Garden Chicken Supreme

My laptop is seriously lacking in memory and takes forever to respond, so I've held off with blogging for a couple of weeks, but it's time to catch up, I've focused on my Ye Olde Recipe project and the recipe cards are piling up.

I've no idea where I got this one from - it's most definitely a card with a recipe on it and photos, but no actual reference to where it may have come from. It's also fairly quick and easy to make, however in my eagerness, I defrosted boneless chicken legs rather than breasts, which resulted in spending over an hour to trim them.

When I mentioned "Chicken Supreme" to Lundulph, his response was "mm, chicken with white wine". This caused me some worries, the recipe didn't mention any wine at all and flicking through my other cook books, none of them even mentioned a "Chicken Supreme". I intended to look it up later, but ended up not bothering. This dish turned out to be pretty much herby chicken with ratatouille, a combination I believe I've done in the past. It certainly was nice though.

Ingredients
Serves 4 - 5

500 g skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp savory
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp thyme
1 tsp rosemary
2 cloves garlic
2 medium sized onions
2 courgettes
3 bell peppers - red, yellow and green
6 tbsp grapeseed oil
400 g can of chopped tomatoes
salt and pepper
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
fresh basil leaves for garnish
couscous for serving

Method

1. Trim the chicken breasts and cut into bite-sized chunks and place in a plastic bag.
2. Mix together the spices and grind in a pestle and mortar, then sprinkle over the chicken pieces and shake in the bag to get them well coated.
3. Peel the garlic and onions. Chop the onions.
4. Trim and peel the courgettes, then dice.
5. Wash the peppers and remove the stalks and seeds, then cut into strips.
6. Blend the tomatoes until smooth and stir in the salt and pepper.
7. Pre-heat the oven to 80 °C along with an oven proof dish. Heat up 2 tbsp of grapeseed oil in a large pan and brown the chicken for a few minutes, then transfer to the oven to keep warm.
8. Add the remaining grapeseed oil and when it's hot, add the onions, courgettes and peppers and press in the garlic. Then cook while stirring for about 10 minutes until the vegetables soften.
9. Add the tomatoes, stir through and check the seasoning and adjust if necessary, then cover the pan and simmer for 10 minutes.
10. Stir in the parsley and add the chicken on top. Cover again and leave to simmer for a further 10 minutes
11. In the mean time make the couscous according to the instructions on the packet.
12. Serve the chicken ratatouille with the couscous and decorate with a couple of basil leaves.

Actually the original recipe calls for 2 tbsp Herbes de Provence, but it seems I didn't have this in my spice collection, so I improvised from the list in Wikipedia and I had to skip the marjoram as I didn't have that either. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever used marjoram.

But on the whole, it's just ratatouille without aubergines and frankly I realised that aubergines seem to function very much like a filler or bulk, without affecting the overall flavour.