Quick dinner: Chicken with Tomato and Bocconcini

Inspired by a Karen Martini recipe for chicken with tomato and bocconicini, I threw this together for dinner. The only work was chopping up the ingredients and it was super quick to cook. If you're really out of time, just use the straight recipe!

Here is the original recipe:

Karen Martini's Pan-fried chicken with tomato and bocconcini
4 Chicken breast fillets, trimmed
1 Tbl Olive oil
1 Brown onion, sliced
1 clove Garlic, crushed
1 large Red chilli, seeded and thinly sliced
400g can Chopped tomatoes
1/4 cup Chicken stock
4 Bocconcini, halved
1 cup Basil leaves

1) Heat a large, non-stick frying pan over high heat.
2) Brush the chicken with the oil and sprinkle with sat and pepper. Cook for 2-3 mins.
3) Add the onion, garlic, chilli, tomatoes and stock, reduce the heat and simmer for 2 mins.
4) Add the bocconcini and cook, covered for 1 minute.
5) Place the chicken on serving plates, spoon over the sauce and top with the basil.
Serves 4

My variation:
1) I used 3 chicken breasts (they came in threes!) so cut up the chicken and compensated with extra veggies. Next time, I'd use thigh meat as the breast meat was a little tough.
2) I added in a sliced eggplant* and instead of chilli, used chopped up red capsicum*. I suppose you can always add some chilli flakes for a kick but I didn't feel like anything spicy. I thought the capsicum added a little more sweetness to the tomato sauce.
3) I also used smaller bocconcini which was interesting as it melted slightly and it was almost like eating liquid pizza. That sounds really off but tasted really delicious!
4) I forgot to buy the basil but I don't think I would have added it anyway. It was tasty enough and I tend to associate basil with just tomato and bocconcini on their own.

*aubergine, bell pepper

Party food

Well we had some visitors and of course there was a supper for 70 that I roped 18 people into preparing for! So in between work, guest pick ups, other commitments... we all had to have a big think about what was quick and easy to make/bring.

My inspiration, scary to say, came from a Safeway (supermarket) catalogue - someone left it on his desk at work and I flicked through it whilst waiting for him, not a hobby read! Anyway remembering a recipe that I'd noted for its simplicity, I attempted to reproduce the chicken scrolls or "chicken thingies" as they were known when I lost ability to think during the mad round of planning.

I don't have exact quantities because you can make this when you're rushed and just want to grab stuff off the shelves! Try and do it in the morning so that you can let the spinach defrost - compared to being able to just pour hot water over the corn. You can argue that it's all going in the oven anyway but I wasn't going to tempt making the pastry soggy to begin with.

Chicken Thingies
1 Pack of puff pastry (6 sheets)
1 Kg of chicken mince
1 Small packet of frozen spinach
1 Small packet of frozen corn
Parmesan (shaved)
Parsley (optional*)

1. Defrost the spinach and corn!
2. Preheat oven to 220C
3. Mix the chicken with parsley if using
4. Take 1 sheet of puff pastry, spread some chicken along one edge
- as if you're making a sausage roll
5. Layer the corn, spinach then parmesan over the chicken
6. Now roll the pastry over the layers and make a tight roll
7. Cut up into smaller slices, bake until pastry has puffed up and is golden

Parsley (optional*) - I have to confess that I cheated because I forgot the parsley and figured there would be enough green from the spinach and enough flavour from the cheese!

I considered seasoning the chicken but the parmesan had quite a strong taste... and noone complained that it was bland! But you can see how easy it is to vary this scroll idea and try flavouring the chicken and substituting the type of cheese.

Added 2nd Mar 2006: I forgot to mention that if you use an egg glaze, the scrolls will come out golden - I didn't! Also the above quantity of chicken is supposed to be used in all 6 sheets of pastry so multiply that by say 7-8 slices per "roll" and you're getting quite a bit of finger food. You will have leftover corn because there's a lot in each packet!