Chicken bake

This is my ridiculously easy, no-pasta, lasagne-style chicken bake, where the chicken is used in place of the pasta.

The only tiny bit of cooking required before it goes into the oven is to make the white sauce. Yep - everything else goes into the pan uncooked, and the oven does all the work.

Free printable recipe is available on our site:

Ingredients:

• 1 onion finely chopped
• 6 medium mushrooms roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic peeled and minced
• 1 red bell pepper chopped
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 chicken stock cube crumbled
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 4 chicken breasts (about 700g/1.5lbs) , sliced in half to make 8 thin, wide breasts
• 500 g (2 ¼ cups) passata* (tomato puree if you're in the US)
• 1 tsp dried Italian mixed herbs
• 100 g (1 cup) Cheddar cheese, grated

White Sauce:

• 4 tbsp (60g) unsalted butter
• 4 tbsp plain (all-purpose) flour
• 400 ml (1 and ⅔ cups) milk (full or half fat)
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• pinch ground nutmeg
• 25 g (¼ cup) Cheddar cheese, grated

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F.
2. First make the white sauce. In a medium sized saucepan, add the butter and melt over a medium heat.
3. Once melted and bubbling slightly, add in the flour and stir it into the butter using a whisk (this will form a thick paste called a roux).
4. Keep gently stirring the roux over the heat for one minute to cook the flour. Add in a good splash of the milk, turn up the heat and stir with the whisk to incorporate.
5. Keep adding in the milk a good splash at a time, and whisking until all the milk is used up (this normally takes me about 3 or 4 minutes and I add the milk in about 5 splashes). Don't worry if you get a few lumps, keep stirring with the whisk and they will disappear as the sauce thickens.
6. Keep stirring the sauce with the whisk over the heat until the sauce thickens. Once thickened, add in the salt, pepper, nutmeg and cheddar. Stir together and then turn off the heat.
7. Now take a large baking dish or casserole pan.
8. Add the chopped onion, mushrooms, garlic, red pepper, olive oil, crumbled chicken stock cube and salt and pepper to the pan and stir together. Note: the pan doesn't need to be on the heat for this. The ingredients go into the oven raw, where they'll cook down together.
9. Add 4 of the slices of chicken in one layer on top of the onion mixture.
10. Drizzle over half the passata, sprinkle on half the dried herbs and spoon on half the white sauce.
11. Layer the remaining chicken slices on top, followed by the remaining passata, then the remaining dried herbs and the remaining white sauce.
12. Sprinkle the grated cheddar on top.
13. Place in the oven for 40 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through, the cheese is browned and the sauce is bubbling.