Chicken potjie

Quite often I have told you about my lamb potjies that I have been cooking and I read through them and realised that I have written up far too many, I decided that I would not do any more posts about lamb potjies. This one is different though, this is a chicken potjie! Janet had to work on Saturday so I decided that I would do the dinner - a chicken potjie, so if you don't mind I will tell you all about it, and how well it turned out. There is a space at the end of each post for comments, please let me know whether I should stop writing about my food, do you enjoy the food posts or not?

I start by preparing and setting out all of my ingredients; from the left the chopped up chicken breasts and my chicken stock, top centre is a bowl containing chopped onions, green peppers, celery and crushed garlic, next to that a bowl of peas and corn, below that a bowl of chopped spring onions, a bowl of chopped chillies, and centre some halved button mushrooms. There is also a packet of white onion soup powder, Aromat and salt and pepper.

First heat the pot up (seriously) and in a couple of tablespoons of cooking oil brown the chicken chunks. When they are nicely browned remove them and set aside. In the remaining oil cook the onions, peppers, celery and garlic until they have sweated through.

In the meantime toss the chicken pieces in the soup powder, a good shake of Aromat and a good sprinkle of mixed herbs and then put them back into the pot and stir around well. At this point I add the container of chicken stock.

Every Tuesday evening I deliver mussels and oysters to restaurants in Langebaan, twenty minutes from Saldanha, and I wait until 1630 to collect Janet from work, we then drive through to Langebaan and after I have done my deliveries we sit on the restaurant veranda and enjoy a bottle of wine together. Before leaving home I prepare a whole chicken in an earthenware pot to cook slowly until we get back, every time I use different herbs and spices with olive oil and there is always about a cup full of gravy/liquid in the pot which I pour into a small container and freeze, gradually we accumulate quite a few of these little containers - this is my chicken stock, each one is different and I never know what they will be like but they are always delicious.

At this point I also add a glass of Robertson Wineries Sauvignon Blanc, chuck your potatoes in, give it all a good stir, put the lid on, turn the heat down and let it simmer for half an hour.

After approximately half an hour taste your gravy and add salt and pepper as required, stir in the chopped chillies, spring onions and mushrooms and the peas and corn and let it all simmer until the potatoes feel soft.

Janet was well pleased with the result and I think I scored some points, another successful potjie.

On a different note it now looks like I will be able to go to the "Slangkop" rally in Kommetjie this coming weekend, there was some doubt because of a meeting on the same weekend but this has been postponed, so I look forward to my fourth visit to the rally with my buddy Frank, I will tell you all about it.