This is one of my favourite quick recipes. I mum would make it fairly often especially if my dad had a nice cabbage growing in the garden. I really miss home grown veggies and can’t wait to have a bit of garden so that I can start growing some of my own.

Chutney Mayo Chicken is something that can be thrown together in advance or when you don’t have a lot of time. It takes less than 5 minutes to prepare and uses ingredients that keep in the fridge/freezer so you can do the shopping in advance and just keep everything for the next time that you make it…and I don’t doubt that there will be a next time.

Forlornly thinking about homegrown cabbage, I just did basmati rice and mixed veggies from the freezer. There is quite a lot of sauce with this dish so you need a starch that will soak up the sauce. Rice and mashed potatoes are great and easy options. (There is a basic mashed potato recipe with the Summer sausage bake recipe from earlier this year).

This will feed 4 people easily and if there are only 2 of you, just make extra rice. Put the extra rice and sauce/chicken in containers and refrigerate until the next day or the day after that for an awesome heat and eat lunch.

Chutney Mayo Chicken

• 4 to 6 chicken breasts or 15 chicken thighs (can be de-boned and skinned or not, entirely up to you)
• 200ml orange juice (freshly squeezed adds some punch, but box juice works just as well)
• 200ml mayonnaise (or miracle whip)
• 200ml chutney (any variation, I usually have homemade chutney courtesy of my parents, but ran out so finished off the Mrs Ball’s Peach Chutney)

Use a medium casserole dish (at a push a medium sized roasting pan will work). Preheat oven to about 200 degrees centigrade.

Layer the chicken in the casserole dish. If you are doing this in advance i.e. the morning or day before, the chicken can be still frozen.

Into a 1 litre measuring jug, pour the orange juice to the 200ml mark. Then add the chutney until the combination reaches the 400ml mark and then add the mayonnaise until the mixture reaches the 600ml mark. Easy measuring and only 1 dirty measuring tool!

Using a fork or spoon, which can be the same one used to scrape the chutney/mayo out of the bottles, stir the mixture well. Depending on the chutney and mayonnaise that you have used you might have lumps in the mixture…this is not a problem. Pour over chicken, ensuring that all pieces of chicken are well covered in sauce and put in the fridge until ready to use.

Place in the centre of the oven for about 40 minutes. Sauce must bubble and preferably brown slightly. You can give it a stir about half way through just to make sure that all of the chicken is coated again.

Remove from the oven and cut open a piece of chicken to ensure that it is cooked through. If not return to oven for a few more minutes depending on thickness of chicken (thighs will cook faster than breasts).

Serve with a generous amount of sauce.

Guess what leftovers I’m having for lunch today?!