Shadow’s Chicken & Mushroom Casserole

From Shadow

You guys are soooo adorable! This is the best idea ever!

Anyway, I thought I would just share with you one of my favourite recipes. Its stupidly easy to cook, feeds as much as you want, tastes great, and is brilliant for things like having people over cos you do all the preparation well in advance so by the time people are arriving you’ve had time to make yourself look pretty and can sit and talk to them without spending all your time in the kitchen!

Shadow’s Chicken & Mushroom Casserole

INGREDIENTS:

Skinless, boneless chicken breast fillets (I’d say probably 2 small ones per person)
Basmati rice (preferably, but any rice will do)
1 small onion
Mushrooms (I’m a mushroom addict so I use about 300… add however many you like!)
½ pint of chicken stock (I’m lazy and just use one of those cubes… if you’re feeling inspired you could try making your own..)
½ pint of milk
Light soy sauce
Worcester sauce
2oz plain flour

INSTRUCTIONS:

Peel and finely chop the onion.
Peel and chop the mushrooms.
Heat some cooking oil in a large deep saucepan (must be one which has a lid).
Once the oil is hot, add the chicken pieces and brown them on all sides (basically just let them sit in the pan until they turn golden brown). If cooking for a lot of people do a few pieces at a time so they brown evenly.
Take the chicken out of the pan and put in a bowl to one side.
Add a little more oil and fry the onion and mushrooms until nice and soft.
Sprinkle over with a light coating of flour and leave to heat for a minute.
Add the chicken stock and milk and stir thoroughly (if you get lumps at this point use a whisk to … umm… what is the technical term for getting rid of lumps?! Delumpify?)
Heat gently until the sauce thickens slightly (should be bubbling a bit but not actually boiling).
Add 2 tablesthingys of soy sauce and 2-3 tablesthingys of Worcester sauce (I love the stuff so I tend to be quite generous and it does smell fantastic!) Stir these in and the sauce should turn a kind of golden browny colour.
Add the chicken pieces from earlier, adjust the temperature until the sauce is simmering gently, put the lid on the saucepan, and you’re done!
Put the rice in another saucepan and add cold water to about ¾ inch above the level of the rice. (I tend to just cook a mountain but about 5 handfuls per person should be ok). Leave that to stand and don’t switch it on.
Leave everything alone for about 35 minutes, just checking occasionally that it’s still simmering away happily and not boiling. Then put the saucepan of rice on a high temperature with no lid, wait for that to be boiling vigorously, turn it down to the lowest temperature setting, put the lid on and leave it.
Give that about 20 minutes and check the rice is done, then serve the rice onto plates, top off with chicken and sauce and enjoy!

The beauty of this recipe is that you can leave the chicken pretty much as long as you like, as long as it cooks for a minimum of one hour.