Adventures of a Cat Lady

This is a unique and tasty recipe, that mixes savoury and sweet. Technically its not ratatouille, as according to wikipedia, its ‘ is a French Provençal dish of stewed vegetables that originated in Nice…’ Ive added meat because everyone loves chicken (if you dont, go meat free and add in chick peas instead).

A few years ago I was introduced to Persian cooking and I was impressed and vowed that I would try it again…. Sadly, I haven’t! This recipe is absolutely made in homage to the Persian food that I tried and really quite enjoyed. I had chicken with eggplant and cinnamon, it opened my eyes to new flavours! 

This is where this recipe is a little bit different and you’re going to read this more than once and think, if she making a mistake? What makes this recipe special is cinnamon, yes thats right cinnamon in a savoury meal. It does make it sweet but its not over powering. Cinnamon is incredibly healthy for you and had many many benefits, use google if youre curious. I put cinnamon in my yogurt each morning. 

One Pot Chicken Ratatouille – this recipe easily serves 4, I attempted to make enough for 2 meals and I ended up with a large amount of freezer meals. Prep time: 20 mins Cook time: 30-40 mins

Ingredients:

• 2-4 chicken breasts or you can use thighs (I tend to use 1 breast/thigh per person and I was initially making it for 2 meals)
• 2 tbsp oil (I used garlic olive oil)
• 2 medium or 1 large onion, diced
• 1tbsp garlic puree
• 1 small bottle (1 cup, 250ml) of red wine (if you dont drink, you can use chicken broth instead)
• 1 chicken bouillon cube (2 if you not using wine)
• 1/2 c (70g) wild rice
• 1 cup (200g) lentils (I used green but use whatever you have), washed
• 6.5 tbsp (70g) tomato puree
• 1 can of tomato blocks/chunks 
• 1 eggplant/aubergine, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 zucchini/courgette, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 bell pepper (use whatever colour you like, I happened to have red), cut into bite size pieces
• 1 tsp of ground cinnamon, if you are afraid of this aspect, go 1/2 tsp (traditional Persian dishes use cinnamon sticks but I was afraid Id forget about it or break it up during the cooking process, if you can going down the cinnamon stick route, use 3-4)
• 1 tbsp of brown sugar, to cut the acidity of the tomatoes 
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1: Saute the oil, garlic and onion. I also threw in half of eggplant/aubergine, more for fun than actual reason.

2: Then add in the chicken to brown it off, not fully cooking the chicken.

3: Add in the tomato puree and cinnamon, stir it around and let it cook for 2-3 mins, you will really be able to smell the cinnamon as this point and you may even doubt yourself, thinking you’ve added too much cinnamon. Its fine, done panic! 

4: Add in the wine/chicken bouillon cube mixed with 1 cup of water to deglaze the pan. Allow to cook for 3-4 mins. If you are adding wine, do expect that it will turn your chicken a purple colour. It was at this stage when realised that all of my ingredients weren’t going to fit in the pan and I would need my much larger cooking pot. 

5. Now for the fun part of just chucking the rest of it. Add in the wild rice, lentils, can of tomatoes, eggplant/aubergine, zucchini/courgette, pepper, brown sugar and chicken bouillon cube mixed with 1 cup of water (250ml). Stir it all together and allow it to cook on a slow boil for 20-40 mins. Stir it every 5-10 mins to ensure the rice and lentils dont stick to the bottom of the pan. 

6. After its cooked down, taste it, dont burn your tongue and add salt and pepper to taste. This was my final product, I believe I cooked it for roughly 35-40 mins, you can see how much of the liquid evaporated out during the cooking process. This shouldn’t be a  dry dish, you do want some liquid in it but it shouldn’t be soupy either. 

What should have been a meal for 2 meals turned into a LOT of meals, this was the following days lunch and many freezer meals. I was surprised by the flavour and how much I liked it. At first I was a bit surprised by the cinnamon and worried that I hadnt added enough or too much, I think next time Ill try cinnamon sticks but I do worry it will be an entirely different flavour profile… lets see! For those who are adventurous, I absolutely wouldn’t add more than 1 tsp of ground cinnamon. 

Notes: As this is a low and slow recipe, you dont need to brown off the chicken, you can just chuck it in when you’re adding in the all of the ingredients in step 5.

I hope your curiosity gets the best of you and that you try this recipe and hopefully enjoy it as much as I did!