Quick and Easy Stuffed and Wrapped Chicken

I love a nice roast, but if you want something a bit quicker, this quick and easy bacon-wrapped chicken is a real treat. It's also reminiscent of Christmas Dinner without the hours of preparation!

Grab your favourite stuffing and make up a small amount. I used half a small pack and still had loads left over so made some stuffing balls to have on another day. I added in a bit of my home dried sage I talked about yesterday to this basic supermarket bought sage and onion stuffing to make it extra herby!

Take one free-range chicken breast fillet per person and slice it open from the side to make a pocket. Try not to cut all the way through, but make the pocket big enough to jam in plenty of stuffing! Add a sprinkling of pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

As you may have noticed I do most of my cooking in silicone dishes. Life's too short to be scrubbing at dishes... these can be chucked straight in the dishwasher and come out good as new!

Next up is some streaky bacon. Wrap it around the stuffed breast and fold it under the chicken to hold it in place.

Sprinkle a bit more pepper on top and pop it into a pre-warmed oven at 200C for about 30-40mins depending on how big your breasts are (so to speak!).

It's not long before a yummy aroma emanates from the oven and when Martha came to sit hopefully in the kitchen I could tell it was done!

The finished result is some deliciously moist and succulent. I served it with some simple boiled home-grown Anya Potatoes and carrots cooked with just my dried mint. Yum!

DIY Herbs - Dry It Yourself!

The rockery is a feature that's rather fallen out of fashion in recent years. Time was that no self respecting home owner would dare do-without a wonderful collection of alpines and heathers nestling between a carefully arranged pile of boulders. My rockery had been rather neglected. A mass of rampant bulbs and weeds had overwhelmed the structure and the rocks had sunk to a rather disappointing scale. So last summer I decided SOMETHING had to be done. Rather than do-away with the much maligned feature I thought I could give it a new lease of life with a rather more useful purpose. I tore it apart with my bare hands, disposed of all the weed-roots and reconstructed with a more stately arrangement and some lovely new compost.

And thus the Herbockery was born. I'm sure you can guess that the new purpose of my rockery was to house my collection of herbs (sadly I don't have a pic of it in it's summer glory so you'll have to use your imagination!), including 4 types of mint, lemon balm, chives, rosemary and borage.

The first thing you learn about mint is not to plant it directly into the garden. It's a rather rampant person and soon ran rather wild! As such I had a bumper harvest of delicious home-grown mint to grace my potatoes (and frankly every other dish!).

Of course mint is a perennial plant (like most herbs it dies back to nothing in the winter and comes back each spring) so after the summer glut I knew there would be a winter mint-famine. But there is no need to resort to supermarket dried herbs, just read on for the simple solution.

You could freeze mini portions of mint in ice cube trays, but life's too short to be digging around the freezer every time you want some herbs so I prefer to dry my own herbs using the microwave...

First lay out your leaves onto paper kitchen towel. This will adsorb any moisture in the leaves.

Next pop the leaves on the paper into the microwave for just a few mins (2-4 is normally enough) until they resemble drying autumn leaves.

Next use your fingers to scrunch the leaves to your chosen size.

Then pop the dried leaves into a jar (you can buy pretty mini-kilner style jars or just reuse an empty herb/spice jar to be extra eco-friendly!), you will need to do several batches to fill a whole jar!

This technique works a treat for all sorts of herbs. I also dried a nice big pot of sage and a mixed 'Italian' herbs pot (Basil and oregano), perfect for pasta and pizzas.