CHICKEN WITH TOMATOES & CRISPY CHORIZO

Our family new year's resolution is to each choose 4 new restaurants and so then this year we try 12 different places to eat. We planned to start this weekend however the weather was so miserable, we decided to stay at home, have a pyjama day and cook. I had several chicken breasts to use up so found this recipe on Jamie Oliver's website, you can used leftover roast chicken if you have it instead. This took around an hour and serves 6 people although I was only cooking for 3 people.

Ingredients for 6 people:

1 yellow pepper
1 orange pepper
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
1kg ripe mixed colour tomatoes (I just used red cherry tomatoes), chopped
1 fresh red chilli (optional), sliced and deseed
A few sprigs of oregano, leaves chopped (I used dry)
Olive oil
1 heaped tablespoon of sweet paprika
2kg free range poached chicken (I used poached chicken breasts)
200ml chicken stock
4 fresh quality chorizo sausages, chopped (around 400g)
1-2 heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche
2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
1 heaped teaspoon of fennel seeds, crushed

If you are using uncooked chicken breasts, start by poaching the chicken in a saucepan of boiling water for 20 minutes. Once it is all cooked through, slice the chicken into chunky pieces or if you are using an actual chicken, pull the chicken off the bones.

At the same time, blacken the peppers under a hot grill and then place in a bowl and cover with cling film to steam for 15 minutes. Apparently after 15 minutes, it should be really easy to peel off the skin. This wasn't the case for me, maybe my skins weren't black enough. Anyway it didn't really matter. Chop into chunky strips and set aside.

Slice the onion, tomatoes and garlic. Halve, deseed and chop the chilli and then pick off the oregano leaves and cut.

Heat a little olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onions and fry for a few minutes before adding the garlic, tomatoes, paprika, chilli and most of the oregano. I left out the chilli as my daughter is not keen on too much spice. Cook for around five minutes or until beginning to soften.

Add the chicken to the pan with the stock and the peppers. Leave to bubble for 25 minutes, or until the sauce has reduced and is thick and glossy.

Place the fennel seeds into a pestle and mortar and bash until crushed. I don't have a pestle and mortar so tried to use the back of a teaspoon. It didn't really work so I just left it.

Heat a splash of olive oil in a second frying pan over a high heat. Skin the chorizo sausages and slice the meat into bite size pieces. Add to the pan along with the fennel seeds.

Cook for about 5 minutes or until dark, golden, crisp and smelling fantastic!

Mix together the chorizo and the chicken and add a good slug of olive oil and season. Stir in a big dollop of creme fraiche, drizzle with the balsamic vinegar and scatter over any remaining oregano leaves.

Finally serve with either fresh baguette, jacket potatoes or warm tortillas. We went for the latter with a scattering of cheese and rolled it up like a fajita - delicious!!

I don't cook many Jamie Oliver recipes as I find them too complicated and they often need so many different ingredients however this was a success. I didn't follow it exactly i.e. I left out the chilli, I used basic cherry tomatoes, dried oregano, chicken breasts rather than a proper chicken and I didn't have a pestle and mortar......and guess what, it didn't matter! This recipe actually worked really well and we all enjoyed it and it was a very pleasant change to have something other than our usual pasta. It did take a while to cook but it wasn't complicated and I think next time I won't bother to blacken the peppers, I will just fry them with the onions. With this in mind, I might be doing some more Jamie recipes in future....that is if I have time to cook!!!

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