I’ll admit it, I love a good casserole style meal; especially chicken casserole. Chicken casserole is something my maternal grandmother used to cook me when I was a little girl and even now I find it warming and delicious comfort food.  Now this particular recipe is adapted from something a friend suggested I make a few weeks ago. Basically I adapted it based on the ingredients in my food cupboard and fridge. The beauty of this recipe is that you can change and substitute ingredients based on your preferences and what you have in. Please bear with me, I made this dish a couple of weeks ago now and the details are a tiny bit hazy.

To make this recipe I used:

2 chicken breasts (you can use drumsticks or thighs but they will take a little longer to cook)

2 shallots

2 cloves garlic

Asda Cajun chicken seasoning

Sainsbury’s woodland honey

Light olive oil

Olive oil fry light

2 sweet potatoes

Just over half a pint of chicken stock

Yellow courgette (in hindsight this was very bitter and I’d prefer using green next time)

Smoked paprika

Ground chilli and garlic

A pinch of cumin

Chilli flakes

Mixed herbs

Sainsbury’s apple and boysenberry juice

A pack of cherry tomatoes on the vine

The morning (or night) before you want to cook this dish marinade the chicken in 2 teaspoons Cajun spice and a drizzle of oil and honey. Cover this and store at the fridge until you’re ready to cook everything.

Switch the oven on high.

Peel and chop the sweet potato and shallot, peel and crush the garlic and put into a medium sized roasting tray. Spray with the fry light and sprinkle over a few chilli flakes (don’t go mad unless you really like chilli, you can add them but you can’t remove them later on when your mouth is burning). Put in the oven for about 18 minutes.

In this time chop your courgette. Prepare your stock and add 3 tablespoons of the apple and boysenberry juice (you can add any fruit juice with a tart flavour, or wine), add 1 and a half teaspoons of paprika, approx half a teaspoon of cumin, your herbs.

Remove your roasting tray from the oven and add the courgette, chicken and stock sauce. Place the cherry tomatoes on top with the vine still on, grind on the dried chilli and garlic.

Now to be honest here, I forgot to time this recipe exactly but I think I cooked it at a medium to high temperature for 35 minutes. I checked the chicken was cooked by cutting a little section of it (presentation wasn’t vital as it was only me eating it for tea and for my lunch the next day.

Now if I were to make this again I’d use a green courgette. I only picked the yellow one from the shop as it looked cool and I found it bitter. I’d probably add a different type of vegetable too to make it into three meals rather than two decent sized meals.