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!