Chicken Casserole / Random Recipe Challenge #22

For this months challenge Dom at Belleau Kitchen had us count our cookbooks to our random birthday number. What ever the number is that's the cookbook you'll cook from. My number is 16 and my count happened to land on Sally Bee once again. I haven't got quite a large selection of books as of yet so I might be going through similar books for the challenges from time to time. The best thing about Dom's challenges are the fact that I get to open my book on a random page and challenge myself to prepare dishes I haven't made before. So, the random page I ended up with was Chicken Casserole. I haven't made chicken casserole just eaten them, so this was exciting because I've always wanted to learn how. I'm sure that there are hundreds of version but for now this is Sally's version. It turned out really well, wasn't greasy at all and it felt light in the stomach and comforting for the cold weather. It was tasty and not salty. I did follow her method and had the exact ingredients, mine turned out to be more like a chicken soup rather than a casserole. I don't know what happened there. The family enjoyed it so this is worth a try..

...here's that beautiful rainbow my darling daughter took a photo of from inside our car..

Ingredients

2 tbsp plain flour
freshly ground peeper
sprinkling of dried mixed herbs
4-6 skinless chicken breast portions cut into chunks
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
6 rashers (slices) very lean bacon cut into cubes
225g/8oz shallots peeled and halved if large
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 courgettes sliced
1 red and 1 green bell pepper deseeded and sliced
300ml/10fl oz/1 1/4 cups white wine (alcohol will burn off during cooking)

*if you prefer this dish without the wine add more stock or non alcoholic grapejuice.

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas mark 3. Mix the plain flour with some black pepper and dried mixture herbs in a large bowl, dust the chicken breast in the flour and set aside. Reserve some flour for the sauce.

Over medium heat add the olive oil in a large lidded flameproof casserole dish. Add the chicken and bacon and fry until golden. Add the shallots and garlic and saute for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add all the remaining ingredients - the peppers, courgettes, stock and wine. Stir in the reserved flour to add thickness to the sauce. Cover and cook in the oven for about 1 1/2 hours or until chicken is nice and tender.

Serves 4