Last updated 21:19, Thursday, 29 May 2008

LATELY, we’ve been obsessed with trying to expand our culinary repertoire at home.

In other words, we’re sick of eating the same old same old. However, we still have a brief to stick to and that is that our food should be relatively quick and easy to prepare, but it should also be tasty and pretty healthy.

We came up with a new dish (for us) and we’re not quite sure what its name is yet.

It is a fragrant sort of chicken casserole.

It is a tangy, endorphin releasing (chilli makes you happy apparently!) vitamin packed dish that we thought was worth sharing. So perhaps ‘fragrant chilli chicken for the whole family’ is a suitable title.

In it, we use chicken thighs which are a bit controversial if you ask us.

People seem to judge chicken thigh meat as being the poor relation to chicken breast.

In our opinion the two different cuts of meat are best suited to different specific uses.

In a dish like this you could, by all means, use chicken breast but it has a tendency to dry out if cooked for prolonged periods of time.

This is where chicken thigh meat comes into its own as the slightly higher fat content means the meat remains moist and juicy. So we say, champion the chicken thigh, your purse strings will thank you for it.

Mind you, ultimately you are in control of what passes your lips so substitute chicken breast if you prefer.

Serves 4

1 medium onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 red pepper, sliced

½ bulb fennel, root removed and sliced

Approximately 600g skin and boneless chicken thigh meat, roughly diced

Oil

1 red chilli, seeds and membrane removed, diced

1 lime – zest and juice of

4 tblsp sweet chilli sauce – we can’t recommend ‘Linghams’ enough

2 tblsp soy sauce

2 tsp mild chilli powder

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 chicken stock cube – dissolved in ¾ pint of boiling water

1 tblsp tomato puree

Salt and pepper

In a large frying pan, fry off the chicken in a splash of oil with seasoning until golden brown all over. You may need to do this in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan. An overcrowded pan will make the chicken stew in its own juices and not allow it to colour.

Remove from the pan once browned and set aside.

Reheat the pan until very hot and add the onion, pepper, and fennel. (You may need a little extra oil). Fry for two minutes to get lots of attractive caramelised colour. Add the garlic and chilli and fry for a further minute.

Re-introduce the chicken to the pan. Add the mild chilli powder, ground coriander and cumin and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomato puree and cook for another 30 seconds.

Add the lime zest and juice, sweet chilli and soy to the dissolved stock and bung everything together into the cooking chicken.

Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and let it tick over.

Cook down for around 10-15 minutes until the stew has reduced to a suitable consistency.

You could make additions to this casserole if you wish. You could add other vegetables like mushrooms or green beans.

You could also add fresh herbs. Coriander would be the obvious choice. Mind you, we eat so much coriander that we left it out on purpose in this case.

To go along side we made a salad with watercress, avocado and red onion, topped with some extra light garlic and herb cream cheese – you could substitute crème fraiche if you prefer.