Baked Chicken and Vegetables

One of my favourite kitchen appliances is the Oven. Without the oven, baking cakes, cookies and breads would be practically impossible. In fact baking or roasting anything would be impossible. One of my favourite ways of cooking involves using the oven - to bake or roast meat. Actually, what IS the difference between baking and roasting?

Apparently not a lot. Purists would say that you can't actually roast food in an oven. Roasting would need to be done in the opne, over an open flame, such as on a spit. Then there is the other school of thought that says that roasting requires fat - either the fat inherent in meat or fat that is added, such as butter or oil.

I guess things evolve though as nowadays, roasting is quite commonly done in the oven - with or without fat. So I guess roast is bake and bake is roast except that we always bake cakes and never roast them. Now you know the kind of stuff that keeps me awake at nights...

Regardless of the argument on baking and roasting, this is a quick and easy dish that is so simple to make and yet very tasty. I just love baking meat as the meat not only cooks in the high heat but bastes itself in its 'original juices'.

No real recipe to this as its pretty much throwing a lot of things together. I would think that any vegetables you throw together with the chicken and bake would turn out great!



This is what I did. I seasoned chicken breast with salt, pepper, oregano and basil. Then I peeled a whole bunch of garlic cloves, cut up some mushrooms (but of course!), eggplant and red capsicum. I threw them all together in a baking pan and baked it at 190C for about 30 minutes.

See? Told you it was simple. I served it with some Cherry Tomatoes that added some extra flavour as well as bite to the dish. The kids and the Lovely Wife loved it and so did I!