Pesto Chicken with Sundried Tomatoes and Toasted Pine Nuts

This is a quick and easy meal, but tastes fantastic. Put it with some good pasta and some garlic flatbread...sorted!

You can get all chefy and make your own pesto (I will do this and show you how). But using a good pesto in a jar, this meal takes 10/15 minutes, perfect if you haven't got lots of time to cook. This for me is a fresh tasting dish and has great variety of textures from the soft chicken to the crunch of the toasted pine nuts to the juicy sundried tomatoes.

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS:

A Jar Of Good Quality Pesto

Two Breasts of Chicken (from a quality Butcher)

50g Pine Nuts

300g Good Quality Pasta (I use: Tesco Finest Pennoni Rigati)

Sundried Tomatoes

Hand Full of Fresh Basil Leaves

Extra Virgin Olive Oil


WHAT TO DO:

In pan bring to the boil a pan of water and cook the pasta,

HANDY TIP:

Put some olive oil and salt in the water when cooking the pasta (the oil stops the pasta sticking to each other and the pan and the salt flavours the pasta while cooking). You want a slight bite to the pasta...nothing worse then sloppy mushy pasta!

Heat your frying pan on a medium heat and add a splash of oil. Cut your chicken into strips and then half (use chunky bits of chicken as you want that succulent texture, don't cut them to thinly) and brown in the pan for around 10 minutes... REMEMBER: chicken should not be pink in the middle! When the chicken is nearly browned, add the pine nuts for a couple of minutes to lightly toast them (the colour changes only slightly, be carefull not to burn).

HANDY TIP:

I'm not trying to teach you to suck eggs! but the reason for browning the meat (any meat) is that you keep the moisture inside, less chance of the meat going dry.

Once the meat is browned spoon 2 tbs of the pesto into the pan, stir in, then add some freshly torn basil leaves and 8 chopped Sundried tomatoes (again don't cut them to thinly as you want the juicy texture, halves or thirds will be perfect).

Once all components are done, drain the pasta and tip into the sauce (the Italians always mix the sauce in with the pasta, its only us Brits that have sauce on top of the pasta) and serve.

Serve with garlic flatbread...told you it was simple and easy!

Recipe by Matt Grice

Photo taken by Rach Grice

Roast Pepper with Tomatoes and Anchovies

This dish is so simple to make but has bags and bags of flavour. The sweet flavours from the roast pepper and tomatoes, the salty punch from the anchovies, and the acidic sharpness of the vinaigrette on the salad just makes this dish amazing! Warm crusty bread is a must to mop up the oils in the Pepper!

One of Rachy's favourites!

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 Lamuyo Pepper (2 small peppers can be used instead)
400g of sweet sunstream vine ripened tomatoes (the smaller the better has they have more intense flavours)
Anchovies
Parmesan cheese
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Fresh Basil leaves
Sea Salt
Black Pepper

For the Salad:

Gem lettuce
Rocket
Qtr of a fresh Lemon
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Crusty bread

What to do:

Heat your oven to 200c

In a pan of boiling water blanch all the tomatoes, for approximately one minute (once you see the skin split take them out, there done), peel the skin off the tomatoes and put to one side.

Half the pepper down the stalk (it makes it look nicer on the plate) scrape out all the seeds and white pith. Drizzle with some olive oil, season with salt & pepper and rip some basil leaves laying them on the bottom of the peeper. Add the tomatoes to fill the pepper. Rip in some more basil leaves and layer on the anchovies (be as liberal as you want, we love them so the more the better!). Finally, grate some Parmesan cheese over the top.

Put the peppers into a roasting pan or dish and put in the oven for around 20/25 minutes. Your looking for the pepper to roast, colour and breakdown (its not ready if the pepper is still purt as when you put it in!).

For the salad:

Cut the gem lettuce at the stem, add a handful of Rocket (washed and dried) and put them into a bowl. In a separate bowl put 4 glugs of Olive oil, one glug of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt & pepper and the juice of qtr of a lemon. Mix well.

Handy Tip:

Don't put the vinaigrette on the salad until ready to serve as this will make your salad soggy!

Warm some bread in the oven for a few minutes. In the meantime pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss. Put the pepper on a plate and add a some salad....done.

Please let me know what you think?

Recipie by Simon Hopkinson

Photo's by Rach Grice