Oven baked chicken, tomatoes and baby potatoes

This is one of my favourite meals to make on a Saturday where I just do the prep work and through the dish in the oven, checking on it every now and then.  It takes a while for the potatoes to cook in the oven, so you are best to leave it until a night are able to start dinner a bit earlier.  I have often adjusted the amount of this dinner I make and served it to anything from 2 to 7 people.

Ingredients
Chicken breasts - 1 per person
Baby potatoes - allow 250g per person
Cherry tomatoes - at least 250g (I always put in as many as I have)
Red onion - 1 or 2
Dried basil - as much as you like
Garlic cloves - I like garlic so usually have at least 3 cloves
Olive oil

Method

1. Turn on the oven - I use gas mark 7 for this
2. Wash the baby potatoes and cut them in half, or quarters (the smaller they are the quicker they cook).  Put them in a large roasting tin.  Drizzle with olive oil and put in the oven for 10 minutes to start them cooking.
3. Wash the cherry tomatoes.  Lift out the roasting tin and add the tomatoes to the potatoes.  Mix well and put back in the oven for a further 10 minutes.
4. Prepare the red onion(s) by cutting into large chunks.  Slice or crush the garlic.  (NB. Crushing the garlic can sometimes result in it burning)  Remove the roasting tin from the oven and add the onion and garlic.  Sprinkle the dried basil (as much as you want) and give a good mix.  Add a bit more olive oil if needed.  Put back in the oven until the potatoes are almost soft.
5. Place the chicken breasts on top of the mixture and put the roasting tin back in the oven.  After 10 minutes, remove from the oven and turn the chicken breasts.  Mix the potatoes, tomatoes and onions under each chicken breast as you turn them.  Put back in the oven until the chicken is cooked.  Remove and serve.

This dinner is delicious hot or cold.  I sometimes serve with green beans or a side salad.  If I make it at the weekend I often leave a few of the potatoes, tomatoes and onions in a bowl and mix them through some scrambled eggs the next day for lunch.

You can use large tomatoes, but I have found that cherry tomatoes left whole are the tastiest way to make this recipe as they explode in your mouth when you put them in whole.  Yummy!  I always use the baby potatoes as I used large potatoes one day and I found that they went really mushy in the juice from the tomatoes and the olive oil.  While still tasty, it wasn't as mice as it is when made with baby potatoes.

TIP  If you want to make this mid-week you can speed up the time it takes to make by par boiling the potatoes before cutting them for 10 or 15 minutes.  Drain and then cut them before putting them on the roasting tray.  Dry them out in the oven for a minute before adding all of the rest of the ingredients, except the chicken breasts.  Put in the oven for 10 minutes before adding the chicken breasts to the top of the dish.

TIP  To lower the fat content in this meal, you can spray fry lite on the ingredients instead of using olive oil.  I have done this in the past and it has been fine, but you need to stir it more often to make sure the ingredients don't catch on the bottom.  I'd do a few sprays each time you remove the dish from the oven.  You might find it better to cut the tomatoes in half if you are using fry lite as more juice from them will go to the bottom of the roasting tin, helping to prevent the mix from sticking.

Cost - This dinner was quite cheap for me to make.  I used 3 chicken breasts at €1 each, 1 kg potatoes at 45 cent, 250g of cherry tomatoes 89 cent and red onion 23 cent.  I'll allow a further 30 cent for the basil, olive oil and garlic cloves, making the total for this meal €4.87.  It served 3