Chicken Tetrazagne

Chicken what?

I pronounce it "tet-ra-ZAHN-yah," in case you're curious.

I had roasted a great big chicken recently and we had a lot of leftovers, so I thought I'd make chicken tetrazzini one night.  And chicken stock with the bones.

 

But.  I already had a ton of dishes to do and I didn't want any more than I really, really needed to.  Which meant I didn't want to use a pot to boil up spaghetti.

So.  I had those Barilla no-boil lasagne noodles in the pantry and thought I'd make a lasagne-ish tetrazzini.  Or a tetrazzini-ish lasagne. 

So that meant I'd only dirty a pot for the sauce and a pan for the lasagne.  Yay!

As you can see, my counters are a bit overcrowded. 

 

And that's the tidy area.  What?  The cat food?  Oh, yeah, it absorbs excess liquid and provides extra calcium and other nutrients.  I used about a quarter cup.

Okay, not really.

Here's what I really did.

I melted half a stick of butter in a big pot…

 

And then I whisked in a quarter cup of flour which makes…anyone?…that's right – a roux.

 

To that, I added a about 2 and a half cups of chicken stock, a cup of white wine, and the rest of the gravy I'd made when we first had the chicken.  Once that started bubbling, I stirred in the chicken (maybe about 3 cups or a bit more) and the leftover vegetables – in this case, grilled string beans (about half a cup), and potatoes and onions I'd roasted in the pan with the chicken (about a cup and a half of them).  And once everything was heated through, I stirred in a cup of cream. 

 

Now for the assembly…

I poured a couple of tablespoons of chicken stock in a 13 x 9 inch pyrex baking dish, swirled it around to coat the bottom of the dish, and then placed a layer of the lasagne noodles over that.

 

Then I ladled in a third of the chicken mixture…

then another layer of noodles, half the remaing chicken, more noodles, and then the last of the chicken.

 

(Yes.  I see them.  Sloppy drips I should have wiped off the edge of the pan.  Sorry.)

And before it went in the oven, I topped it with about 1/2 – 3/4 of a cup of grated parmesan cheese.

 

I also sprinkled paprika on top, but that image didn't come out too good, and these shots are wonky enough with the ugly lighting.

I baked the whole thing at 350 degrees for about 35-45 minutes – til it's golden brown on top and all bubbly and hot.

Here's a glimpse of the edge of the pan (because my picture of the top looked horrible).

 

Mmmm…goopy and bubbly and comforty.

Let it sit about ten minutes to set – if you can.  And then go on and dish it up.

 

The kids liked it – Julia especially liked the pasta.  Alex especially liked the chicken and the rest of the inner glop.  (I mean "glop" in the yummiest possible way.)  Bill had his later – he had played a wedding and didn't get home til later.  And he said he wasn't all that hungry, at first, but said he'd have a little, probably because of the "What do you mean you're not HUNGRY???  After I worked for hours and hours and hours slaving away on this?????" look on my open-book face.

And then he went for seconds.