Mango Tomato “chicken”

This blog was never supposed to be a cooking blog but here I am writing out a recipe. Almost purely so that I can have a way of keeping track of my recipes and don’t have to keep riffling through lots of random pieces of paper every time I want to find a meal I cooked.

This is a lockdown larder kind of recipe and in response to the fact that my mother keeps on telling me off for not eating enough fruit (yes she has moved “in” with me, and yes she is still telling me off at nearly 33!).

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Ingredients

• 1 onion diced

• 1 tbsp minced garlic paste

• 1 small sweet potato, diced

• 2 small potatoes, diced

• 1/2 fresh mango, diced

• 1 tin chopped tomatoes

• 1 tsp harrisa sauce

• 1 tsp smoked paprika

• 5 lumps of frozen spinach

• 250ml chicken stock

• Leftover cooked chicken

• Salt and Pepper to taste

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Directions

• Brown onions in a saucepan with a splash of oil, after they have started to brown add in the garlic paste and cook for a further 5 minutes.
• Add the diced potatoes and cook for a while adding a little colour to the cubes.
• Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan excluding chicken stock and cook for 20minutes.
• Add chicken stock and simmer with the lid off until the potatoes are cooked and the sauce has reduced down to a nice thick consistency. Check how it tastes and add salt and pepper as required.
• Once the sauce has thickened add the diced cooked chicken. Adding it this late will reduce the chance of it falling apart during the cooking. Once the chicken is hot throughout it is ready to serve.
• Serve with steamed broccoli and brown rice.

This turned out to be a lovely dish and one that I might consider cooking again, should I ever end up with random mangoes again.. But I think it would work well with any sweet but slightly acidic fruit.

For some reason in recent years I have got out of the habit of cooking lighter tomato dishes, I only ever seem to cook bolognese style tomato sauces that sit on the hob for hours and cook down to that lovely deep tomato flavour. But something like this that cooks much quicker and has a fruity depth to it is a lovely way of using a tin of tomatoes that doesn’t take 100hours and heat the kitchen up to stupid temperatures. Sounds like a win all round as we come into the summer.

I hope everyone is settling into a bit of a routine now that we are getting further into this lock down.

What have you all turned to? Surprisingly I have barely done any knitting or sewing and have mostly been cooking and doing some gardening. I have been planting lots of seeds and potting on the seedlings whilst my mother has been attacking bits of the garden with a mattock and building a hugelkultur bed in one of the unused beds.

Let me know if you try the meal or what activity you have been turning to during the quarantine.