Easy chicken and lemon all-in-one tray bake

When you want a nice easy recipe where you can chuck everything into one pan to save time (and save on the washing up), a tray bake is a great option.

This one is vaguely Mediterranean and very simple to make. All you need is:
 
Chicken thighs - I used skinless ones and allowed two per person 

Onion 

Garlic 

Tinned tomatoes (one 400g tin)
1 lemon, sliced
1-2 medium to large potatoes per person, cut into wedges
 
Dice the onion and finely chop the garlic. Fry for a few minutes over a medium heat and add the tinned tomatoes and season. Spoon into the bottom of a baking tin and mix in the potato wedges. 

Sit the chicken portions on top and top each one with a slice of lemon. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

GBBO Japanese Week - Wagamama's Tori Kara Age and Chicken Katsu Curry

I was a bit surprised when I saw Great British Bake Off was doing Japanese week, as I didn’t think Japan was a particularly easy theme for cakes and bakes. Of course, I’ve never been to Japan so could be completely wrong – and a few years ago I did go to the opening of a Japanese cafe in central London which was really nice. But when I googled Japanese desserts, the main things that came up used flavours that are quite hard to get hold of unless you can go to a specialist shop, like yuzu, matcha and red bean paste. One recipe I kept coming across was a really light wobbly cheesecake that looked quite difficult to make – which is what Lottie actually made on GBBO that made her star baker.

I have made mochi before which was interesting – quite nice but not something I’d eat regularly – but since I couldn’t get hold of any matcha or yuzu in time I couldn’t think of anything I could bake that wouldn’t be really complicated. So I decided to do dinner from my Wagamama cookery book instead! I picked out Tori Kara Age which is essentially a marinated fried chicken recipe. I didn’t realise it was actually a side dish as I have never ordered this in Wagamama’s, but I think it also goes well with rice as a main course.

It is a little time consuming to make since you have to make the marinade (which is a separate recipe) first, and then a dipping sauce (another separate recipe). Luckily I already had most of the ingredients, including sake, from a previous recipe; this uses quite a lot of soy sauce as well so make sure you have plenty! Once I had marinated the chicken pieces they were coated and fried; the dipping sauce added an umami sort of taste that was really quite more-ish!

My favourite Wagamama recipe though is the dish I order almost every time I eat there (which is only once every couple of years, if that, as my husband doesn’t like that cuisine) – chicken katsu curry. So I was quite pleased when the restaurant chain decided to publish their recipe during the first lockdown, for people to make at home. It is surprisingly easy – you need quite a few ingredients but all ones I already had in the cupboard. I tend to take a shortcut and buy breaded chicken goujons rather than make my own, but the sauce tastes exactly like the real thing and has quickly become a firm favourite in my household!

I was also interested to learn about kawaii from Great British Bake Off - a style of Japanese cake decorating that translates as cute or adorable. If you see a kawaii cake you will know straight away what I mean! I have made a few things in the past that might fall roughly under this category - not strictly speaking kawaii, but I think they are quite cute! Check these out:

Reindeer cake pops

Puppy dog cupcakes

Cupcake

Russian doll birthday cake

Shopkins doughnut birthday cake

Strawberry and white chocolate unicorn cake

Easy chicken enchiladas - cooking for a crowd

What can you make when you are cooking for a crowd, and don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen all night?

 My go-to dish for when we have had friends over (pre-lockdown of course) has become chicken enchiladas. They are easy to prepare, can be made in large quantities and a lot of the prep done in advance. You can also dial up or down the spice depending on preference.

 My recipe is more a guideline than a list of exact quantities, but that’s another beauty of this dish – you can add all sorts of things.

 

Easy chicken enchiladas

You need:

Soft tortilla wraps – allow one per person

Chicken – either breasts or boneless thighs, again allow 1 per person if breast, 2 per person if thigh

Packet of fajita seasoning

1 onion, diced

1 red pepper

1 green pepper

1 de-seeded and finely chopped red chili or ½ tsp of dried chilli flakes

500g box of passata (sieved tomatoes)

About 150g grated cheese

 

Fry the chopped onion, peppers and chilli and then add the chicken – this can be done in advance to save time. I sometimes use a packet of fajita seasoning or you can use your preferred spice from a jar, such as Cajun chicken seasoning. I usually fry the chicken but you could also cook in the oven. Allow to cool and shred the chicken and set the chicken and vegetables to one side or refrigerate if using later.

 Preheat oven to 180C.

 Take a large baking tray with deep sides – I usually use a roasting tin. Grease lightly (I spray with Fry Light) to make sure the tortillas don’t stick. On a plate or chopping board, spread a few spoonfuls of the chicken, onion and pepper mixture down the centre of the tortilla and roll up. Place at one end of the roasting tin.

 Repeat with the other tortillas until the tin is filled. Pour the passata over the top, making sure all parts of the tortillas are covered. Sprinkle cheese over the top, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

 Cut into squares to serve. This goes well with potato wedges and a green salad.

 

Di Oro Seamless Spatulas Review and Discount Code

How often do you replace your cooking utensils? I'm guessing not often enough - things like wooden spoons and spatulas aren't the sort of thing it ever occurs to me to buy and when I need one I grab one from the drawer or utensil jar without really thinking.

But some of mine are pretty old and at least one of my wooden spoons has a split which means it's destined for the bin. So it was good timing that I was sent a set of three seamless spatulas from Di Oro for review and there is one great USP in particular that means I want to recommend them to you!

As the name implies.. they are seamless. My other spatulas have handles and then the actual spatula end as two pieces melded together, so you can see a join - and it never occurred to me before but it would be easy to get food and therefore bacteria into that very fine line.

Di Oro seamless spatulas don't have this as they are moulded from one piece of silicone but also have a reinforced stainless steel core so they are really sturdy, though the end is flexible enough to scrape out your pan or bowl. Of course the silicone is non-stick and BPA free and what's more the large spatula in this set won a 2017 award from America's Test Kitchen. Heat resistant up to 315C you are not going to melt these easily!

There are three spatulas in this set - a large one for mixing and a large one with a straight edge for scraping out pans, and a small one which you can also use in a pan or use to scrape out a jar.
The set of three comes in either red or black and costs £14.95 from Amazon (you can also buy them individually); but you can currently get 15% off with this special discount code for use on Amazon: DIO15OFF  - this discount is good for all EU readers with access to Amazon so this includes Amazon UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

I'm already making good use of all three spatulas as you can see in this meal below. This is a version of this Santa Fe chicken recipe I made a couple of years ago; as I still can't get hold of Monterey Jack cheese I used a cheddar spiced with chilli from Morrisons which gave it a nice kick, and I made a cheese sauce and topped the chicken with red and green peppers. It was really good and my new Di Oro spatula made stirring the cheese sauce (and not letting it burn) a doddle!

 

 

Thanks to Di Oro for the spatulas for review. All opinions are my own.

 

Chicken Shawarma with Garlic Sauce

 

You may not have heard of shawarma before but you’ve probably eaten something very similar in the past – it’s a lovely (and easy) dish to make yourself at home. A shawarma is a Middle Eastern dish that can use various meats or poultry – usually lamb, chicken, beef or veal – cooked on a spit and shaved, rather like a kebab. It’s then served in a wrap or in a roll and is sometimes topped with houmous.

 

It's also nice served on, rather than inside, a pitta bread for a sit-down lunch. Of course, you don’t have to cook the meat on a spit (unless you want to barbecue) and most people don’t have a kebab rotisserie at home – so you can also cook the meat in the oven. I used this recipe for oven-baked chicken shawarma with garlic sauce from the Easy Peasy Foodie.

 

 

 

 

Like her, I used chicken mini fillets to make the recipe quick, though you do need to allow an hour or two to marinade the chicken in advance. There are a lot of spices to mix but they are pretty much all ones you would probably have in your store cupboard anyway if you like cooking, and once you’ve marinaded the chicken, simply bake in the oven then shred it.

 

 

 

The garlic sauce from this recipe is also easy to make and works really well with the spicy flavour of the chicken. I lightly toasted some pitta breads on the grill and served the chicken and garlic sauce on top – I think this would even work for a pizza topping if you want to make your own pizza! It was delicious and something I’d definitely make again.

 

 

Old Bay Fried Chicken

I've written about Old Bay seasoning before - if you're American you are probably familiar with it but if you're British or from another country, probably not. Old Bay is a seasoning made in Baltimore for more than 75 years; it was paired originally with seafood but is popular particularly in the state of Maryland with all sorts of dishes. Read more about Old Bay's cult following.

This is a very simple and not particularly healthy recipe but probably OK in moderation; I'm sharing it because I'd forgotten how good fried chicken can be. You can find the Old Bay recipe here; you don't really need to follow exact quantities and can use whatever kind of chicken pieces you want - legs, thighs, even pieces of chicken breast. If you are using legs, which take longer to cook, I would advise baking them in the oven first and finishing off in the oil, to make sure the chidken is cooked through. You can do that with the other chicken pieces as well to be on the safe side.

Mix Old Bay seasoning and flour in a shallow bowl or a freezer bag. Beat an egg (one egg will do enough chicken for two people, roughly) in another shallow bowl. Dip the chicken in the egg and then the flour mixture, or if using a bag, place the chicken in the bag and shake until it is coated.

Part-cook the chicken in the oven if you wish; heat an inch of oil in a large saucepan until just bubbling and carefully place the chicken using tongs into the hot oil, turning as each side becomes golden brown. Remove from the oil with tongs and drain on kitchen paper.

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

I just wanted to quickly share this recipe with you as I've been making a lot of soups for lunch lately and this one is really good. It's a Betty Crocker recipe which you can find here; one of the things I like about it is that you put everything into the slow cooker and don't even need to stir.

It has quite a few ingredients (I left out the mushrooms as I don't like them) so you do have to do a little bit of prep; you also need to sear the chicken in a separate pan first unless you use chicken that is already cooked, which is what I did. Once you've done all that you pretty much just leave it to cook in the slow cooker.

 

There's definitely a kick to this from the ginger and curry paste; I would probably make it a little more mild next time. The chunky veg and pieces of chicken make this a meal in itself and I enjoyed it for my lunch at work over a couple of days.

Slimming World Coronation Chicken Jacket Potato

One of my favourite lunches for when I am at home is a jacket potato. I hardly ever do them at weekends, because I just don't get out of bed organised in time, plus my husband isn't that keen on them, but often do one if I have a day off or am working from home. They are ideal for "wfh" lunches as you can put the potato in the oven, come back to it an hour later and just slater some butter onto it, grate over some cheese and you're done.

Of course, there are loads of more interesting jacket potato fillings than cheese (though if you haven't tried grated cheese and chopped tinned hotdogs, put that on your meal plan now!). I recently made coronation chicken as a filler, from the Slimming World 100 Extra Easy Days book. It's a good way to use up leftover cooked chicken as well, if you have some left over from a roast or another meal.

You could also use Quorn chicken-style pieces or a similar meat-free alternative to make this a vegetarian recipe.

Adjust the quantities you need to taste - the chicken depending on how many people this is for, the red pepper and spring onion to personal taste (I don't like red pepper that much) and the same with the fromage frais and mayo - some people like their baked potato fillings quite 'wet' for want of a better word than others.

Simply mix together some cooked chicken pieces, some diced red pepper, diced mango, lime juice and zest, chopped spring onion and chopped fresh coriander. Season and mix in mango chutney, a little bit of curry powder, some fat free natural fromage frais and some extra light mayonnaise. Stir everything together and spoon into your jacket potato.

I'm sharing this with a new blog challenge, Desert Island Dish. Jacket potatoes would be one of my desert island desires but the theme for this challenge this month is actually fruit - there could well be mango growing on my desert island anyway but if not I'd like to have some! The challenge is hosted by the Good Egg Foodie.

 

I'm also sending this to One Potato, Two Potato - a new link-up for potato recipes, hosted by Family Friends Food.

 

Slow Cooker Lemon Chilli Chicken

I've been using my slow cooker a lot lately as I work from home every Tuesday, meaning I can put something on at lunchtime, forget about it while I go back to my laptop and work for the rest of the day. When I work from home I pick my husband up from the train station which means I would otherwise have to wait until we were back to start dinner, so this way it's already cooked!
I mainly do chicken in the slow cooker as my husband is a very fussy eater and he likes chicken. I love lemon chicken but he doesn't like sweet and savoury food together, and lemon chicken often ends up tasting quite sweet and tangy at the same time. I came across a recipe for lemon chilli chicken on SlimmingEats.com which was ideal, as it's citrusy and spicy and not really sweet at all.

The recipe given is cooked in a pan while I did mine in the slow cooker, and I didn't reduce the sauce at the end so it was quite thin - I think it would be nicer thickened a little.

I browned the chicken in a pan and added the spices - coriander, cumin, chilli, turmeric:

and then put the chicken in the slow cooker on high for 4 hours, along with the stock, lemon zest and juice

Serve with rice and a green veg.

Chicken Broccoli Pasta Soup

This soup is definitely a meal in itself - in fact it's barely a soup! The good thing about it is that you can thin it down as much as you like - so if you want something really chunky and filling (that's more like a bowl of pasta than soup) you can have it, or if you want to be able to drink your lunch rather than eat it with a fork (let alone a spoon) then you can do that too!

I came across a recipe for chicken broccoli alfredo soup on Food.com and decided to make it for my lunch last Sunday; I did reduce the quantity of the ingredients but still had enough left for the rest of the week!

Instead of half-and-half which you can't get in the UK, I used mainly milk with a dash of double cream. The resulting soup was deliciously creamy. I didn't have any farfalle pasta so I used macaroni which worked well.

This was a very filling soup that tasted rich and creamy and keeps well for a few days afterwards though you might find you need to add some water to thin it out again once it has been in the fridge for a while!

I'm sharing this with Cook Once Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice.

Chicken and Chorizo Filo Parcels

Isn't it always the case that when you use ready-made pastry, you have some left over that find its way into the fridge or even the freezer? Not long ago I decided I needed to use up some filo pastry and had a look on the Jus-Rol (the pastry brand) website for inspiration. I thought these chicken, manchego and chorizo briouats.

 

I made them a little differently, as I always do; I left out the lentils as I don't like them, and rather than sun-dried tomato paste or even tomato puree (which would have been a good alternative) I used some chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and added some sweet potato puree I had previously made, and a little plain yogurt to create some moisture. I'm also not quite sure why the recipe on the link above mentions puff pastry and think this might be a mistake!

Making the parcels very small and tight isn't that easy and mine were rather bigger than expected; we ate them as a main course with potato wedges but I think they would be brilliant as part of a buffet. The chicken and chorizo are a great flavour combination and the sweet potato puree really adds something slightly sweet and creamy, though if you don't want to go to the effort of making this specifically, just use the cheese and the yogurt. Manchego is a Spanish's sheep's cheese which I couldn't get hold of for this recipe so I used cheddar which I thought worked fine. I also took the opportunity to use up some left over roast chicken, which I shredded.

Here's what I did:

Serves 6
6 Filo pastry sheets
2 tbsp. oil for brushing
50g chorizo, diced
1 onion, diced
dash of oil or low-fat cooking spray
25g sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
4 tbsp. plain yogurt
either 4 cooked chicken breast fillets or about 400g cooked shredded chicken
salt, pepper
75g grated cheese
4 tbsp. sweet potato puree (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Heat the oil or cooking spray in a frying pan and fry the onion and chorizo over a low to medium heat for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer to a bowl and mix with the shredded chicken, cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Season. Stir in the yogurt and sweet potato puree.

Lay out a sheet of filo pastry and cut into three long thin strips. Brush with oil then add a spoonful of chicken mixture at one end.

Fold over the pastry to form a triangle, then flip the triangle up and to the right and then to the left and repeat until you have folded the filling all the way along the strip of pastry. Brush with more oil and place on a baking sheet.

Repeat until you have used up all the filling and the pastry.

Bake the parcels in the oven for 10-12 minutes. You may need to do this in a couple of batches. Serve warm with salad, couscous or potato wedges or as part of a buffet offering.

I'm sharing this with the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary - it's a good way of using up filo pastry and cooked chicken.

I'm also sending it to Cook Once, Eat Twice, hosted by Corina at Searching for Spice, as you can cook some chicken one day (eg a roast) and use it in this recipe another day.

WeightWatchers Chicken Basque

This a great one-pot meal which can feed a whole family. It's actually a WeightWatchers recipe as it's fairly low in fat if you use skinless boneless chicken breasts or thighs - I used thighs for this recipe so it's good value as well. If you left the chorizo out it would be lower in fat but wouldn't taste as good!

According to the recipe which I found in an old WeightWatchers magazine, this has 9 and a half points per person. It involved scattering olives and orange slices over the top at the end which I didn't do, so I have left these out of the recipe.

To serve 4, you need:
8 skinless boneless chicken thighs
low fat cooking spray
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, cut into thin wedges
2 red peppers, de-seeded and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
75g chorizo sausage, skinned and sliced
50g semi-dried tomatoes (I used sun-dried, drained of oil on kitchen paper)
175g brown basmati rice
1 chicken stock cube, mixed with 225ml water
125ml dry white wine
1 tbsp. tomato puree
1/2 tsp paprika
2 tsp chopped fresh parsley

 

Season the chicken. Use an oven proof dish that can also go on the hob if you have one, and spray with low fat cooking spray. Brown the chicken on both sides - alternatively you can do this in a frying pan. Heat the olive oil in the casserole dish or frying pan and brown the onion and peppers, then after about 5 minutes add the garlic, chorizo and tomatoes.

Preheat the oven to 180C. If you're using a frying pan, at this point transfer the ingredients into the casserole dish. Stir in the rice until it's coated in oil then add the stock, wine, tomato puree and paprika. Put the chicken on top, making sure the rice is still covered by liquid, and put the lid on top.

Bake in the oven for about an hour until the rice has cooked and the liquid absorbed and the chicken is cooked through. Sprinkle with parsley to serve.