Tomorrow's Chicken Casserole Done

I boned the cooked chicken, and since I was there... I cooked rice in some of the stock, and cleaned up the kitchen. While the rice was cooking I made a simple white sauce:

• 1TBSP Butter whisked with 1TBSP flour on a medium hot pan
• add about 1 cup hot stock a little at a time whisking constantly
• herbs and spices and salt to taste

I mixed the slightly undercooked rice with the chicken, about 3/4 cup of chopped tomatoes and the white sauce in a greased casserole dish, then covered everything with crushed saltines.

Tomorrow when I come home, all I have to do is pop this in a 350 oven until warmed through, boil some water , then drop in some sliced carrots, and as soon as the carrots are soft, drop in a handful of snow peas. Dinner is done!

A few notes

I love leeks! The green made a nice ingredient in a stock. The all white part just dissolves in soup , so you can get a really nice leek and potato cream soup.

All this can be done with canned chicken stock- I just usually make my own since - well, I have the chicken bones right there anyway.

I was going to make the casserole with potatoes instead of rice, but well, I didn't feel like peeling potatoes again today. I'd made Spanish potato omelets for lunch.

Snow peas are hellishly expensive, but we like them. Usually in a casserole like this I use frozen mixed bagged vegys. They are good, nutritious and reasonably priced. The only drawback sometimes is that the combo of carrots, corn , peas and green beans I like can sometimes be a little sweet.

Finally, I don't mention how I spice things up. I tend to like herbs more than fiery spices , but any of these recipes can take the addition of hot spices and more herbs. In this case I used a lot of Rosemary for example, since that's what I have on hand. It goes well with chicken.