A winning chicken dinner to put a cheesy smile on your face...

Sat, 13 Jan, 2024 - 08:00

Di Curtin

IF, like me, you went mad on the cheese buying for Christmas, you’ve probably got a few bits left to use up. I’ve been living on it the last couple of weeks!

The softer creamy cheeses like Brie and Camembert don’t have a long fridge life. But a hunk of cheddar will keep you going for a couple of weeks.

So, this weekend, I’m using up what’s left of my hunk of cheddar in this fantastic cheesy bake.

This is a simple mix of chicken breast fillets baked in a cheese sauce with greens of choice and cherry tomatoes.

I’ve used broccoli here, but you could substitute green beans or even courgettes.

If you don’t want to use full fat cream, try making this with the equivalent of low fat Greek-style yogurt. It isn’t quite as rich, but it will keep the calories down if you’re on a New Year health drive.

The other thing I had leftover from the Christmas shop was a pineapple. It wasn’t ripe when I bought it, and it’s taken all this time to get there!

I left it out at room temperature on the kitchen worktop and, just the other day, got the fragrant scent of sweet ripe pineapple that told me that baby was ready to eat!

You can eat it as it comes, but for a pud, this simple grilled idea hits the spot for light refreshingness, and gives that little bit of sweetness too after the chicken.

If you made your own Christmas puds or cake for the festive season, you probably have the cake spices leftover to flavour the fruit. It adds a little touch of warming spice to the natural sweetness!

Cheesy Chicken

Ingredients (serves 4) 4 large skinless chicken breast fillets 1 head broccoli, trimmed and rinsed.

10 cherry tomatoes, rinshed and quartered 1 tsp dried oregano 100mls chicken stock 300mlsmls cream Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 50g grated Irish mature cheddar.

Method Place chicken breasts in an ovenproof dish and season.

Cut broccoli into small florets and rinse. Shake dry Scatter around the chicken with cherry tomatoes.

Add the oregano.

Pour over stock and cream. Season Cover dish with foil. Place in a pre-heated oven gas 4 350F 180C and cook for 25 minutes or until chicken is cooked through, depending on thickness of fillets.

Carefully remove from oven and sprinkle top with grated cheese. Return to oven till top is browned and bubbling.

Serve immediately, with mashed potatoes or pasta.

Grilled Spicy Pineapple Wedges

Ingredients (serves 4 1 ripe pineapple 4 tbsp runny honey Juice and zest of a lime 1 tsp ground ginger 1level tsp ground cinnamon Freshly grated nutmeg Method Trim top and base from pineapple. Cut into thick wedges lengthways and remove the core from the point of each wedge.

Peel each wedge by slicing the flesh from the peel horizontally with a sharp serrated knife.

Mix the honey, lime juice and zest ground ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Lay the wedges on a baking tray and brush all over with the spicy honey mix.

Cook under a pre-heated grill till heated through and lightly caramelise. Turn over to grill other sides.

Serve warm with ice cream of choice, or natural yogurt.

Drink accompaniment

FOR those of you who are on a dry January this month - good on you!

I’m making life easy by not recommending an alcoholic drink this weekend. I drink non-alcoholic beer, and it washes down dinner a treat.

These days, the production methods for alcohol-free beer have smartened up to the point where there is really very little difference in the actual taste, so it satisfies the palate in the same way as a real beer, just without the booze.

You can grab carry-out packs of our very own Heineken in its 00% version, which provides that familiar Heineken taste. But for a change, I’m choosing an Italian alcohol-free beer here.

Moretti has a lively, hoppy flavour with a zap of citrus which will compliment this creamy cheese based sauce for the chicken.

You can gulp a couple of bottles of this completely guilt free during dry January. A four pack carry-out pack of 330ml bottles comes in at €7.80 from Supervalu stores

RECEIPT

Main dish

Chicken breast fillet 750g pack €7.99

Broccoli head 350g €1.59

Cherry tomatoes punnet 89c

Oregano 7g jar €2

Cream 500mls €1.99

Irish Vintage Cheddar 200g €2.50

Total: €16.96

Dessert

Whole extra sweet pineapple €2.29

Mango x 1pce 79c