoons paprika
10 cups chicken stock
1 – 14 ½ ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 roasted chicken, meat removed and shredded
Hot pepper sauce, to taste
3 – 15 ounce cans hominy in juice, white or golden
1 cup FRESH cilantro chopped
Salt, to taste

How to Make Chicken and Hominy Soup at Home

10 cups of chicken stock is a lot so be sure to use a big soup pot to make this recipe. I actually started out with too small a pot and had to transfer everything over to my soup pot.

Heat your soup pot over medium-high heat, add oil and when hot, add the green onions, cumin and paprika. Sauté for about 5 minutes and then add the chicken stock, tomatoes WITH juice, chicken meat and a teaspoon or two of hot pepper sauce. You can add more of the hot pepper sauce toward the end if you want it spicier but it’s easier to add less now than suffer from adding too much.

Using a food processor or blender, puree the hominy with juice until smooth. Add the hominy to the soup and bring it all to a boil. As soon as it comes to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the cilantro, taste and adjust with salt and hot pepper sauce. One thing you might not realize is it is very difficult to adjust seasonings when the soup is as hot as it is at this point. Over a certain temperature, you taste buds are not that effective.

 I recommend you either wait until the soup cools down a little before adjusting the seasonings or have salt and pepper or hot pepper sauce on the table and let the individual eating the soup make the adjustment. Just be sure to tell them it may need salt.

This recipe is very similar to my Tortilla Soup with Shredded Chicken that you can find on my web site. In fact, I think that one has a little more interesting flavor that this one although it does take just a little longer to prepare.

What to do with leftover roasted chicken breasts?

I roasted a couple of chickens the other night and will write about roasting chickens another time.  I thought as long as I was roasting one whole chicken; I might as well roast two and use the meat from the second chicken for something else. And as long as I was going to roast chicken, I might as well roast a bunch of vegetables too.

We ate part of the first chicken one night with the vegetables and wanted to use the leftovers for another meal so I looked to see what I had in my refrigerator and pantry and decided to make a Penne with Chicken & Peas in a Cream Sauce. I basically had everything I needed in stock thus avoiding another trip to the supermarket.  Not that I don’t enjoy hanging out in the supermarket but two or three times a week is enough.

I put together a recipe and it was good but thought it needed a little more flavor help so I wrote to my friend Chef Ricco, who happens to be working in India right now starting a restaurant, and asked what I could have done to make this recipe better. The recipe below is a combination of what I came up with and Chef Ricco’s suggestions.

Roast Chicken Alternatives

If you don’t feel like roasting whole chickens, you can either buy already roasted chickens at the supermarket or use uncooked chicken breasts that you cook in the pan yourself. The advantage of cooking raw chicken is extra flavor you’ll get from sautéing the chicken (see fond on my Pan Sauces page).

I hope you enjoy it and please write and make your own suggestions or comments.

Penne with Chicken & Peas in a Cream Sauce
Serves 2

1/2 lb. penne pasta, cooked to al dente
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoons butter
2 thin slices from a large red onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, finely diced (Ricco suggested using roasted red peppers for more flavor and adding them toward the end of the recipe)
¼ cup white wine or brandy
1 chicken breast, cut up into pieces (cooked or uncooked)
1 cup half and half
1 pinch nutmeg
1 tablespoons fresh chopped parsley
1 cup frozen peas
Grated cheese like Parmigiano or Romano or you could even try some crumbled Roquefort cheese.
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste

How to Prepare at Home

Heat a large saucepan over medium heat until hot. Add the oil and butter. When hot but not smoking, add the onion and diced pepper. Sauté until the onion is translucent.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine or brandy and continue cooking until most of the wine has cooked off. This will add another layer of flavor.

Season the already cut up cooked chicken with some freshly ground pepper and add it to the pan to reheat for about one minute.

Add the half and half, nutmeg, parsley and peas being sure to mix together with a wooden spoon. Raise the heat to medium-high but as soon as the half and half comes to a boil, lower the heat to medium or medium-low and reduce the sauce to desired consistency (thickness).

When the sauce is just the way you like it, add some freshly grated cheese or try the crumbled up Roquefort. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta but reserve a few tablespoons of the pasta water to add to the sauce if the sauce appears to be too thick. This thins out the sauce while giving it a little flavor from the cooked pasta.

Add the pasta to the saucepan; toss well and serve.

Uncooked Chicken Method

If you are using uncooked chicken, you’ll start by sautéing the chicken first, before the onions and peppers. So cut up the chicken into bite sized pieces and sauté them in butter and olive oil.  Cook until almost done but not all the way. You can finish cooking the chicken when you return it to the pan otherwise you risk overcooking it.

Remove the chicken from the pan, add the onion and pepper and follow the rest of the recipe above.

An alternative would be to sauté the chicken breast whole, let it rest while you are making the sauce and cut it up just before adding it back to the pan. I don’t think it makes much difference but if you try it both ways, please let us know which you like better.

There’s nothing like braised anything when the weather gets cooler and you’re not out firing up the grill. Not that braised meals aren’t perfect any time of the year. They are, but the fall and winter is when I am looking for something more hardy and nothing satisfies that hunger more than a seasonal braise.

Braising is a simple technique where you brown a food, add a cooking liquid and let the food simmer in the oven covered until it breaks down and becomes tender. No magic. Just sear and simmer.

It works especially well on tough cuts of meat. We’ve all heard of pot roast and braised veal shanks or leg of lamb. One of my favorite dishes is braised chicken with whatever herbs and spices I might have lying around. I’m especially fond of braising chicken with leeks or fennel. Check out chicken thighs with sausage and braised fennel.

Please visit my web site for a more detailed explanation on braising, what cuts are best and the science that makes it work.

I adapted this recipe from December issue of Fine Cooking, one of my favorite culinary magazines. I made a few changes but the process is pretty much the same whenever you braise chicken.  The difference comes from the ingredients used. At the end of the recipe I have some suggestions for leftovers.

Braised Chicken with Apple Cider, Apples, Pears & Mustard

The recipe calls for using hard cider, which is alcoholic, but I used fresh sweet apple cider because that’s what I had and to be honest, I misread the recipe. I’m not sure why they say don’t use fresh apple cider, the recipe turned out great.

Ingredients:

6 chicken drumsticks
6 bone-in, skin on chicken thighs
Salt & Pepper for seasoning
2 plus tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
3 apples (I used Rome)
2 hard Bartlet pears (if too ripe, they will fall apart when cooking)
2 cups fresh apple cider
¼ cup Dijon mustard
3 sprigs of fresh marjoram
¼ cup half and half
some chopped fresh marjoram for garnishing

Prep

Rinse the chicken under cold water and pat dry.  Season with salt & pepper.
Peel & core the apples and pears. Slice them into sixths or eights.
Chop some fresh marjoram for garnish

How to Prepare in Your Kitchen

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