Italian Chicken Bake

It's always satisfying when you cook something and immediately start thinking of the next available opportunity to cook it again.

Discovering a new family favourite is a treat, and when it's as easy as this, it's even more of one. From a student's point of view, it reheats well, and the original recipe scales down to make two portions nicely too (which is what I will be putting here). It goes well with garlic bread, potatoes, neither, or both.

You can use cheap chicken breasts because there's so much else in there that you can't tell if they're organic or Tesco Value. Finally, you can use chorizo or pepperoni, whatever floats your boat. There are still a few tweaks that I'm going to try. When I made it for myself the first time I used a whole large onion - that was too much. I also think it could survive with half the amount of tomatoes, though I haven't tried that yet. Basically, instead of 2 400g tins for 4 people, I would use 1. For the 2 person version, I'd try the 200g tins I know Tesco sell. I think it would make it slightly less runny (though those juices are soooo tasty mopped up with garlic bread) and not really much less filling.

The recipe calls for 3 diced chicken breasts between 4 people, and even with 2 big eaters we found there was a lot. I made it for myself with 2 chicken breasts, which lead to some huge portions, though eating it never feels like a chore.

So thank you Fay Ripley!

Italian Chicken Bake for 2 (Or a student with a microwave)
This is halved from the original recipe in Fay Ripley's cookbook "What's for Dinner", which I won from the lovely Kelly-Jane at "Cooking the books with Kelly-Jane". I'd made a few very slight modifications - increasing the amount of garlic, decreasing the amount of tomato and swapping the pepperoni for chorizo.

2 skinless chicken breasts, diced
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 an onion
200g tin chopped tomatoes
60g mozarella (approx half a ball), reduced fat if you can get it (I couldn't tell the difference between the reduced fat and the full fat one)
1tsp dried oregano
40-60g chorizo


1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas mark 6. In a frying pan, fry the onion in the oil until translucent.
2. Add the diced chicken and fry for 5 minutes.

3. Add the garlic and oregano and fry for 1-2 minutes before pouring in the tomatoes. 

4. Let it gently bubble for 5 more minutes.
5. Pop the lot into an ovenproof dish and top it first with the mozzarella, then with the pepperoni. I found it fitted quite nicely in a 7 inch sandwich cake tin. You basically don't want it all spread out thinly else you'll get big patches with no cheese.
6. Bake for 25 minutes.

7. Serve with new potatoes and garlic bread. 

APPROX 400-450 CALORIES PER SERVING (NOT INCLUDING GARLIC BREAD AND NEW POTATOES)