One Pot Chicken, Bacon and Peas

I love any dish you can eat with a fork and a spoon – it means it’s chunky and (often) nourishing, but has some sort of delicious stock or sauce to slurp up. This is particularly good when your country hasn’t got the message that it’s the middle of Summer, and is acting like it’s late Autumn.

This dish is completely inspired by French flavours. The French have been cooking lettuce for donkey’s years, and it’s a bit strange we’ve only recently picked up on this over here. Cooked lettuce is beautifully sweet – the heat must eradicate any of the bitterness that raw lettuce can sometimes have.

Wonderfully, this is a one pot dish (as you may or may not have guessed from the title) and is ready in less than 30 minutes. The recipe below will serve at least 4. We had ours with cheese on toast (think the croutons you’d make for a French onion soup) to mop up all of the lovely juice.

One Pot Chicken, Bacon and Peas

8 rashers streaky smoked bacon

6 skinless, boneless chicken thighs

3 cloves garlic

6 spring onions

1 litre chicken stock

2 bay leaves

200g frozen peas

2 little gem lettuces

3 tbsps creme fraiche

Small handful chopped parsley

1. Put a casserole dish on a medium-high heat and add the bacon. Sizzle until it is starting to crisp and the fat has run out. Scoop the bacon out and put to one side.

2. Add the chicken thighs and brown for 5-6 minutes. Add the chopped garlic and chopped spring onions; stir for 30 seconds.

3. Add the bacon, chicken stock and bay leaves. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Uncover; add the peas and roughly chopped lettuce, then stir in the creme fraiche. Bring back up to a simmer then stir in the parsley. Taste and season with salt and plenty of black pepper.