I made dish ‘better’ than Charlie Bigham’s Sicilian Chicken ready meal

Getting a Charlie Bigham’s ready meal to cook up on an evening when you don’t feel like preparing food (or washing up lots) is certainly a real treat. I’m impressed with the home-cooked taste and the quality ingredients used – and Charlie Bigham’s Sicilian Chicken is one of my favourites in the range.

More often than not, I don’t necessarily follow a recipe when cooking up a dinner – I like to invent my own meals while noting ingredients in my favourite dishes. Recently, after eating the delicious Charlie Bigham’s Sicilian Chicken ready meal, I decided to try making my own version of it – and it went really well. I’d even go as far as to say it was better than the original, but there was of course a little bit more washing up to do after the prep.

On the second time of making my own take on a Sicilian chicken-inspired dish, I found it was an easy one to make in bulk too, meaning the following day it could easily be reheated leading to an easy meal that evening.

I’m a big fan of Riverford’s organic veg boxes, so I used red peppers and tomatoes from a weekly box delivery which really added to a great flavour.

For this take on Sicilian chicken you need:

Ingredients

• One (raw) chicken breast (skinless) chopped into bite-size pieces
• One red pepper
• One fresh red chill pepper (you can also use a green pepper or dried chilli)
• Two onions
• Two garlic cloves
• 10 small cherry tomatoes
• A can of chopped tomatoes
• Fresh parsley – or any dried herbs of your choice
• One stock cube
• A pinch of salt and pepper
• Up to four tablespoons of olive oil

Method

1. Turn the oven on to 180C, then chop the peppers, onions and garlic ready.

2. Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a medium-sized stainless steel saucepan (you’ll need a stainless steel lid too for later).

3. Heat the olive oil in the pan on the hob, then fry the peppers, onions, chilli pepper and garlic until they are just soft.

4. Add the 10 fresh tomatoes to the pan, along with the fresh or dried herbs, then crumble in the stock cube and stir on the heat for a few minutes until roughly combined.

5. Now, pour in the can of chopped tomatoes and add a couple tablespoons of olive oil as this gives a rich taste to the sauce.

6. Season with salt and pepper, stir, it should be just bubbling hot and well combined, then turn the hob off.

7. Add the chopped raw chicken to the sauce in the saucepan as this will now cook in the oven (making it really tender).

8. Press the chicken bits down into the sauce so all cooks evenly, put the stainless steel lid on the saucepan and put it in the oven.

9. I set a timer for 20 minutes and then gave it a stir, before popping the saucepan back into the oven, I set a timer again for the next 20 minutes. It takes around an hour for the dish to fully cook – and I checked a piece of chicken before serving to be sure it was piping hot.

You can double up each of the ingredients for a batch cook – and adapt the dish with different herbs as you wish.

I served one of my Sicilian chicken dishes with crusty bread – and for the following evening I added some of M&S’ Potato Rosti.