How to stretch a chicken

Today, I made chicken stock for the first time in ages. There's something very ritualistic and soothing about doing this, the preparation, the slow simmering, the straining and the portioning out into 500ml portions to freeze. If you have a freezer and a stove, and you don't make your own stock, you're cheating yourself out of the one thing that'll make your cooking taste really, really good. With no freezer in our rented flat in London, I've been grimacing at powdered stock in food for too long now.

Although the Kiwi now has a job (yay!), we're still very much on a budget, so I thought I'd see if I could stretch the bird a little further than normal. When I jointed it for the stock, I peeled the breasts off with the peg-bone attached (a supreme, I believe), and jointed the rest for the stock pan. These, once marinated in sumac, lemon, pomegranate molasses, garlic and thyme and olive oil for a while, were served on a bed of couscous for dinner tonight.

The stock, once simmered for three and a half hours, was strained, and whilst I would normally have chucked the resultant sieve-full of veg and chicken bits away, I took out the chicken pieces and whizzed the veg in the blender with a little stock to loosen it. Chopped and bones and gristle removed, the chicken went back into the mix. With a bit of seasoning and possibly some cumin, this will be tomorrow's lunch. Granted, most of the flavour in the pan went into the stock itself, and so the soup is a little less punchy than I'm used to, but needs must.

Tomorrow evening's dinner will be paella. The depth of the flavour will come from the stock absorbed by the rice grains, and the prawns and squid rings cooked in it. Two blocks of stock are also in the freezer, to be used at some point in the future. By my reckoning, that's three meals for two, plus the two more I'll get out of the frozen stock. Quite pleased with myself, I am.

Oh, and this weekend, if the starter's up to it, I'll bake my first sourdough loaf!