This is a great meal for busy women. While the cooking time is one hour, the amount of preparation is minimal. This recipe will provide four serves – one for tonight's dinner and then lunch for the next three days, helping you to fight the afternoon energy fade with easy leftovers of a sustaining and colourful dish.
- L/D Lunch/Dinner
- DF Dairy free
- GF Gluten free
- Rainbow diet
- Prep time 15 mins
- Cook Time 60 mins
- Serves 4
- Difficulty medium
Method
- Preheat oven to 200°C.
- Rub the chicken with a little olive oil and a pinch of salt. Pour a little olive oil in a large baking dish, top with a few whole sprigs of rosemary and 2 cloves of garlic, slightly squashed with the back of a knife.
- Place the chicken on the bed of rosemary and garlic and place in oven for 20 minutes before adding the vegetables.
- Meanwhile, chop all the vegetables (except mushrooms), place in a bowl and toss with olive oil. Remove chicken from oven, place vegetables in dish around the chicken, return to oven.
- Place mushrooms in the bowl and toss with the olive oil and add to baking dish after another 20 minutes.
- Turn chicken over when brown on one side and turn vegetables. Cook for another 20-30 minutes (total chicken cooking time: 1 hour to 1 hour, 10 mins).
- If adding cannellini beans, toss in the same bowl that the vegetables were in (to mop up the oil) and add to dish 15 minutes before end of cooking.
Nutritional information
By Jean Hailes naturopath and herbalist Sandra Villella
The good palm-sized serve of protein in this dish helps maintain energy levels, aids the growth and repair of our body tissues, and provides amino acids for the making of our brain chemicals that influence mood.
The colourful array of vegetables takes less cooking time and is less starchy than the traditional roast vegetables. The flavours are simple with the rosemary and garlic, and the red onion combined with the chicken and moist vegetables creates a lovely caramelised glaze and taste.
You could make this for tonight's family dinner, but we'd love you to make it just for yourself to enjoy over a few days. As a leftover lunch, you could add some baby spinach and serve the vegetables cold with a balsamic and olive oil dressing.
Go on, put yourself first!
