Chicken, Chorizo and Potato Tray bake (Nigella Lawson) with lemony salt and pepper green beans

Tray bakes are one my favourite dinner ideas, it is just so easy to chuck everything into an oven tray, season and pop in the oven! Not to mention tasty too! This is another recipe taken from Nigella Lawson's Kitchen, a cookery book I've been loving lately! This recipe involves one of my favourite ingredients, chorizo. I just love how amazingly juicy, salty and crispy it is when you cook it, of course it is not healthy at all but sometimes you have to accept these small details and just enjoy it! I don't eat it that often but it is one of my favourite things to cook with (a chorizo tomato salad is also gorgeous!)

This is more than enough for 4 people, I also served it with green beans to get some more colour and a least a little bit of healthiness onto the plate!

Ingredients

2 large oven trays

2 x 15ml tablespoons olive oil

12 chicken thighs (I used 6)

750g chorizo sausage (whole if baby ones or cut into chunks if a regular-sized ring)

1 kg new potatoes

2 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped

2 teaspoons dried oregano

Grated one zest orange (I used lemon instead)

Good handful of green beans

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Sea salt and cracked black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220 C. Rub the olive oil over the chicken thighs in the oven tray, reserve 6 pieces for each tray.

Divide the chorizo sausage, new potatoes and chopped up red onion between the 2 trays. Sprinkle the dried oregano and lemon zest over the trays. Drizzle oil over the contents and make sure all is coated.

Cook for 1 hour. Nigella recommends that after 30 minutes the trays are swapped round in the oven and the ingredients are basted with the orange zesty juices (or lemon juices!)

Lemony salt and pepper green beans

Around 10 minutes before the tray bakes are ready, get the green beans boiling.

Once ready, drain and pop back into the saucepan. Coat in the zest and juice of 1 lemon, a sprinkle of crunchy sea salt and cracked black pepper.

Serve both up straight away!

Tuna Steak WITH Gino D'Acampo's Cherry tomato and Anchovy Sauce and French Bean Salad with Mint, Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts

It's been a few days since my mad bout of posting lots. But it's the weekend and I'm a student therefore I'm either going out or in the library! Although I should be studying now I think I might update with a few of the meals I've had. This Friday night I cooked tuna steak for me and my housemate along with Gino D'Acampo's Cherry tomato and Anchovy Sauce and French Bean Salad with Mint, Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts.

I saw him make this on This Morning whilst I was bumming about at home, probably before a lecture. (Life of a student eh?!) Also during his cooking segment, there were other people all cooking the same thing at home at the same time as Gino, they had a wall of telly screens so he could watch them and tell them if they're doing the right thing. Thought that was pretty cool and also showed that what these TV chefs make on the telly isn't that hard!

So Gino cooked it with a crispy salmon fillet - whereas I had tuna steak in the freezer and I'm not a massive fan of salmon. The meal again, like Rosie's wasn't too difficult.

This is Gino's recipe - I am copying and pasting it from the website, so in no way am I claiming it is mine!

I am separating the recipe into 3 parts, since there are kind of 3 stages to it although done at the same time.

For 2 people.

Sauce:

200ml olive oil
1⁄2 red onion, finely sliced
4 anchovy fillets in oil, drained
400g tinned cherry tomatoes
3 tablespoons finely chopped
flat-leaf parsley
Salt and pepper

Preparation:

Heat 4 tablespoons of the olive oil in a medium saucepan and fry the onion until golden. Add the anchovies, cherry tomatoes and parsley, season with salt and pepper and cook, uncovered, over a medium heat for 10 minutes.

French bean salad with mint, goat cheese and pine kernels:

100g French beans (topped)
3 fresh mint leaves
½ garlic clove
1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
70g goat cheese
2 tablespoons of dry toasted pine kernels
Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
In a medium size saucepan, cook the beans in salted boiling water until al dente.

In the meantime finely chop the garlic and the mint together and place in a large bowl. Pour in the oil and lemon juice and mix until well combined.

Drain well the beans and add into the bowl with the dressing.

Season with salt and pepper and toss all together until evenly coated. Place on a serving plate.

Crumble over the goat cheese and scatter with the cooled pine kernels.

2 tuna fillet steaks.

For the timing of the meal overall, I would:

- Fill up a kettle to boil the water for the green beans.

- Place the green beans in a saucepan.

- Chop up the onion for the sauce, open the can of cherry tomatoes, open the tin of anchovies.

- Once the kettle is boiled, pour into the saucepan with the green beans and let them cook.

- Start frying the onion for the sauce.

- Get the grill very hot for the tuna steaks.

- Once the green beans have been cooking for a couple of minutes and the red onion has sweated and you have started adding the other ingredients to the sauce. Then place the tuna steaks under the grill, cooking for 5 minutes either side - or until it's cooked how you want it, here's a good guide for cooking tuna steak.

- Then follow the rest of the directions from Gino's instructions for the sauce and the green bean salad.

Plating up:

- Place the sauce onto a plate, place the tuna steak on top. Arrange the beans next to it.

Enjoy!

Love FF x