This is my Jamie Oliver story, and, although he features heavily he fails to actually appear in person. It is brought on by the JO inspired dish today which is chicken tray bake. Anyway, back to the bit you’re gagging to find out, how did Jamie Oliver get liddle old me preggers? Well, we use to camp at Tregurrian Camping Club site at Watergate Bay which is just outside of Newquay. Mr Oliver has a 15 restaurant at Watergate Bay and we did the taster menu with the taster wine, big mistake, there is a LOT of wine. The meal was ok, I’ve had worse from higher end restaurants but I was expecting much better tbh. At the time the reviews for 15 were very mixed and yes, the service was terrible. So after the meal we climbed back up the hill to our tent and it was raining. There isn’t that much to do in Cornwall when it’s wet, so I ended up pregnant. I was nearly 40, it’s really hard to get pregnant so I thought no problems. I felt The Cub implant the next day and just knew. I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO GET BLOODY PREGNANT THAT QUICKLY #andbreathe. So yes, Mr Oliver, if you’re reading this, I do blame you, entirely, for getting me pregnant. I, of COURSE, wouldn’t be without The Cub now and love the bones of him, it did take me a while to get my head around it all though. And back to the JO inspired tray bake, here’s the original recipe, which I’m pretty sure I got from the JO magazine:
- Small ciabatta loaf
- 8 chicken thighs or drumsticks
- 2 handfuls of cherry tomatoes
- bunch of basil, leaves picked
- 1 garlic bulb, broken into cloves, skin on
- handful of black olives, stoned (the idea of stoned olives always cracks me up, but I have the humor of a 7 year old)
- olive oil
- 1 dried red chilli
- 8 slices of pancetta, or thin-sliced smoked streaky bacon
- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas4. Get a deep roasting tray big enough to fit all the chicken in one layer. Rip the ciabatta into medium-sized chunks and place in the tray with the chicken, tomatoes, basil, garlic cloves and olives. Add a generous drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of salt and pepper and the chilli. Toss to mix up well, then reposition the chicken on top. Bake in the oven turning the chicken after 30 minutes.
- After another 30 minutes, drape the pancetta or bacon on top of the chicken and return to the oven for 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked and falling of the bone. Lovely with a crisp green salad.
Here’s what I actually did No olives, they are nasty little bags of horror. A dry chilli, but I made the mistake of putting all my dried chilli’s in the same jar, some of which were chipotle and now they all smell/taste a bit smoked. I completely forgot the bacon. You may have noticed from a previous post, I bloody hate it when recipes state a drizzle, what does it mean? So here’s what I did, poured a little oil into the dish which didn’t coat everything, so I did a bit more and a bit more until everything got a little coating of oil. I used de-boned chicken thighs so the cooking time was reduced, also, Robin hates bones in anything as he feels he’s fighting with his food. He isn’t picky honest, it’s just that for some reason all his foibles are coming out in my first few blogs 😀 Here are a couple of pictures of the prep and the finished product, it’s is very yum. The bread goes like gooey, but yummy, croutons.
Today’s picture of The Cub, have just had a thought I should take a new picture every day as well as drag out an old one so there’s a year of The Cub online!
Old picture
Today’s picture
Peace, love and pizza!
PS, can you imagine what the Daily Fail will do with this, I doubt they ever fact check anything and quite obviously, from some of the stuff they’ve ripped off borrowed from Mumsnet never bother to read past the title 😀
365 Days of I Don't Know 