Chicken and Mozerella Rice Bake

This is one of OH's creations, he was doing night shift on Monday night and I must say its pretty cool to get home from work and having the house smell of melty cheesy goodness, and then finding that the source of that delicious smell, is pretty damn tasty too!


To make this Chicken and Mozerella Rice Bake you will need

400g chicken breast diced
1 x capsicum diced
1 x carrot diced
1 x onion diced
1 x celery stick diced
400g tin of peas and corn
250g pkt light grated mozarella or pizza cheese
2.5 cups stock
1.25 cups rice
mixed herbs
crushed basil
crushed garlic
400g diced tomatoes

Pre-heat oven to 180C.
Heat a fry pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook for 2-3 mins.
Add the carrot, capsicum and celery and cook until soft.
Add the peas and corn, rice and stock and simmer for about 15mins or until liquid has been absorbed.
Pour vegie mix into a casserole dish.
Add chicken to fry pan and cook for 5-7 mins or until browned. Stir through diced tomatoes and add basil and garlic to taste.
Add chicken mix to the vegies and combine.
Top with grated cheese and mixed herbs. (I used pizza herbs - but you could use thyme or rosemary)
Bake for 45 mins or until cheese is golden. If cheese is browning too much just cover the dish with foil and un-cover for the last 10 mins of cooking.

Based on your personal preference you could dice the vegies really fine (making this dish great to hide vegies from the kidlets!) or you could leave them chunky.

I also find that the flavour in this dish develops more if baked the day before serving.

In fact I am heating some up for dinner as we speak! And on the subject of dinner, we went to Mum and Dad's last night and Mum made these awesome chicken schnitzel burgers toasted in the sandwich press using foccacias, cheese, chicken breast steaks and some tomatoes drizzled with vinegar, just like a counter meal, but 10 x better!! We also had some shoestring fries on the side with Mum's home made tomato relish, I like stirring a bit of mayo through some of my chutney...I know I'm odd....anyway that was the dinger on the microwave so that means its tea time!!

Happy Wednesday everyone - did I mention I only have 2.5 weeks of work left!!!

Em xx