Roast Chicken with Broccoli and Cheese Crumble and Pan Roasted Baby Potatoes

Last night on this blog, I included a small section about how to easily find healthy recipes to suit your personal tastes. Purely off the top of my head, the three food ingredients which I used in the example were chicken, broccoli and cheese. A couple of hours after publishing the post, it occured to me that I should provide my own option to suit the example. So, today we have my healthy eating option incorporating chicken, broccoli and cheese...

Ingredients per Person

1 chicken breast quarter portion
1/2 small head of broccoli
8 to 10 small new potatoes
1 slice of bread
2 oz cheddar cheese (or other hard cheese)
1/2 tsp dried sage
Salt and black pepper
Butter for greasing baking dish

Method

The potatoes have to be firstly cooked by boiling. They should be washed and added to a pot of cold water, placed on a high heat until the water boils and the heat reduced to achieve a simmer for half an hour. The potatoes should then be drained and added to a pot or bowl of cold water to cool. The expansion/contraction process helps to make the skin later easier to remove.

The chicken portion should be baked in the oven on a baking tray. The oven should be preheated to 400F/200C/Gas Mark 6 and the chicken put in for half an hour to cook and then the oven turned up to full for five to ten minutes to crisp the skin. It is imperative to check that the chicken is fully cooked after this time. The easiest way to do this is to pierce the thickest part of the flesh with a skewer and then press down over the hole you have made to ensure the juices run clear and that there is no trace of red, or even pink. Cover the tray with tinfoil and set it aside for the chicken to rest.

The broccoli should be split in to florets and added to a pot of boiling, slightly salted water for ten minutes. While the broccoli is simmering, the bread and cheese should be grated and mixed with the sage and some black pepper in a bowl.

The broccoli should be drained and added to a small oven proof dish, lightly greased with butter. The crumble mixture should be spread evenly over the top and the dish placed under a hot overhead grill for around five minutes.

The potatoes should peel easily simply by rubbing them with the ball of your thumb. They should then be deep fried for around five minutes until beautifully golden and drained on kitchen paper.

The broccoli and cheese crumble should be removed from under the grill and carefully slipped out of the dish with a fish slice on to a plate. The chicken and roasted baby potatoes can then be served alongside.