I cut out this recipe from a magazine a while back, and when I discovered 3 chicken breast fillets in my freezer, I thought ‘Why the Hell not?’ and decided to make it last night. The recipe called for red and yellow peppers, spinach and basil, but my fridge and my wallet weren’t being cooperative. Instead, I used what I had.

Ingredients

Chicken breast fillet (use as many as you need/want, or turkey if you’d rather)
Red, green or yellow peppers (depends on which you like)
Mushrooms
Cooking mozzarella (the one in a square or rectangle, it’s less liquid)
Sweetcorn
Basmati rice (although you may use whichever you like)
Herbs (Mixed or Provence) as well as salt, pepper and paprika if you so desire
Stock cube for rice (I used Mediterranean Herbs, but chicken or vegetable can do)

Preheat oven at 200°C.

First I cut the chicken open, which is quite easy when it’s still frozen, although it makes stuffing it a little harder as they’re less malleable. I seasoned them inside and out with Herbes de Provence and salt/pepper. Then I laid them aside.

I chopped a green and yellow pepper, as well as the mushrooms and the mozzarella. Because the chicken was frozen, I only managed to stick in one long strip of each pepper, two slices of mushroom and one and a half slice of mozzarella into each. I covered it with mozzarella as well, and put it in the oven at 180°C for 20min.

Because I had so many vegetables left, I decided to make extra rice and create a leftover stir fry for lunch at work. I boiled some water with the kettle and put in the right rice quantity, then added a stock cube. Mine are French and AWESOME, and I don’t understand why they’re not being exported… But maybe you can get them on your next holiday, or order them from an online shop for French food like Chanteroy. Let that boil until the rice was floating to the surface.

I put some Flora Cuisine in a frying pan (I don’t like oil on vegetables) and added the peppers and mushrooms. As that looked very vegetably, I cut up a couple of slices of ham and added them to the mix. When the rice was boiled, I put half away for dinner, and stirred the rest in with the vegetables and the ham, adding the sweetcorn last. Let that simmer for a bit, make sure it doesn’t stick to the pan, then let it cool down before transferring it into Tupperware.

After 20min, the chicken was not quite done yet, but that’s probably our oven’s fault (it sucks), so it stayed in a little longer. The mozzarella was already melted everywhere, so maybe it’s best to put the top slice on about 5min before taking them out. So after 30min in total, we got the chicken out and served it with the rice on which I sprinkled some leftover sweetcorn.

It tasted AWESOME!!! I’m definitely doing this again, maybe with different stuffing, another cheese etc. But it’s genius, the chicken was really tender from being oven cooked and the herbs gave a little zing to the mozzarella. An easy recipe that I recommend, as well as my leftover stir fry!