Chicken in a Parcel with Soy, Ginger and Noodles

This dish puts in a regular appearance in our house for dinner during the week. It's an unbelievably quick and easy recipe, totally delicious and is bursting with oriental flavours! It involves cooking a chicken breast in a foil parcel in the oven, to which I add ginger, soy sauce and a spring onion. I love it so much I don't experiment with it at all but I'm sure it would work well with with a nice bit of Thai curry paste a drop of fish sauce and some coconut milk mixed together in place of the soy sauce.

The noodles are cooked with spring onions, soy, coriander and sesame oil - the combination is really delicious. I always try to use the reduced salt variety of soy sauce - it has the same great taste but as it's lower in salt it's much better for you.

My daughter cooks this chicken a lot at Uni as it's so easy and has it simply with plain boiled rice - there is plenty of sauce when it's cooked to give the rice a nice flavour but I think the noodles complement the chicken perfectly!

This recipe serves 2

Ingredients

2 Chicken Breasts

400g packet of ready-cooked noodles or 2 (or 3 if you're hungry) nests of dried medium egg noodles
Bunch of spring onions

Half a small pack of fresh coriander 

5 tbsp of dark soy sauce 

Thumb size piece of ginger

1 tbsp sunflower oil 

1 tsp sesame oil

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/ 180°C fan assisted oven / Gas Mark 6.

2. Cut two pieces of aluminium foil large enough to enable a chicken breast to be completely sealed in each. Place a chicken breast on each piece of foil and turn the edges up so that when the liquid is added it stays in the middle with the chicken and doesn't run out.

3. Slice half the ginger very thinly and place on the top of the chicken breasts - there is no need to peel it. Cut 2 of the spring onions into 3 or 4 pieces and lie these across the chicken breasts over the ginger.

4. Add 2 tbsps of soy sauce to each chicken breast.

5. Carefully seal the chicken breasts tightly in the foil so that the liquid cannot escape during cooking and place them in a shallow baking tin. Cook in the oven for 25-30 minutes until the chicken is thoroughly cooked through.

6. While the chicken is cooking prepare the ingredients for the noodles. Slice the remaining spring onions in large slices. Peel and chop the remaining ginger into small, thin strips. Chop the coriander finely.

6. If using dried egg noodles, place them in simmering water and cook according to the instructions on the packet and drain when cooked.

7. About 5 minutes before the chicken is ready heat the sunflower oil over a medium heat in a frying pan or wok and add the spring onion and ginger. Fry gently to avoid burning the onions.

8. When the spring onions have softened slightly add the noodles and turn in the frying pan or wok to warm the noodles and ensure they are coated in the oil. This will only take 3-4 minutes.

9. Add the remaining 1 tbsp soy sauce to the noodles along with the coriander and sesame oil and continue to turn them to evenly disperse them through the noodles.

10. When the chicken is ready, remove from the oven and  serve with the noodles. The chicken can be served still in the foil straight onto plates but I prefer to remove the chicken and pour the sauce over.

11. Remember to remove the ginger from the top of the chicken before you eat it - unless you like the strong tangy taste of lightly cooked ginger that is!

12. Enjoy!

A quick midweek meal to banish the winter blues

Poor old Blighty has been getting a good battering from the weather over the past few weeks and it looks like there’s still more to come! We’ve been really lucky up here in Northumberland having largely escaped any flooding so far. I don’t want to speak too soon though – our annual deluge of snow is probably just around the corner.

I've been sustaining myself through the cold dark nights of winter with plenty of rich and hearty home-cooked food (and a reliable central heating system!) but I'm now finding myself hankering for some lighter fresher summer tastes. Brought on by all those holiday brochures I've been flicking through I suspect!

A plate of summer in the depths of winter

Out of season ingredients available at this time of year seem to have virtually circumnavigated the globe before finding their way into my local supermarket  and I usually avoid them when I can. So I was over the moon when I found this recipe on the BBC Good Food site which uses mainly store cupboard ingredients to create an effortless Provençal style sauce for chicken although I suspect it would complement fish just as well. Even better - I discovered, when I made it, that it can be cooked up from scratch in around 20 minutes so it’s perfect for when I’ve come in late and just want to batten down the hatches, turn the heating up, eat something nice and dream of summer.

I must point out that I did serve it with fine green beans from Morocco as it seemed the ideal accompaniment (and it was) so on this occasion I make no apology!

I have tweaked the original recipe very slightly to add a bit of heat! 

Notes: This recipe serves 1 but just increase the ingredients accordingly to serve more. Also, nice juicy ripe tomatoes are hard to come by in February but the sauce won't suffer by using the less tasty varieties available at the minute. The recipe calls for a splash of wine or water - wine definitely gives the sauce extra depth of flavour. Finally I used half a sachet (around 35g) of Crespo green olives with herbs and garlic - because they are already marinated they make the sauce extra tasty.

Chicken Breast with Tomatoes, Olives and Capers

Ingredients

1 Boneless, skinless chicken breast

a little seasoned flour mixed with half tsp chilli powder

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large (ripe if available) tomato, chopped

2 tbsp capers

handful olives

splash white wine (or water)

Method

1. 1. Bash the chicken with a rolling pin to flatten, then lightly coat in the seasoned flour mixed with chilli powder. Heat the oil in a pan, add the chicken and cook for 6-7 mins, depending upon the size, on each side until crisp, browned and thoroughly cooked through. Remove from the pan and keep warm.
2. 
   
3. 2. Add the tomato, capers, olives and wine to the pan, season to taste, then bring to the boil. Bubble the sauce for 2-3 mins until the tomatoes are starting to break down, then spoon over the chicken and scatter with chopped herbs. 
4. 
   
5. Recipe from Good Food magazine, October 2009