Curried Chicken Tray Bake :

I know, I know. It’s been a long long time since I posted a recipe for you here. But, it turns out that life with three kids and two part time jobs is pretty busy – who woulda thought it, huh? So here’s my Curried Chicken Tray Bake.

So whilst I’m still feeding my family all sorts of delicious food (which you can see every day on my Facebook or Instagram), most of my recipe development energy is being put into the recipes I write for Lisa Corduff’s Small Steps Living Membership site (an amazing space for women wanting to live a better life – check it out here). Which doesn’t leave a lot of time for sharing here on my blog.

But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that a tray bake is hard to beat when life is busy, especially this Curried Chicken Tray Bake. Chop some meat & veg, add some great flavourings, throw it all on a tray and let it bake itself in the oven while you get on with other things. And the extra bonus is that there’s only one tray to wash up (music to my husband’s ears)!

This particular curried chicken combination came about based on the vegetables that arrived one week in our veggie co-op delivery. Cauliflower and eggplant are two of my favourite vegetables to add to curries, so I thought I’d try to use the curry flavours I love in the traybake form that saves my sanity so often. It worked. It was absolutely delicious. We served it up with a cucumber and mint raita, some fresh raw vegetables and some roti bread from a local takeaway. Homemade flatbread or basmati rice would work well too.

And although my fusspot older child still insisted on having some plain chicken and raw vegetables instead of the traybake, my more adventurous middle child was rubbing her belly in delight proclaiming that dinner “just has so. much. flavour!”

So here’s the recipe if you’d like to give it a whirl…

Curried Chicken Traybake

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2cm piece of ginger, grated

1-2 tbsp olive oil

Juice of a lemon

1 tbsp rapadura sugar

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground turmeric

½ tsp ground cumin

½ tsp garam masala

2 tsp curry powder

pinch salt

6-8 chicken thigh fillets, cut in half

2 zucchini, sliced

½ cauliflower, broken into florets

1 red onion, cut into wedges

1 large eggplant (or 2-3 smaller variety), diced

Method:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Mix all ingredients except chicken and vegetables in a bowl.
Add chicken pieces to the spice mixture and stir to coat. Leave to sit in the marinade while you chop the vegetables.
Place vegetables in a lined baking tray and spray lightly with olive oil.
Bake for 10 minutes.
Remove tray and nestle chicken pieces among vegetables.
Bake for approximately 45 minutes more, or until cooked through and slightly caramelised.