Ras el-Hanout baked chicken breasts

Dinner

Cooking method: Roast
Serves: 2

Time: Average - 30 to 60 minutes
Difficulty: Average - a standard adult who feeds themself could do it

Equipment

• Baking parchment
• Oven
• Oven dish

Ingredients

• Drink or liquid
• Lemon juice - some
• Vinegar (wine) - some
• Eggs / cheese / dairy
• Butter - some
• Yoghourt - some
• Fruit / nuts
• Lemon - some
• Herb
• Mint - some
• Meat
• Chicken (breasts) - 2
• Oil
• Olive - some
• Spice
• Sumac - some
• Ras el-Hanout - 1 tablespoon
• Vegetable
• Olives - some
• Salad leaves - some
• Onion (red - 1

Method

In a small bowl, mix the Ras el-Hanout together with some olive oil, a bit of salt, and lemon juice into a paste, and then smear it all over the chicken breasts. Put them snugly fitting into an oven dish and cover them, and leave them in the fridge overnight. At the same time, mix a bit of sumac and a bit of mint into some plain yoghourt, and leave that overnight too. If you forgot to do this the night before it's not a terrible disaster. But try to remember.

Thinly slice the red onion and cut the slices in half, into crescents. Chop some olives in half. Place the onion and olives in a bowl of wine vinegar to soak. Pre-heat your oven to 210c. Take your dish of marinated chicken out of the fridge, and smear a huge blob of butter evenly across one side of a piece baking parchment cut to be a bit bigger than the dish, cover the chicken with it and tuck it down the sides, and bake in the oven for about 35-40 minutes. If you're the kind of person who uses a meat thermometer, that'll be until the core temperature of the chicken is 75c. Place the chicken on a board to rest for a minute or so.

Put the chicken breasts in the middle of your plates, and artfully arrange the onion and olives mix, the salady leaves, some slices of lemon, and some blobs of yoghourt in a circle around it. Also serve some middle eastern flatbreads and some spiced rice on a side plate.