Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Jamie's Tray Baked Chicken Maryland


Cooking for one can sometimes be a drag. I usually prefer dishes that are quick and easy to prepare, as I figure that if I am the only one I have to please it doesn't matter so much.

On Saturday evening, I was in a place where I knew I wanted to eat dinner sooner rather than later, and I didn't want to make anything that was too fussy, but at the same time, I wanted something tasty and different to my usual "anything goes" stir fries. On spec, I took Jamie's Dinners off the shelf, and I found a great tray baked chicken Maryland dish. You can find the recipe here.

This dish has only a small number of ingredients, the trickiest being white wine (as I don't drink at home and wasn't sure if I had any in the cupboard). The remaining flavours for the chicken come from sweet corn (I used tinned), cannellini beans (didn't have any so I used chick peas!), cream (or in my case, the more waistline friendly evaporated milk), streaky bacon and - wait for it - banana. Now I don't know about you, but the thought of chicken and banana together doesn't sound appealing. However, ignore all inherent repulsion that you might feel about this combination - after baking, the banana just melds into the dish and gives it a lovely sweet flavour that works well with the salty bacon.

This dish also wins ticks for being really fast - you mostly just pop everything into the baking tray together, then let it look after itself for 40 minutes or so.

I simply served this with cooked frozen veges (I am a heathen and microwave them), which I used to soak up the extra sauce on the plate and give them flavour as well.

If you are looking for a quick but crowd-pleasing and tasty dish for dinner, you could do a lot worse than trying this dish from Jamie. I highly recommend it!

6 comments:

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

Ooh I love these dishes! The set and forget kind that taste great too! :D

Unknown said...

Its great to have easy dishes like this. I have to admit, I often have to eat alone and believe it or not eat a lot of pre packaged stuff. Not good, especially as i write about food all the time LOL.
*kisses* HH

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's quite a combination of ingredients! So fun to try something new and like it though, isn't it?

I love microwaved frozen vegetables! They're fast and healthy.

Conor @ Hold the Beef said...

I would NEVER have come up with this recipe on my own but can totally imagine it working really well.

The Blonde Duck said...

I'm willing to try anything with bacon.

Anna - Mix said...

Looks great! Makes me hungry just looking at it.