Leftover Roast Chicken & Carrot Pilaf

A roast chicken yields many possibilities. All these roads lead to happiness, but especially chicken and rice cooked together in a pot.

We had roast chicken on Sunday, and as is quite common at my house we ate late - very cool, very continental, I hear you say, but when you only put the bird in the oven at 9pm you have to rush it a little bit. It all came together in the end in a bit of a frenzy, because we were already hungry, and then the smell of the roast filled the house and drove us to fever pitch. This was roast chicken with all the excitement but few of the trimmings and very little of the usual ceremony: roast chicken, roast potatoes, spinach, gravy, YUM. AND we watched the telly while we ate it.

I would say that it almost doesn’t get better than this, but the added appeal of a whole roast chicken for two is that there are always leftovers; a prospect almost as appealing as the first meal itself. There are loads of things to do with leftover chicken, but whatever you do it’s sure to be comfort food of the highest order. A roast chicken sandwich with mayonnaise, a kind-of-risotto thing made with orzo that you’ve put a silly amount of cheese in, a don’t-tell-the-Italians creamy chicken pasta bake with crispy bacon all over the top of it, or my ultimate favourite, chicken pilaf.

I’m not sure if I need to explain to you, dear reader, why chicken pilaf is so good, but I’m going to anyway, just in case you haven’t heard. What I’m talking about when I say pilaf is basmati rice cooked with all the other stuff in the pot. At the minimum there should be onions and butter, which is the kind of riz au pilaf that the French like, but what I really love is the kind of pilaf you get further afield, with spices, vegetables, and meat on the bone. The onions, sliced thinly into half moons, collapse into the butter, the spices frazzle in the butter and release their oils into the pot, the meat browns and releases its juices so that the rice is coated in the flavoured fat as it steams, and everything in the pot is delicately fragrant and deeply delicious.

This is the food I find most satisfying to eat, and is something I make often, particularly when cooking for myself. I usually make it from scratch - cooking pieces of chicken in a tasty sauce of onion, tomato, ginger, garlic and coriander root, flavoured with lots of whole spices. But this week I discovered that it was possible to replicate my usual feast using leftover chicken, a much simpler process than usual, with fewer spices, a few shortcuts here and there, but no less tasty for it. So tasty, in fact, I made it two nights in a row. OK, maybe it’s because I had no other ingredients in the fridge, but it was also very good.

The method is one I’ve been making for as long as I have been cooking for myself. I remember being in my school uniform in my parent’s kitchen, following a Nigel Slater recipe for pilaf rice and being astounded by the result. Finely diced onion was softened in butter with whole spices stirred in - cloves, cardamom and cinnamon stick - then you had to stir the washed rice delicately into the fat and pour over just enough boiling water to cover the rice by a centimetre or two. Clamp on a tight lid, set a timer, and watch in wonder when you finally remove the lid, the grains of rice magically standing to attention, and the fragrance released in a sudden whoosh of steam over your face. The rice tastes of the onion, the butter and the spices and, if you get it right, is just perfectly cooked. I never looked back. As I got older and started cooking professionally I learned the tricksy arts of cooking pilafs with different flavours and vegetables added to the rice pot, then meats both on and off the bone, and gradually it has become one of my very favourite things to cook.

Part of the joy of cooking for yourself is that you can do whatever you want without having to ask anyone else first. Improvisation is part of the fun. Sometimes I make it mega spicy for no reason other that I want my face to hurt, sometimes it feels right to go for something more delicate with rosewater and cinnamon. Other times I add pieces of potato to the pilaf base for extra ballast. Often I add a hard-boiled egg on the side, chopped hot green chillies over the top, or even better, fried turmeric potatoes sprinkled all over it for random bites of fatty yellow crunch. On this occasion, I did none of the above, because I was trying to be speedy and economical, and wanted to get my dinner in front of the telly with a glass of wine as fast as possible. This version was simpler than usual, using mostly whole spices for speed, cooked chicken torn off the bone into big shreds and grated carrot for a welcome sweetness.

Because I was eating leftover roast chicken I also happened to have some leftover chicken fat, that I poured off the roasting tin before making the gravy. Bonus! Use a tablespoon of it instead of cooking oil and your rice will glisten even brighter. If you have any leftover gravy, spoon some of it - in all its wobbly glory - into the pot before you pour over the boiling water, and your rice will taste even more like your lovely Sunday roast, thicker and richer (maybe that’s the cornflour in the gravy?).

To finish, I fancy some raita would fit the bill, but I didn’t have any yogurt, and no-one else was watching, so I grated some mature cheddar over the hot rice using the chunky side of the box grater. Cor! The cheddar softens over the rice and does the same soothing job as a yogurt sauce might, with the added bonus of feeling slightly naughty. I know that cheddar isn’t supposed to go on top of pilaf, but I’m cooking for myself here, so I can do whatever nonsense makes me happiest, thanks very much. In the same way that chunky grated cheddar goes on top of a British spag bol, I propose that grated cheese melting on top of steaming hot pilaf rice is also quite comforting. A bit like a risotto? Well no, not really, but it’s my dinner and my brain and I can make as many tenuous associations as I like. Try it! You might like it too.

Leftover Chicken & Carrot Pilaf

Serves 1

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