Chicken en croute

The name just means chicken in pastry, so feel free to experiement with the fillings, but this is a nice summery combination of vegetables.

Ingredients

  • 1 large chicken breast, cut into 3 equal sized pieces (or 3 smaller fillets)
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 sweet pepper
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 pack of pre-rolled puff pastry
  • 1 ball of mozzarella
  • 1 egg, beaten in a small bowl

Method

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and remove the pre-rolled puff pastry from the fridge to warm up a bit at room temperature before you use it later.
  2. Heat the olive oil in a pan over a medium high heat until it's starting to shimmer.
  3. Place the chicken breast pieces into the pan and cook for 3 minutes.
  4. Once the 3 minutes is up, flip over to brown the other side for a further 3 minutes.
  5. (Optional)While the chicken browns, use a gas flame or blow torch to char the skin of the tomatoes and sweet pepper, leave to rest for a few minutes to cool and then rub off most of the charred skin under a tap of running water.
  6. Remove the core and seeds from the sweet pepper and finely chop the tomato and sweet pepper into squares about 2mm in diameter - you can cheat and just use a food processor to finely chop them if you want.
  7. Crush the garlic clove into the tomato and pepper mixture and mix well before placing in a seive over a bowl to drain off any excess tomato liquid.
  8. Once the chicken is browned on both sides, remove from the pan and leave to cool in a bowl.
  9. When you're ready to construct the en cruite, unroll the pastry and divide into three pieces.
  10. Place a layer of the tomato and pepper mixture on half of each of the three pieces, leaving a 1cm gap around the edges.
  11. Put the browned chicken breasts on top of the tomato and pepper mixture.
  12. Tear up the mozzarella ball into small pieces and use to top the chicken - you won't use all of the ball, so put the rest of it back in the fridge.
  13. Fold over the clean pastry on each of the three pieces and use a fork to seal the edges.
  14. Use a sharp knife to score the top of each pastry parcel, going only just deep enough to expose a bit of the mozzarella underneath.
  15. Apply an egg wash to the top of each parcel with a pastry brush.
  16. Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the pastry is nicely golden brown and the chicken has an internal temperature of about 74 degrees Celsius.
  17. Serve with steamed green beans and gravy.
Serves 3.

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