I won’t spoil his sales by repeating the recipe, but this is a great use of left-over roast chicken meat with stock made from the carcass, finely-chopped carrot and leak, peas, plus small pasta stars and onion. Instead of using olive oil, I fried the veg in the schmaltz, the chicken fat scraped off the stock once it had solidified in the fridge. Full of golden flavour.

I was lucky enough to meet Claudia Roden in 1997 when I was working for NPR and I am pleased to report that she was charming, gracious, and chatted to me for way longer than she needed to.

This is a simplified version of Claudia’s recipe. Fed 2 hungry boys and their dad.

• pack of 4 chicken thighs (I used fillets but this would be even better with skin-on unfilleted chicken)
• 1 onion
• half a big pack of smoked bacon lardons
• 2 fat cloves of garlic
• 500ml apple cider
• as many salad / waxy potatoes as you want, halved
• 2 handfuls of frozen peas
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Chop & gently fry the onion in a casserole dish until it starts to go soft, then add the lardons and then the chicken on a higher hear. Season well with salt & pepper. When the chicken is browning nicely, add the chopped garlic and continue to fry. Before the garlic can burn, add the cider, and the peas. We cooked the potatoes separately but I would suggest adding them to the pot now. Reduce heat to a simmer and put a lid on.

Cook for 30 min and serve on soup plates with crusty bread to mop up the sublime juice.

Tilly likes these so much we’ve added this to the menu in our Imaginary Café.

You will need:

• Some chicken thighs (or breasts, but thighs are cheaper and tastier. Cheaper and tastier in the Suppertime way.) – 1 per person.
• Some buttermilk – or and egg / milk mix.
• Spicy sauce of your choice, e.g. a Mexican chilli sauce.
• Some polenta or semolina
• Plenty of salt, freshly-ground pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder / granules
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp dried oregano

Bash the chicken flat with a rolling pin. Put it in a bowl for a while with the buttermilk and spicy sauce mix to marinade.

Meanwhile, in an old ice cream tub, mix all the dry ingredients, then put the lid on and shake like a Polaroid picture.

When you’re ready to cook, take the chicken out of the marinade bowl, add to the dry mix, coat and shake. Then shallow fry for about 10 minutes on each side until golden brown. Serve with veg or in a sandwich.

Cooking al fresco:

Serves 2

• 2 chicken breasts, cut into strips
• 2 or 3 tsp of zatar (a mix of thyme, marjoram, oregano, sumac and sesame seeds)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 tsp seasalt
• 1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika
• 1 tsp cranberry jelly (don’t ask why – it just worked!)
• squeeze of lemon juice
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp agave nectar, or other sweetening agent
• 1/4 onion

Pound the garlic and salt into a paste and add all the other ingredients. Mush up into a thick gloopy paste, which you then smother over the chicken meat. Leave it marinade for as long as you can, then fry in olive oil on a high heat to begin with with a quarter onion cut into thick slices. Reduce the heat and turn the chicken to ensure it is cooked all the way through.

We had this with warmed pitta bread, salad, couscous, home-made hummus and falafels. Utterly divine.

Only 2 of us for supper in the ever-diminishing household tonight – I had a chicken breast and a couple of steaks. I know my daughter often finds steak a bit tough, and a grilled chicken breast sounded boring, so I thought I’d have a go. I didn’t look it up, I just made it up as I went along. Serves two. If you have two chicken breasts.

• 2 chicken breasts
• some polenta – 6 tablespoons perhaps
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp dried marjoram
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp paprika (not smoked)
• 1 egg

Bash the chicken breasts flat with the end of a rolling pin. I ended up with something covering about twice the area of the original chicken breast.

Mix the polenta, herbs, salt, pepper & paprika well on a plate. One a separate plate, whisk the egg. Coat each flattened chicken breast with egg, and then cover really well in the polenta mix. Fry each escalope on a fairly high heat until crisp & golden. Delicious and very child-friendly.

• 1 large egg white
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 tsp salt
• splash of mirin (optional)
• splash of clear  rice vinegar (optional)
• chicken breast meat
• 1 cup of peanut oil or similar

Whisk the cornflour and salt into the egg white with a fork. I added a bit of mirin and rice vinegar purely because I had some in the cupboard and hadn’t found a use for them yet.

Cut the chicken into stir-fry-sized chunks and marinade in your gloop for up to half an hour. Then fry the chicken in quite a lot of oil – I used sunflower oil with a dash of toasted sesame oil added. Once the chicken pieces are white on the outside, you can drain it and add it back to the main stir fry wok to continue cooking – or in our case we cooked it longer in its own pan as we were making separate veggie and meat stir-fries.

The chicken was a huge hit – beautiful texture, and it stays moist inside.

• Small whole chicken – small enough to fit in a casserole with a lid
• Enough new potatoes, carrots and parsnips to feed your family
• 1 or 2 onions
• stick of celery
• glass of white vermouth or wine (Noilly Prat for preference. The French must be on to something. The smell of Noilly Prat and the sound of Fauré’s Requiem are by far the best arguments I’ve ever found for the existence of God.)
• clove of garlic
• sprig of thyme
• bay leaf

Heat a small amount of olive oil in the casserole and brown the chicken whole on all sides. Remove the chicken and rest on a plate.

Then slice the onions finely and fry in the casserole. Add the garlic, sliced celery, thyme and roughly chopped carrots and parsnips and halved new potatoes. When they’ve fried for a bit and started to stick, chuck in the vermouth or wine. Inhale deeply. Put the bay leaf and chicken back in the pot and top up with some water. Season with salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Bring to the boil on the hob then put in a coolish oven for up to a couple of hours – I think I started at 180C and turned it down to 140C after about half an hour.

The chicken should just fall apart – I put all the veg in a warmed serving dish with a slotted spoon, and sat the chicken on top.

Skim as much fat off the juices as you can, and simmer to reduce and serve the gravy with the veg and chicken. Delicious!

Post script: I had the left-over dark meat the following day on some soda bread with a bit of mayonnaise and pepper – the best chicken sandwich ever! The meat was suffused with the divine taste of the herbs from the Noilly Prat.

This is a simplified version of Nigella’s Chicken, Mushroom and Bacon pie. I wanted to use left-over cooked chicken instead of cooking fresh, so this is what I used:

• Bowl full of cooked chicken meat – about 500g
• 4 rashers of bacon
• half a box of chestnut mushrooms
• 2 tablespoons of Marsala wine
• 500ml of hot chicken stock
• roll of ready-made shortcrust pastry (though in hindsight I wish I’d made my own)
• splash of olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic
• 3 spoons of plain flour
• dried mixed herbs

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C or a little hotter. Put a glug of olive oil in a pan. Slice a clove of garlic in half and push it round the pan while the oil warms up. Chuck the garlic away before it burns. Cut the bacon into little strips and fry. When it begins to catch, toss in the sliced mushrooms.

Chop the chicken into small chunks and chuck in the pan along with a couple of teaspoons of dried mixed herbs – she said to use thyme, but I never ever have enough thyme. Sprinkle over a few dessert spoons of plain white four. When the mushrooms are cooked, add the marsala and the hot chicken stock. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 5 or 10 minutes until thickening.

Put the mixture in a dish and cover with pastry. I put the children’s initials on top with the left-over pastry for a bit of fun, but this proved to be a very good move. Tilly had earlier in the afternoon declared that chicken pie was “disgusting” and she wouldn’t eat it – but of course she just had to have the piece with the letter T on, and she ate loads.

Bake for half an hour. Serve with new potatoes, peas and sweetcorn. Delicious. It all went. Nothing left for Mr Freezer.

You will need:

• left over roast chicken meat
• half a box of mushrooms
• 250ml double cream or just over
• garlic
• 150g parmesan cheese
• 250g or more of linguine or spaghetti
• a glass of white wine or Noilly Prat vermouth
• basil

(Made enough for 2 adults and 3 small children).

Cook the pasta. Put the grill on.

Thinly slice the mushrooms and fry in a little oil with the chopped garlic. Add the cooked, diced chicken and fry for a bit to warm it through. Turn up the heat and throw on the wine or vermouth. Inhale deeply. Reduce the wine a bit then pour on the cream and brink to the boil. Add some salt and a lot of freshly ground pepper.

Take the pan off the heat. Stir in most of the grated cheese and the chopped basil. Mix in with the pasta in an oven dish sprinkling some parmesan on top. Zap under the grill until golden brown on top.

2 out of 3 of my children wanted seconds.

- 1 block shortcrust pastry – taken from the freezer about 3 hours ago and now thoroughly de-frosted.
- 1 tin Campbell’s condensed chicken soup.
- 2 chicken fillets – diced.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Fry the diced chicken in a knob of melted butter.

Grease the inside of a pie dish or oven-proof plate. I use a shallow pyrex bowl which is very un-glamorous, but quite effective.

Roll out two sheets of pastry. Put one on your plate to form the bottom of the pie.

When the chicken’s cooked take it off the heat and stir in the condensed soup. Ladle this mixture into the pie and cover with the top sheet of pastry.

Trim the pastry so it’s nice and tidy round the outside of the pie, seal the edges by pressing down with the tines of a fork all the way round the rim. Cut a slit in the top of the pie and if you’re feeling creative make a few pastry leaves to decorate the top of the pie. Brush or sprinkle with milk.

Put it in the oven until the pastry’s cooked.

Lovely with roast potatoes and some veg or just some chips!