Ratatouille, Chicken, and Haloumi Traybake

"It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving."

Mother Teresa

This traybake ratatouille is based on a healthy Mediterranean combination of vegetables, and is my go to when I have fresh eggplant and capsicums on hand. I cook it a lot. I've added chicken fillets to the original vegetarian ratatouille recipe here, however just serving the vegetables and haloumi with a grain such as Burghul or brown rice is delicious for dinner. 

This dish is so versatile and can be served warm or cold, and also makes a simple  packed lunch.   I only ever use eggplant purchased from the farmer's market, or which is gifted to me or grown in our garden, as it should be fresh to avoid the bitterness which develops with age. Of course it can be salted to remove the bitterness if necessary, but that is another step.

I love a  tasty Traybake, so easy if you are cooking for friends or family, and not much cleaning up afterwards.

Let's cook:

Ingredients:

Serves 4



3 chicken breast fillets, each one sliced into 3 pieces
225 g haloumi cheese, cut into 8 slices
2 capsicums  ( 1 red and 1 yellow) if you are impressing guests, but two red will work, deseed these and cut into chunks
250 g eggplant ( about 1 medium sized eggplant) cut into chunks
1 medium peeled onion, cut into 12 wedges

3 tablespoons Extra Virgin olive oil
2 Australian garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
Handful fresh basil leaves, torn or sliced thinly, plus extra to serve
1 x 400 g can chopped tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

Let's cook:

Preheat the oven to 220 deg. C fan forced, or 200 degrees C.

Place the  onion, capsicums and eggplant in a shallow baking dish. Add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and season with sea salt and ground black pepper. Toss everything together with your hands and arrange into a single layer in your baking dish.

Add the sliced chicken fillets (9 pieces)  throughout the vegetables ensuring the chicken is covered with the vegetables. Bake for 25 minutes. Take the dish from the oven, and if needed turn the vegetables and chicken over, then cook for a further 5-10 minutes until softened and lightly browned. Sometimes I eliminate this step if it looks ready for the next step.



Remove the dish from the oven, carefully stir in the basil, dried oregano, garlic and can of tomatoes.
Arrange the haloumi on top, drizzle with the remaining oil, and season with more ground black pepper and return to the oven for a further 15 minutes. Remove from the oven when the haloumi is hot and lightly browned.

This recipe is adapted from the The Fast 800 Recipe Book which is based on low-carbohydrate Mediterranean style recipes, by Dr. Clare Bailey and Justine Pattison. If you make the vegetarian version of this without the chicken, you can pat yourself on the back that it is only 321 calories.That leaves plenty of room for treats later with Christmas on the horizon. Also different vegetables such as zucchini or cauliflower or broccoli could also be substituted. I'm all for using what I have on hand in a traybake. This is such a versatile recipe and so delicious, and Mr. HRK doesn't even notice that it has eggplant in it. Another of my recipes with eggplant working undercover and absorbing beautiful flavours.

It would also be delicious, served with the Rosemary and Garlic sourdough Cob bread from my last post.

Hope your week is going well and that you enjoy this simple recipe.

Best wishes

Pauline