Chicken and sausage 'olla'
Meat mains
Chicken and sausage 'olla'
An olla is a Spanish ceramic jar or pot, often used for holding water. They're also used for everything from storing beans to fermenting wine, but Spanish friends use the word in the same way as casserole – i.e. to refer to either the dish or a cooking vessel. As is so often the case, day two is better than day one. Olla rules are few and far between but one that is often forgotten is that using proper stock will lift it to another level – both in flavour and texture. We use beef stock, which might seem strange with chicken but it works a treat. The vegetable selection is also variable. If you have anything else leftover, butternut squash or leeks for example, they will find a good home here.
Ingredients
- 4 chicken quarters
- 6-8 meaty sausages (almost any will do, including a couple of chorizo but probably not 6)
- 8 waxy potatoes, e.g. Charlotte or Rudolp)
- 300g greens (curly kale, runner beans, Savoy, cavolo nero etc.)
- 2 large onions
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 5 rashers streaky bacon, finely chopped or the equivalent of lardons
- 3 garlic cloves
- 500ml chicken or beef stock
- 2 tbsp red wine or sherry vinegar
- 2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 2 Romano peppers, roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp each tomato purée and herby harissa, or 3 tbsp tomato purée and 1 tbsp hot harissa
- salt and pepper
Method
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Step 1
Preheat oven to 160°C/Gas 3. Cut the chicken legs in half and the breasts into three. You'll need a sharp, heavy knife and a chopping board. Quickly brown the sausages under the grill. You just need to quickly crisp up the skins rather than cook them right through and a hot grill is much more effective than a frying pan. Cut each sausage into three or four pieces.
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Step 2
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil. Cut the potatoes into large roasting size pieces and boil for 5 minutes, remove and set aside.
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Step 3
Chop the greens into bite size pieces and blanch for a couple of minutes. Drain and set aside.
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Step 4
Chop the onions, heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onions and bacon for about 7 minutes. Chop the garlic, add to the onions and cook for another 3 minutes.
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Step 5
Transfer to your olla or casserole. Quickly brown the chicken and add to the casserole, then deglaze the frying pan with the stock and vinegar. Put all the remaining ingredients, apart from the greens, in the casserole, add the stock, season, mix everything together, lid and cook in the oven for an hour.
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Step 6
Add the greens and cook for another half an hour. You might well be thinking that the recipe calls for a lot more than one pot and you'd be absolutely right. Something similar can be produced all in a slow cooker, but there is no doubt that it tastes better when the constituent parts are started off separately. Apologies to the washer-upper.
