So I had to make some chicken stock and ended up with 4 fully cooked chicken thighs, skin and bones included. Being a thrifty homemaker that I am (?!) I was initially thinking of serving the meat in a simple lemony-creamy sauce (pieces of chicken with sauce, carrots and green peas with rice, dressed up with the freshly chopped Italian parsley). As it happens in our house often the circumstances called for a different approach and, instead, I took off on an experimental pierogi route. Hopefully the proof of concept will be accepted..
Here they are with last year home made cherry tomato sauce made with fresh cherry tomatoes and this year’s fresh basil.
And here with the sun dried tomato sauce
If preferred, one could entertain the tomatoes as a sauce option, or the prepared preserved version from the jar.
We declared it to be a very delicate stuffing – maybe somewhat overpowered by the sauce, yet quite a respectable implementation of the traditional dish.
- 4 fully cooked chicken thighs
- a few tsp of basil pesto
- 1/2 medium size onion chopped finely and gently fried in oil till golden
- 1 tbsp of oil
- a few cloves of garlic – chopped finely or pressed through the appropriate garlic pressing device
- sun dried tomatoes – I took quite a few (for 4 full legs used a 250 ml jar ) might take even more the next time
- a tbsp or more of the olive oil the tomatoes had reposed in
- salt, pepper
- by default, some ready to go pierogi dough – but only when the filling is indeed ready to go
With the approximate quantities above i made 52 pierogis.
- I separated the meat from the stock and the veggies. The veggies (except for the onion and the leak) are often a good contribution to the filling, but this time i wanted to focus the taste on the chicken. And i will likely keep it this way.
- I took out the bones and minced the meat in a noisy blender.
- I chopped the tomatoes – trying to save the olive oil – maybe you want to drain them on a sieve first, anyway.
- Started mixing stuff – into the meat went basil pesto, tomatoes, onion, garlic, salt, pepper – helping myself to the olive oils as i thought I needed to get a tasty, pliable and smooth paste. My gourmand authority pronounced the paste surprisingly full of flavour and taste, but suggested there may be more tomatoes next time..
- Set the filling aside and went to mix the dough and produce the pierogi.
I am thinking of trying the roasted red pepper route instead of tomatoes the next time – might be also interesting..