Slow cooked chicken broth and a twist on gello.

 Whenever I chop up a chicken I always freeze the carcass to make stock. Usually, my jointing skills being what they are, there is enough flesh left on the bones to get a decent enough meal from the scraps and I literally have a meal for next to nothing, as well as a really nice broth to use in a soup or for stock. The chicken stock I made here helped create 3 meals, one which is shown here and 2 on the next post. So:

Recipe: 

2 raw chicken carcasses and 4 raw chicken wings

1 red onion, quartered

4 cloves garlic, whole

1 yellow pepper, deseeded and chopped

a handful of sage leaves, 4 bay leaves and 4 sprigs of thyme

6 small tomatoes, halved

1 piece dried Heirloom tomato

10 black peppercorns

1 tsp salt

Place everything in a slow cooker and cover with water. Let cook on high for around 4 hours.

Once the time is up, leave everything to cool and refrigerate overnight. The next day the stock should be jelly like with a layer of fat on top. You can remove this layer quite easily with a spoon and use a colander to drain the liquid into a bowl.  Now you can shred the meat from the bones and place in another bowl along with any vegetables you want to keep. (As above). The drained liquid should be golden and rich tasting, (below).

For a really quick and tasty soup, heat some of the broth and a little chicken until piping hot, season if you like and add a spoonful of something like shredded bamboo shoots or a sliced green onion.

Jello mousse

  

This is by no means my own idea but rather something I make when I feel a craving for something sweet and creamy take over me. An ordinary box of jello can be made more interesting by the substitution of cream for half of the water. Simply sprinkle the jello powder into a bowl as usual and add the 1 cup of boiling water as specified. The twist is to use a cup of whipped up whipping cream as the second part of the process rather than the water, which will give you a mousse like consistency which will very attractively separate into three layers when set.

  

Adding a few blueberries or other fruit (not kiwi or pineapple, it won't set), creates a little berry surprise at the bottom of this incredibly lame and cheap dessert.

 Maybe something on top? Whipped cream, a little more fruit perhaps?

The jello becomes more dense as you descend further down into it's mysterious layers.