This dish is really simple, but it’s absolutely bursting
with flavour thanks to a long cooking time. As it gently stews the tomatoes and
peppers melt away into a gorgeously gooey sauce, and the chicken becomes
incredibly tender. Not to mention the fact that this is a fabulous plateful all
in one dish, so there’s hardly any washing up.
Ingredients
A mixture of chicken thighs & drumsticks – one of
those supermarket packets with 2 or 3 of each is perfect
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 onion
A big handful of black olives
A glass of red wine
Sweet chilli sauce
Rosemary
Thyme
Salt & black pepper
Olive oil
Serves 2, with
some left over (depending on how hungry you are!)
First of all, you need to brown the chicken – drizzle with
a little olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper and rosemary, and then pop into
a large pan on a medium heat. Keep an eye on it and turn the pieces over as
they start to turn golden underneath, then once they’ve lost their raw pink
colour all over, remove from the pan and put to one side.
Next, slice the onion (for this dish, I like to go for
long slices rather than dice, but of course it’s up to you) and the peppers and
pop in the same pan as the chicken with a good glug of olive oil. Add a
generous sprinkling of rosemary and thyme, a bit of salt and pepper, and stir
gently until the vegetables are starting to soften. Then add the red wine –
putting it in at this point, as opposed to when all the liquid from the
tomatoes are in there, means that the alcohol will burn off and stop the end
result tasting bitter. Once the wine has mostly disappeared, add the tomatoes
and olives, and a good dollop of sweet chilli sauce – I admit, this is probably
not on the original Spanish recipe, but I think it really adds to the gooey
sweetness of the dish. Leave it all to bubble for a few minutes.
Get out a large earthenware dish and arrange your chicken
pieces skin-side-up in one layer. Then pour the tomato sauce over the top,
spreading it out evenly, and bake in the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, without
stirring – until the sauce is just starting to blacken a little around the
edges. You might think this would mean that it’s gone too far, but in my
experience it means the sauce is just perfect. Serve up a generous plateful
with a glass of red wine – gorgeous.