I know it’s not winter anymore, but…this was just too serendipitous not to post. Sometimes recipe ideas come together sheerly because of what you have to hand, and this is one of those instances.
It started with Ina Garten’s Lemon Chicken with Croutons recipe, my go-to roast-chicken recipe because of the bang/buck ratio: you stick a quartered lemon inside the well-salted cavity of a chicken, plop it on a bed of sliced onion, and roast at 425°F for an hour and change (depending on the size of the bird). Then, while it’s resting, you toast up some stale bread with olive oil to make nice croutons. To serve, you put croutons in a bowl, some chunks of roast chicken, and a good scoop of the roasted onions and jus over the top. So fantastic and so easy.
Today I had leftover Lemon Chicken, since I was just cooking it for me, and I’m notoriously not a reheated chicken/meat kind of girl. I don’t like the off flavor the meat gets from being reheated. But, I’m not always in the mood for cold chicken—especially on a rainy, blustery day like we’re having today. So I’m always looking for ways to cover up that reheated meat flavor, whether it’s enchiladas or what have you.
A few weeks ago, I made a quick chicken soup out of the leftover lemon chicken and onion jus, cut with a bit of bone broth, and thought that was pretty good. But THIS time I happened to have the leftover croutons on hand as well as some sliced provolone in the fridge for a different recipe, so I poured the soup over the croutons, broiled a slice of provolone on top until brown and crisp, gave it a crack or two of pepper, and I’m telling you—this is the way to do leftover chicken.
The Rookery 