One pot meal: Chicken with courgettes and green olives

This is one of those handy little recipes which kills a few birds with one stone. It's all done in one pot, which I'm a big fan of (less washing up) and it's a good use for courgettes of which there is already a glut (and they've only just got started.) It's also fairly low fat and children like it.

I bought a wide cast iron pan with a lid from Aldi and it is such a lovely thing to cook meals in. (The posh, the rich and those with generous friends who bought them one for a wedding present will have similar pans made by Le Creuset.)

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
glug of olive oil
Four or five courgettes
1 pack of chicken thighs (or chicken breasts) - about 250g to 300g cubed chicken
1 cup (about 200g) rice
Pinch of saffron
1/3 cup sherry
1 and 2/3 cup water or chicken stock
handful of pitted green olives
fresh thyme

METHOD:

1. Chop the onion and garlic and soften in the olive oil.
2. Chop the courgettes and add to the pan.
3. Use scissors to snip the chicken thighs into bite-sized pieces straight into the pan.
4. Add the rice, saffron and sherry and bubble until the liquid is reduced.
5. Pour in the water or stock (I use half a Knorr chicken stockpot) and add the chopped thyme and the green olives.
6. Put the lid on and leave over a low heat for 15 to 20 minutes until the chicken and the rice are cooked through.
7. When it's cooked leave to rest for about 10 minutes. Then check the seasoning and grind over some black pepper before serving.

This makes a nice big pan full and serves four to six people.

The Way Things Are

I could never really say what we actually eat from day to day. I'm not a great planner of meals. Most of the time I tend to just cook whatever happens to be to hand. Sometimes, though I'm organised and that's great.

Last night is a good example of The Way Things Are. I found a packet of prawns in the freezer. I didn't know they were there because Brian bought them. He does most of the supermarket shopping and I do most of the cooking which can lead to Old Mother Hubbard moments when there's nothing in the house except Marmite and bran flakes.

These prawns were the fat, juicy frozen uncooked type. What a find! I had some risotto rice and a head of broccoli, so it seemed to suggest a risotto.

I sweated off a finely chopped onion in a bit of butter, added the chopped broccoli with the tender parts of the stalk, and then a cupful of rice and let that lot toast and sweat in the butter for about five minutes.

Next I added a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and let the rice drink it up before adding a couple of mugfuls of hot chicken stock made from those lovely little Knorr Stockpots - dinky little pots of jellied stock without the powdery taste of previous fave Marigold bouillon.

Then I left it to cook. There is a school of thought that says you should hover over a risotto, stirring it lovingly and adding ladles of hot stock as the rice drinks it up. Then there's another school of thought which says bung the whole lot in at once. I belong to the latter.

Then the cat arrived among the pigeons - or rather the mobile fishmonger arrived and I'd not only forgotten he was coming, I'd also neglected to make sure I had the requisite cash to make a purchase. Granny in the Annexe took pity and procured me half a kilo of mussels. Perfect to add to my seafood risotto.

So I did, along with the prawns, a pinch of thyme and a bit more butter and very delicious it was too (I was told).

So that was The Way Things Were last night. Tonight's going to be much the same, except I haven't got a nice bag of prawns to discover any more.

There is, however, a rather charming lobster...