Recipe: Creamy Chicken and Broccoli Bake With Peas, Baby Corn and Mushrooms #TipsTuesdays 36

This week for Tips Tuesdays I am continuing to share some of the staple recipes I use all the time. This one is based off this recipe from allrecipes, but I've tweaked it, so I'm sharing my version. It is very tasty and filling without heavy amounts of starch, but I have to admit mine is not as low fat as the original.

Creamy Chicken and Broccoli Bake With Peas, Baby Corn and Mushrooms

Serves 2 with healthy appetites or 3 who like smaller portions

Ingredients

• ~half a head of Broccoli
• 6 baby corns
• 1 large flat mushroom (I find the large mushrooms much tastier than the small closed cap ones, but if that's all you can find they will do - use 4 or 5)
• handful of frozen peas
• 4-6 skinless chicken thigh fillets (the original recipe uses chicken breast, but I think thigh is much tastier)
• 1 400g can Heinz Cream of Chicken Soup
• 50g Hellmans Light Mayo
• 2 tspn curry powder or 1 tspn of curry paste (you can add more of less to your taste if you like)
• splash of milk (I use semi-skimmed because that's what we have in the house)

N.B. All the vegetable amounts are very hand-wavy - if you prefer one to the other, add more of that. This is a very as-you-like-it recipe and easy to adapt to personal tastes.

Gluten Free - for those who require gluten free this is a recipe for gluten free cream of chicken soup or the Pacific brand does a gluten free condensed soup (but its organic so it's expensive :)) and you will need to make sure your curry powder brand is gluten free as well - many aren't.

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190C/375F
2. Cut the broccoli into bite sized florets.
3. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and add the broccoli. Cook for 2-3 mins until almost tender.
4. Chop the baby corns and mushroom into bite sized pieces.
5. Trim the chicken thigh fillets and cut into bite sized pieces.
6. Put all the veg and chicken into a medium sized oven proof dish (a standard Pyrex one is good).
7. Put the soup, mayo, curry powder and milk into a bowl and mix together top make the sauce (a whisk is useful to make sure the curry powder is mixed in properly).
8. Pour the sauce over the chicken and vegetables and mix to coat thoroughly.
9. Put in the oven and cook for 45 mins, until you can see everything bubbling nicely and the chicken is cooked through.

The broccoli will go quite soft, but the baby corns give a nice crunch because they don't lose their texture. For me its the addition of the curry powder that really makes this recipe sing. It gives it another flavour level and brings out the taste of the mushroom.