Slimming World Recipe

Portuguese Peri Peri Chicken

1. Preheat your oven to 220°C/fan 200°C/gas 7.

2. Put the sweet potato wedges in a medium-size non-stick roasting tin or baking tray. Stand the cobettes on a board and, using a sharp knife, carefully halve each cobette lengthways, then halve each half lengthways again to make 4 quarters – you should have 16 ribs in total. Add them to the sweet potatoes, spray everything with lowcalorie cooking spray and roast for 20 minutes.

3. While they’re cooking, put the chicken on a board and cut from the thickest side almost all of the way through horizontally, so that they open up like butterflies. Sprinkle with the peri-peri and set aside. (‘Butterflying’ helps them cook quicker and capture even more of the fiery spice.) Add the chicken to the tin and roast for a further 15-20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are tender. While you’re waiting, mix the salsa ingredients in a small bowl and season to taste.

This recipe caught the eye immediately. Fresh, tasty, simple to prepare and delicious to eat. Perfect!

4. When everything’s ready, spoon the salsa around the tin and serve with the lime slices or wedges, coriander sprigs and a big salad.

Ingredients:

• 2 large sweet potatoes, cut into wedges

• 4 sweetcorn cobettes (or 2 corn cobs, halved)

• Low-calorie cooking spray

• 2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts

• 2 level tsp periperi seasoning

For the salsa:

• 2 tomatoes, finely chopped

• 1 small red onion, finely chopped

• ½ small pack fresh coriander, finely chopped, plus sprigs to serve

• Juice of ½ lime, plus slices or wedges to serve

Grinling Gibbons was the most celebrated British woodcarver of the 17th century. Born in Rotterdam in 1648, to British parents, Gibbons completed his initial apprenticeship in the Low Countries before emigrating to London in around 1667.

After his arrival in London Gibbons quickly attracted attention – receiving commissions by the mid-1670s to produce decorative carving for two countryhouses in Hertfordshire.

Gibbons was given his first royal commission in 1675, when he was hired by Charles II to produce decorative carving for Windsor Castle. Over the next 25 years, he completed important commissions for Whitehall Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral and Hampton Court Palace. In 1693, he was appointed as master sculptor and carver in wood by King William III.

Grinling Gibbons’s highly distinctive style is characterised by botanical elements carved with hugely naturalistic detail, in very high relief. Gibbons worked with limewood –a material whose uniform but soft structure makes it particularly well suited to high-relief carving.

Gibbons’ limewood carvings were unpainted and unvarnished. They were designed to hang against oak panelling, creating a dramatic contrast between dark oak and light lime which worked to heighten the effect of their abundance, depth and incredible detail. The huge skill and delicacy of Gibbons’ work is perhaps best demonstrated by a limewood cravat, carved to imitate lace. Examples of his work can be found at Lyme Hall and Chatsworth.

Grinling Gibbons produced his decorative carvings via a large workshop in which different parts of a single design were completed by different carvers – many different hands would have worked on each commission. His style of carving, although unusual in Britain in the mid-17th century, was very quickly imitated by large numbers of contemporaries.

Gibbons died intestate at his home in Bow Street on 3 August 1721 and, on 10 August, was buried in London at St Paul’s, Covent Garden, where his wife had been buried two years before.