TRIPLE P CHICKPEA CHICKEN

Triple P Chickpea Chicken? Whats that all about then? Well let me tell you. I love a roast chicken for my Sunday dinner and I'm always looking for ways to jazz it up. This weekend I had a look in the cupboards and I had some pepperoni, roasted red peppers and a little bit of paprika. "That would make a nice stuffing" I thought and then when I stumbled across a tin of chickpeas well, that's when I had my "Eureka" moment and my Triple P Chickpea Chicken was born. Quite frankly I find it to be the most sexy bird I've ever had in my house.

This is a great bird to roast if your a fan of Mediterranean type flavors. If your looking for something more far flung you can also try my Sweet and Sticky Asian Roast Chicken instead. If your game for the Triple P then let's start with roasted red peppers. If you really want to go all out you can roast your own red peppers but the jarred versions you can buy are really delicious and a lot easier especially if your trying to knock up a whole roast dinner for the family.

Onto the pepperoni. A packet of the sliced stuff you can pick up in the supermarket is all you need. You can cut you own if you have a good delicatessen nearby which sells pepperoni whole or why not use another cured sausage such as a chorizo instead. I just find pepperoni to be a lot less expensive and more accessible than most other similar spicy sausages.

The paprika is used as a rub on the chicken to add some flavor to the skin of your chicken. It can be smoked or not depending on your preference or if you really want to give your chicken a bit of a kick why not try adding in some cayenne pepper as well. Don't go too mad with it though or that heat is just going to overwhelm everything.

Onto the chickpeas. If you want to soak dried chickpeas and boil them up for your stuffing then they will be great in your stuffing. You could even be all Nigella like and use a jar of chickpeas but I've used a tin to save time and effort as they are really only there to bind everything together. The flavor for your stuffing is going to come from all the other yummy ingredients.

To keep that meat beautifully plump and moist then you need to roast your chicken in a Bin-Marie of white wine and water along with the chunky veg. This will also leave you with a delicious gravy to pour over your roast as well. If you don't have white wine or don't touch alcohol then you can replace it with some chicken or vegetable stock instead so that you still finish up with a delicious gravy as well as still adding some additional flavor to that voluptuous white flesh.

Think that's all I can tell you about now. My timings in the recipe below are based on a 1.5kg chicken but you need to adjust the cooking times depending on the size of your bird roasting for roughly 30 minutes per 500g.

Triple P Chickpea Chicken

1 Chopped Red Onion

2 Grated Garlic Cloves

8 Sprigs Of Thyme

400g Tin Of Chickpeas

130g Diced Pepperoni

2 Chopped Roasted Red Peppers

1.5kg Whole Chicken

Glug Of Olive Oil

1 Tsp Paprika

400ml White Wine

2 Large Peeled White Onions Cut In Half

2 Large Peeled Carrot Cut Into Large Chunks

1. Begin by turning your oven on to 200 degrees (180 fan) and place a large lightly oiled pan on the hob.
2. Add the red onion and garlic to the pan and fry until the onions begin to soften. Add in the leaves of 5 of the sprigs of thyme and fry for a minute.
3. Drain the tin of chickpeas and add them to the pan along with the pepperoni and red peppers and fry for around five minutes until the chickpeas soften slightly and then remove the pan from the heat.
4. Take the chicken and begin to stuff it with the stuffing inyourpan. You can get it all in if you really squish it in there. My squishing it in you will also mash up the chickpeas slightly and this will bind the stuffing together. Close over the cavity with some skewers to make sure the stuffing doesn't fallout. 
5. Mix together a good glug off olive oil with the paprika in a small bowl and then rub this all over the chicken skin until every piece is stained red and covered in oil. Leave your birdto one side.
6. Take a large roasting tin and pour in the white wine along with 200ml of water. Toss in the white onion, carrots and the remaining thyme and then sit your chicken on top. 
7. Cover the tin with foil and then pop in the oven and roast for 1 hours before removing the foil, turning the heat up an additional 20 degrees and roast for a further 30 minutes until the skin is brown and the chickens juices run clear.

 

Remove the chicken form the oven and leave to rest for ten minutes before serving. You can then remove the chicken from the pan and carve away. Don't throw away anything in that tin though, pour it all into a bowl and use a hand blender to blend into the finest gravy you will ever taste. It might be a bit thick so loosen it up with a smidge of water if you prefer your gravy to be slightly thinner. As for the bird well, you are going to have the most deliciously moist meat and a fabulous flavorsome stuffing to serve along side it. Triple P Chickpea Chicken? I think you'll find it also stand for pure poultry perfection!