red onion |

Sometimes, you just know how a dish is supposed to be put together and you nail it the first time. That might have happened this evening – though I can’t rule out the possibility that smoked chicken would make day-old porridge into a culinary delight as well.

Either way, this is a pleasing, colourful dish wish lots of texture and a nice balance of flavours. I’ll definitely be making it again.

Ingredients

1 breast smoked chicken, cut into cubes

180g wild rice

2 small onions/1 large onion, sliced

2 sprigs rosemary

100g walnuts, broken into pieces

80g pomegranate seeds

50g pecorino romano, grated

olive oil

Serves 3

Method

Step 1: rinse rice and cook with about 350ml on a medium to low heat. Bring through the boil, allow it to simmer for 3-5 minutes and turn off. Set aside to let it steam through to completion.

Step 2: in a large frying pan or wok, over a low to medium heat, fry onion, walnuts and rosemary leaves, stripped from their stalks.

Step 3: once the onion is starting to soften, add the chicken and stir for another 3-4 minutes until the chicken is warmed through. Turn off the heat, add the pecorino and pomegranate seeds and stir through. Set aside until the rice is done.

Step 4: Once the rice is done, add it to the rest of the ingredients and stir gently, but thoroughly. You don’t want to break the structure of any of your ingredients.

And there it is: a relatively quick and extremely more-ish dinner.

Last night was our office Christmas party. True to form, I drank far more than I intended to – and then left without telling anyone. They don’t call it an Irish exit for nothing. Anyway, as you might imagine, today I had a bad dose of The Fear. And as I ran out the door (late) to meet someone in Brixton this morning, fighting back waves of nausea, smudged makeup still under my eyes, one slice of toast and a cup of ill-advised coffee swilling around in my poor, poisoned stomach, I thought to myself, what the f*ck am I going to do with that roast chicken sitting in my fridge?

Aha. Chicken salad. Which, aside from being truly delicious, also happens to be a solid hangover cure. So, here we go:

Ingredients

Salad

200g roast chicken, torn into strips

50g split red lentils

200ml vegetable stock

1 clove garlic, grated

3 roast peppers, peeled

1 red onion, peeled and sliced

250g cherry tomatoes

200g boiled chickpeas

1 ripe avocado

50g sheep’s cheese

3-4 sprigs of mint leaves, torn

zest of 1/2 orange

Dressing

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp sesame seed oil

1/2 tsp English mustard

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp black pepper

pinch salt

juice 1 lemon

Method

Step 1: place chicken in a pre-heated oven at 180c for about an hour and a half, depending on weight. Remove, cover with foil and set to one side to rest. When it’s cool enough to handle, tear into strips and add to your salad bowl.

A note on chicken: I buy free range and/or organic chicken – primarily for ethical reasons but they do actually taste a whole lot better too. You can get a chicken for less than £6 in Sainsbury’s and, given that you can get 4 meals out of it (6 if you use the bones and any scraps for chicken soup), I think that’s pretty good value for money. And I assure you, I am on a budget.

Step 2: cook the lentils in the vegetable stock and garlic on a medium heat for about 15 mins, until the water has boiled off but the lentils still have a teensy bit of a bite to them. Once cooled, add to salad bowl.

Step 3: place peppers on a roasting tray in a pre-heated oven at 200c for about 40 mins or so, turning once in the middle. About 20 mins in, add a sliced red onion to the tray. Set tray aside to cool or, if time is of the essence, run peppers under cold water for a minute or two. Peel, cut into strips and add to the salad bowl, along with the red onion.

Step 4: wash tomatoes and add to salad bowl. I had mine whole and raw today because I wanted to give the salad some bit, but I’ve been known to slice or roast them with the peppers. Whatever takes your fancy.

Step 5: next, add the chickpeas. I use pre-boiled, canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained. If you feel like cooking them up yourself, even better.

Step 6: cut open the avocado and scoop out the flesh into the salad bowl.

Step 7: crumble white cheese on top of the salad mix.

Step 8: add zest and torn mint leaves. I don’t own a zester right now so I’m using the parmesan side of the cheese grater which, as far as I’m concerned, works just fine.

Step 9: mix salad dressing ingredients together in a cup, giving it a good stir to make sure none of the dry ingredients clump, and drizzle over the salad ingredients.

Step 10: mix salad by hand and voila, you are done.

Serves 4 (unless hungover, in which case 2)

red onion

Wild rice and smoked chicken salad

Roast chicken salad