Roast Chicken & Roasted Vegetables

This week’s healthy eating is going pretty well and I was really looking forward to last night’s dinner.  I reckon I packed in 2-3 portions of my 5-a-day in this hugely satisfying meal. When you are preparing the veg and piling them into your dish, it looks like it would serve 4 or 5 people, but the veg does shrink down substantially and if you have some leftovers they are good in an omelette the next day.

I always skin my chicken pieces before roasting.  It’s a messy job but then I am not tempted to take a mouthful of crispy, very fatty, chicken skin.  Also the flavours can penetrate into the flesh instead of the skin since this is what I will be eating I want maximum flavour and minimum fat!

You’ll need for 2:

• 2 –3 chicken thighs, skin removed, meat slashed
• 2-3 chicken drumsticks, skin removed, meat slashed
• 2 garlic cloves, bashed
• Half a lemon
• 1 small potato, approx 200g, peeled and chopped
• Half a butternut squash, peeled and chopped
• 1 courgette, washed and chopped
• 1 aubergine, chopped
• Half a punnet – approx 125g chestnut mushrooms, chopped into large-ish pieces
• 10 or so cherry tomatoes
• 1 red or normal onion, roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Seasoning
• 1 ½ tsp dried rosemary
• 1 red or yellow pepper, chopped

What to Do:

Start by preparing your chicken.  Skin and slash.  Season and place into roasting dish.  Sprinkle ½ tsp rosemary and squeeze of lemon.  Then cut your lemon half into 4 pieces and throw these in too.  Scatter the potatoes around the chicken and season aswell.  I love using my Stoneware roaster as it requires no oil to be added, but you could lightly brush the chicken and potatoes with olive oil or use a spray.  The chicken will omit its lovely juices flavouring the potatoes and helping them to brown.

Next prepare your veg.  Basically I chop everything into roughly the same bite size pieces.  The mushrooms shrink down a lot so keep these chunky but the butternut squash requires a bit longer cooking time so keep these smaller.

Pre-heat the oven to 190 or 200.  I generally do all of this before taking my kids up for bathtime so the dishes can be shoved in at appropriate times during the bathing / dressing / story-reading routine.

The veg needs a good 45 minutes, maybe longer turning every 10 to 15 minutes.  The chicken needs approx 35 minutes and I put the chicken on the lower shelf.  Dive into your healthy feast!

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 11