Describing this dish, Mary said: “This is a great way to feed the family as the chicken and veg are all cooked in one very large tray in the oven.
“It takes only minutes to put everything together then it sits in the oven for under an hour with no fussy finishing off to do and only one pan to wash up.”
While I did follow the recipe pretty strictly, I did make two adjustments – the first was to half the ingredients listed below and the second was taking out the green olives as I’m not the biggest fan of them.
Ingredients (for six people)
1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into 5cm chunks
Six chicken thighs
Six chicken drumsticks
Six rashers of bacon, snipped into 1cm pieces
One large onion, cut into wedges
Two garlic cloves, crushed
Three courgettes, thickly sliced
Five preserved lemons, cut into quarters
One tin of green olives
One and a half tablespoons of paprika
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Method
I started by measuring out the ingredients and preparing the veg before preheating my oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7.
Next, I placed the potatoes in a large roasting tin with two of the three tablespoons of the oil, making sure to coat them all before adding the onion, garlic, bacon and chicken pieces and combining them together.
It was then time to add the lemons to the roasting tin and season everything well – this is when I sprinkled on the paprika. Then roast for 40 minutes.
Make sure not to overcrowd the roasting tin as you need everything to be in a single layer or it will not cook evenly – divide between two tins if necessary.
Just before the 40 minutes was up, I coated the courgettes with the remaining tablespoon of oil and seasoned with salt and pepper.
When the time was up I poked the courgette slices in among the chicken. If you are adding olives, this is when you would do so.
I then returned the tray to the oven for a further 20 minutes, until the chicken and vegetables were golden brown and tender.
This traybake was delicious, however, when making it again I would probably swap the preserved lemons for a regular lemon as I wasn’t a huge fan of the salt water coating the lemons.