Hoarder

I wanted to brag about this Chorizo Chicken Casserole dinner for a few reasons.  

1. It is my favorite recipe from What to Cook and How to Cook it by Jane Hornby. I've made is so many times and in different iterations and each time it is delicious. I've even made a little video of me making it a while back. 

2. I tailored it to be a no waste recipe. 

For the actual recipe, see my old Cookbook Tuesday post about What to Cook and How to Cook it. I took a picture of it.

Cookbook Tuesday

I guess we have to start at the very beginning.  I horde vegetable waste.  The ends of onions, celery tops, carrot ends, fennel cores, any vegetable with the exception of lettuce. All these odd bits end up in a bag in the in the freezer.  I also save chicken bones from a roast or grocery store rotisserie. All these odd bits come in really handy. Like when I roasted a whole chicken, I stuffed it herbs and "veggie waste" into the the chicken and I rested it on the "waste." There is still flavor in those ends and it is much easier to stuff a small chicken with small odd ends.  When the chicken is done, I don't feel so bad throwing out all the stuffing material and I have a pile of bones for soup. 

For the Chorizo Chicken Casserole, I made the chickpeas from scratch.  I took dried chickpeas soaked them overnight in water and salt.  The next day I cooked them in the pressure cooker.  I used the soaking liquid, made a tea bag of sorts with assorted veggie waste and another tea bag of roasted chicken bones and placed them in the pressure cooker. I added a bit more water to cover the tea bags and more salt then set to cook for 35 minutes.  After all is said and cooked, I was left with a beautiful yellow opaque chicken and chickpea broth. It tasted rich but still very light. I drank a cup with a little bit of fish sauce and some chickpeas.  I would have added some green onion, but I'll save that for next time.

The recipe calls for parsley. and usually that means the leaves and discard the stems.  When I was cooking the chicken, I added the finely chopped parsley stems along with all the other spices and onions and garlic.  And of course I saved those onion ends. I also don't cut the ends off of the garlic. 

All in all, the only waste to came of this dinner was the plastic from the chorizo and the veins of the bell pepper, which I probably could have saved. When I made he commitment to try to reduce food waste at home I didn't think it would evolve as far as this. Now I'm thinking about all the things I can make with all this waste! You should try it too!!