Peruvian Chicken with Chilli Rice & Potato Chip Slices

On a random outing to Shoreditch last year, I was given a packet of Schwarz Peruvian Street Food spice mix! Finally decided to use it last night and here is the result – Peruvian Chicken with chilli rice & potato chip slices. It turned out to be remarkably tasty and good food.

Ingredients

418g diced chicken (I used Waitrose essential chicken breast chunks as they were in the fridge)

1 x medium potato

150g Basmati rice (it was the only rice in the cupboard)
1 x Oxo chicken stock cube, mixed in 300ml boiling water
Half a red chilli
Half an onion
3 x garlic cloves
3 x small tomatoes – chopped
2 x squeezes of Tomato paste
Half a tin of black beans, drained and washed (I used Lupa brand as they were in the cupboard)

Method

The Chicken & Potato

Cut a large square of silver foil and fold the edges, making a kind of tray about 2/3 size of your baking tray – this is for the chicken and to stop the oil/juices dripping into the oven tray.

In a small cup or dish, add about 2/3 of the spice mix to some oil and mix.

Drizzle some oil over the silver foil, place the chicken on it and paint both sides of the chicken with the oil/spice mix.

Turn on the oven and roast at 200degs.

Meanwhile, slice the potato into narrow slices and/or small chucks. Lay the slice/chunks on a strip of silver foil and cover both sides of the potato with oil and the remaining spice mix.

Add to the oven tray that has the chicken on – so you should have 1/3 of the tray with the potato and 2/3 with the chicken.

Roast for 25mins (in theory, see below for real life)

The Rice

Chop the onions, chilli + finely chop the garlic. Add together(including the chilli seeds) in a saucepan with some oil and fry for 3 or 4 mins, mixing constantly. Do this on a medium-high heat.

Add a bit more oil and gradually add the rice, coating it in the oil, onion/garlic/chilli mix. Do this until all the rice is added and stir for another minute or two.

Next, mix in the stock, chopped tomatoes and tomato paste – stirring everything in. Bring it to the boil for a minute or two, then reduce the heat to simmering level and cover.

Cook the rice mix for 10mins.

Now add black beans and cook for another 5-10minutes more, stirring occasionally.

At this point, theoretically, the dish should be cooked! 😀 In real life – this didn’t happen! my rice took WAY longer than the hoped-for 15-20mins AND needed WAY MORE than 300ml of water, probably because I didn’t cover the pan properly. So…if you want to copy exactly what I did :

Stir in extra water – you probably need to add at least a pint(500ml) more, bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer again(tbh I added this extra pint or so over about 10mins, frantically trying to cook the rice before 8pm struck, but you can prob just add the water in one go).
Next, reduce the rice to a very low heat, keep it covered and stir occasionally as the rice absorbs the water. Leave for 30mins more! Also reduce the oven to 50degs and leave the chicken and potato for another 30mins. Yep! in case you’re wondering, at 8pm I had to take a church Zoom call, so had no choice on this one, but it turned out to be for the best 🙂

I have to say, doing this, the result was Excellent – the extra cooking time seemed to crisp the potato slices, gave extra taste to the rice and due to the oil, the chicken was fine and tasty!

Note: annoyingly the only pic I took of this great meal was the one above, the potato slice chips were great, will update this next time.