Dinner for 2

admittedly, i find it embarassing when people say my husband is very fortunate to have married a chef: "you must eat so well", they remark and i can feel my ears burning up. in truth, my poor husband eats a lot of take-away meals, we both do (a repeat offender being food from our local mamak joint) because i rarely cook at home. it is a combination of reasons - yes, reasons... not excuses. we both work, hard - extremely hard, i might add and we lived in a bedsit.

our recent urge to nest, to actually start "settling down" saw us move to a roomier place with an oven and some actual kitchen bench space. so me, being a kitchen-phile (can i say that? am i allowed to make up words like that?) that i am, i go out and get an enameled cast iron baking dish like this one.

i am a very practical person. not opposed to consumerism, but most items i get must be a marriage of form and function. it doesn't hurt to have a good measure of aesthetic appeal thrown in too. anyway, questions i ask myself before a purchase: 

"do i need it?"

"will i have room to store it?" 

"can i use it for more than 1 application?" 

o-kay, so back to this baking dish i got. it is quite costly. a good sized one will set you back say, RM400, but i assure you, once you've got it, you are pretty much set on the path of great lasagnas, stews, fruit crumbles, curries, potato gratin and oh, roasts, of course. actually, you can pretty much cook anything in it except an asian stir-fry... you need a wok for that sort of thing. the thing about these trays, they distribute heat so evenly you're not likely to burn the crap out of your food. they retain heat too and that's always a plus when you are waiting for your spouse to return (or that annoying dinner party guest who ALWAYS rock up late!). 

the other night, while we were  he was unpacking cartons, i fixed us dinner (so pleased with myself!). its a one-pot meal or in this case, a one-tray meal (semantics...). you need only a handful of ingredients for dinners such as this:

• 1 tin of tomatoes, 
• 1 tin of pinto beans, 
• chicken stock out of a carton, 
• small pasta shapes (a handful of rice might work...),
• a few chicken pieces with bone-in (used 6, had leftovers) 
• spinach 

the trick here is clever layering! pour the tinned tomatoes into the tray followed by a tinful of chicken stock, the pasta and beans, salt and pepper then the chicken pieces skin side up so they brown nicely and a little more seasoning. cook for 40 minutes at 190C, remove tray and then place rinsed spinach leaves on top and let the heat wilt them. 

wish i took a picture, it would have lasted longer: our first oven-cooked meal in our new home.