A recipe that will appeal to you if you love black olives and dark earthy flavours. Everything can be prepped in advance and brought together in half an hour.
For 2 people you’ll need:
A chicken breast per person
A lemon
Thyme (fresh or dried)
Olive oil
20g butter
100g stoned black olives (I used Greek)
Butternut squash
Broccoli
Piment d’Espelette or chilli flakes
Salt and pepper
Method:
To make the olive purée put the stoned black olives, the juice of half a lemon and a good glug of olive oil in a mini processor (or use a hand held). Blitz until you have a smoothish purée adding a little more oil if necessary. Put aside until later.
Slash the chicken breasts across in several places, sprinkled with salt, pepper and thyme leaves. Pop into a bowl and add the juice from the other half of the lemon and some olive oil. Rub well into the chicken and leave until you are ready to cook. If you put it in the fridge then bring it out about half an hour before you’re going to cook it.
Cut the butternut into long chunks and pop in a roasting tin sprinkled with olive oil, thyme leaves, sea salt and chilli flakes.
Cut the broccoli into florets and cook for 2 minutes in boiling water. Drain, rinse with cold water and put aside to dry.
Preheat the oven to 190°C fan
Half an hour before you want to eat:
Take the chicken out of the fridge. Pop the butternut into the oven to roast.
10 minutes before the butternut is cooked, cook the chicken breast in a non-stick frying pan on a medium heat for 8 minutes on one side. If the chicken has the skin on cook it skin side down. Don’t fiddle with it, leave it be and when the 8 minutes is over flip it over, add the butter and baste it for a further 2 minutes with the heat a bit higher. Take off the heat and put to rest.
While the chicken is resting pop the dry broccoli into the frying pan and fry until charred on all sides.
Bringing the dish together:
Put a heaped teaspoon of the olive purée on the plate and then place the roasted butternut and broccoli on top. Cut the rested chicken breast in two and place on top.
Drizzle over any buttery juices that collected while the chicken was resting and add and few drops of olive oil to dress.
Voila!
You’ll have more olive purée than you need for two people so keep it for another time. You can mix it with a little mayo for crostini or use as a dip for crudités.
