When it comes to getting dinner on the table, it doesn’t get any easier than a tray bake. Choose a meat and some vegetables that cook in the same time (like chicken thighs/drumsticks and salad potatoes), select a few flavours to enhance the meat and veg, and you’re away – less than an hour later and dinner is served. I featured one a short while back, very similar to this but with Italian flavours, and it got a great response, so here’s another. Now, as a standalone dish, it isn’t going to help you hit your 5 a day target (although it does have red onion in and some lemon in!) but if you served it with a nice salad then you could rectify this.
For me, it was a working day, so I just walloped the ingredients in the oven, went to pick up the kids from Nana’s, and when I got home dinner was ready – not a salad leaf in sight on this occasion. I did knock up a quick spiced yoghurt sauce to eat with it which went down really well. My son and husband are typical ‘meat and potato’ men, so I don’t think they really missed any greenery. It makes the most delicious sauce in the pan; I challenge you to not mop every last bit up with bread.
As ever, I made enough to feed a small country, so just cut down ingredients accordingly. It’s not a dish that needs very careful measuring so don’t worry about that. I have used very Spanish ingredients, Jerez vinegar and smoked paprika, but you could replace these with normal paprika and white wine vinegar, it won’t taste as authentically Spanish, but it’ll still be good. However, if you’re not familiar with them then I urge you to pick these ingredients up next time you’re shopping (available in any decent supermarket); a well stocked ingredients cupboard is THE secret to making delicious fuss-free suppers in a flash. Check out my How I cook page here for more on that subject…
Serves: 4/6 adults
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes
Total time: 55 minutes
Ingredients:
1kg chicken thighs and drumsticks
1kg salad potatoes (like Charlottes)
200g cooking chorizo
2 teaspoons of smoked paprika (normal paprika would do)
2 teaspoons of cumin seeds
1 tablespoon of Jerez vinegar (white wine vinegar would suffice)
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon, cut into 8 long chunks
1 red onion, cut into similar sized chunky slices
Salt and pepper
Yoghurt sauce:
Greek yoghurt
Splash of extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pinch of ground cumin (I used a pestle and mortar to crush my cumin seeds, just toss them in whole or use ground)
Pinch of paprika
Instructions:
- Preheat your oven to 190C.
- Tip all the ingredients into a tray and mix well to cover in spices, oils and vinegar.
- Roast for about 50 minutes – 1 hour, turning over once half way through. Test the chicken to see if it’s cooked by cutting into a piece. Use a skewer to test the potatoes.
- To make the yoghurt sauce, mix a small bowl’s worth of Greek yoghurt with a splash of good extra virgin olive oil, with a pinch of salt and a little ground cumin and paprika, mix well. Taste and adjust as you like.
- Serve as is, with some nice crusty bread to mop up the juices, and a salad for greenery.
Second attempt: used RWV as the WWV was at the back of the cupboard and I was too tired to reach for it, also threw in a tin of chopped toms as I am a bit of a maverick. It was universally popular around our table & I have achieved pub points for very little effort!
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Dermot