Piri piri chicken recipe, with red peppers, cauliflower rice, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob and cucumber yoghurt

And finally, we have arrived at the third chicken recipe from my initial bird! Check out the other meals of butternut squash risotto (using the stock made from the bird’s carcass) and the initial roast dinner!

So on Sunday, before I put the roast on, I chopped off the bird’s legs leaving just the crown (a quicker cook too!) so I had these uncooked legs leftover.

So why not get some homemade piri piri going on? I marinaded actually two days before, due to having lots of spare time…haha but overnight would be perfect. If you only have 30 mins, follow the amended, short recipe.

 

Ingredients:

(serves 2)

2 chicken legs

sweetcorn cobs

2 sweet potatoes

cauliflower stalks

2 red peppers

inside of a cucumber

plain low-fat yoghurt

handful of sprigs of fresh thyme

for the marinade:

1/2 red onion

2 cloves of garlic

1-2 chillis (I prefer scotch bonnet)

1/2 tbsp sweet smoked paprika

1 lemon

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp lea and perrins/worcestershire sauce

a bunch of fresh basil

olive oil

(if you have only 30 mins, omit the below):

2 tomatoes

1 red pepper

 

Recipe:

Piri Piri marinade:

First make your piri piri marinade.

Peel and roughly chop your 1/2 red onion and your garlic. Add to the liquidiser, with the red chillis (squeeze out some of the seeds if you want to make it a little less hot). Blitz a little to break your mix into smaller pieces.

Add your paprika, zest of the lemon, juice of 1/2 a lemon, the white wine vinegar, the Lea and Perrins, a good scrunch of salt and pepper, the bunch of basil and a tbsp olive oil.

(Leave it here if you’re doing the short recipe, but if you have overnight to marinade, add your tomatoes and pepper).

 

Blitz until smooth. If it’s too thick, add a tbsp of two of water so that it is a smooth, thick liquid.

Whack your chicken in a bowl and cover well with the marinade. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge over night.

When you’re ready to cook, carry on:

 

Cauliflower Rice:

Whizz up your cauliflower stalks (Use the florets for your Sunday cauliflower cheese!) – don’t throw them away! They have the same great taste as cauliflower and making them into rice just works so well. Whizz until they are rice grain-ish sized. Put into a bowl with 1 tbsp water and cover with clingfilm, ready to microwave (takes 1-2mins).

Process:

Get a griddle pan hot, and add a tbsp of oil. Take your chicken out of the marinade and try to wipe off most of the excess marinade coating them. When the pan is hot, griddle your chicken legs for a minute or so each side, until lightly browned. Then do the same to your strips of red pepper (leave the strips fat, for example cooking each pepper into 3-4 pieces). In the meanwhile get your oven on at around 180C.

You could griddle your sweetcorn cobs if you want in this pan, but I like to boil them.

To a baking tray add a tbsp of fat (olive oil will do, but I have a tub of smoked jalapeno bacon fat from Syms Bacon Jam which makes AMAZING roasties!) and let this heat/melt in the oven. After a couple of minutes, add your sweet potatoes (If you want something quicker and a little healthier, chop your sweet pots into roastie size, then put in a bowl with 1/2 a lemon and clingfilm. Microwave for 5-10 mins (trust me!) and you’ll be left with crozzley, tasty potatoes without having used the oil).

Now put your chicken in to roast. First spoon some marinade onto a baking tray, and lay over your peppers. Then lay the legs on top of the peppers and and cover in the rest of the marinade (this marinade has to be well-cooked because you’ve marinaded raw chicken in it – just don’t add it late in the cooking, add it now, and it’s all good). They’ll take  around 10 minutes, but just keep an eye on them – you don’t want the marinade to burn but obviously you also don’t want underdone chicken!

Take a tbsp of yoghurt and mix through the insides of a cucumber (to make a watery, cooling dip). If you need to use the whole cucumber that’s fine too.

Now, you’re ready. Heap it all together.

 

Cauliflower rice, with piri piri chicken and peppers, with a cucumber yoghurt and sweet potatoes! Enjoy! x