Monday, November 25, 2019

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






20 comments:

  1. That looks like a perfectly healthy and delicious one tray meal with all the great flavours.

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  2. I often make ratatouille, but I've never added chicken. This is a complete meal. Another recipe to try soon. Thanks Pauline.

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    1. Thanks for your interest Nil. It's just an easy but tasty meal for us busy girls:)

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  3. yep i love a good traybake too. so easy, so handy with only one dish to wash up. i do it quite often.

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    1. Yep and very versatile as well. I am quite addicted to these flavours. Thanks Sherry

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  4. Dave is a master at cooking with eggplant so I shall pass this on to him.

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    1. Oh you are very lucky Tandy. I think my Neil is allergic to handling it but will eat it in small amounts.I hope Dave likes it. Thanks for dropping by.

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  5. A great sheet-pan meal. For me, I suppose one of the great joys of gardening was when the eggplant was ready for harvest and we began making garden fresh oven ratatouille. We'd always put many batches in the freezer so as to enjoy the fresh summer taste come Christmas time. So how does Australian garlic differ from others?

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    1. Very interesting to hear that story Ron. I have only really discovered ratatouille in the last couple of years when we discovered we could grow eggplant. Wasn't anywhere to be found when I was growing up. I think the Garlic grown in our local region has smaller and sweeter bulbs which can be a bit sticky to handle when really fresh, however we have so much imported garlic in our supermarkets I was just encouraging Aussie readers to buy Aussie garlic, not the imported stuff. Thanks for your comments Ron.

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  6. Terrific dish -- nice combo of flavors, and pretty easy to prepare. Neat idea -- thanks.

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    1. Thanks KR, yes its a cinch to make for a complete meal in a tray.

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  7. Hi oh this recipe sounds delicous,cant wait to try it,i have never made a tray bake before,hope your day is a good one xx

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    1. Hi Sheryl, Thanks so much for your comment. I have a few recipes for delicious tray bakes on my blog. You will never look back once you try them.

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  8. Goodness, this is good! So good, I had to say it twice, lol. I thought it was fried halloumi at first, but now realise it's baked. So long as it has that golden brown, halloumi flavour though, it doesn't matter. I'm in. :)

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    1. Thanks Chris. The only improvement I could have made on this would have been to find a large block of halloumi and place large blobs of cheese on top. Never mind it was still delicious.

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  9. Oh yum, halloumi is so good, love this cheese. Abd those kind of tray baked meaks are my favourite to make☺

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    1. Thank you very much Natalia, I'm a fan of a good tray bake as well. There are so many variations to be had.

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  10. I'm a big chicken traybake fan and this one sounds stellar Pauline! :D

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    1. Thank you so much Lorraine, it turned out really well and I will be cooking it over and over I expect.

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