Chicken with harissa carrots and flatbreads is an easy mid-week meal that takes less than 30 minutes to cook. Sweet and spicy carrots elevate the dish and give scrumptious taste to this simple recipe.
Eating seasonal food is the most amazing thing ever. You get a fantastic hit of flavour without even trying. This is the type of food I used to eat, and it’s the food that makes me happiest. What makes it wonderful is that you don’t need any pretentious ingredients. The flavour is already there, so the main goal is just to elevate it.
My Mum is an absolute master of that. She’s the queen of seasonal eating and I inherited that love from her. Our food menus used to be based solely on seasonality, which meant we had tomatoes at the end of summer, carrots late spring to late autumn and berries just during the summer months. Even though it meant winter wasn’t the most exciting time, it did mean the quality of the food was always top notch.
I’m trying to embrace seasonality more and more in my diet. When you live in the middle of London, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the ingredients constantly available in shops. To counter this, it’s always nice to get back to your roots.
Harissa Carrots
Seasonality plays a massive role in this dish because the star of the show is bright orange, sweet and incredibly delicious carrots. The taste is just amazing and the effort you put into making them is close to zero. The only thing you need is a screaming hot pan, the most wonderful harissa flavoured butter (recipe here) and this orange goodness.
Cook the carrots for a couple of minutes on each side (because they are so fresh you don’t need more than 2 minutes on each side) and that’s it. My Fussy Eater, who as you know, hates vegetables was coming back for seconds. I’m taking this as a win.
Serving this simple ingredient with the perfect mid-week product – chicken breast – makes the recipe: chicken with harissa carrots, the easiest dish ever. You can elevate it by choosing pork tenderloin or white fish. Finish it by serving with fresh salad and warm flatbreads, which will soak-up all that harissa flavoured butter from the carrots. Amazing!
Recipe
Chicken:
2 chicken breasts
1 teaspoon of paprika
1 chilli pepper
¼ leek
1 clove of garlic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Carrots:
6 carrots
2 tablespoons of harissa flavoured butter (recipe here)
Flatbreads:
100g plain flour
50g Greek yogurt
½ teaspoon of baking powder
Knob of butter
Salt
- Prepare the chicken: slice chicken breasts into small pieces. Add a teaspoon of paprika, drizzle some olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix everything together and leave it to marinate for 30 minutes.
- Cook the chicken: chop the chilli pepper, leek and garlic. Preheat a frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil. Add the chicken and cook it for 5-7 minutes. Add the chopped vegetables and cook everything together for a couple of minutes until softened.
- Prepare the carrots: preheat a frying pan and add harissa flavoured butter. Add the carrots and cook them for a couple of minutes on each side.
- Prepare the flatbreads: mix the flour, yogurt, baking powder and a pinch of salt together (if the dough is too wet, add more flour). Make two, same sized dough balls, then flatten them to 1cm thick using your hands. Preheat a pan with a knob of butter and fry the flatbreads for 2 minutes on each side.
- Serve everything together with fresh salad and sprinkle some chilli pepper on top.
