Sticky Chicken

Well, the weather got better! It's been gorgeous all day and I had time this afternoon to go and do a bit of shopping. It was lovely, driving into town with the roof open, enjoying the sun and listening to music I like, instead of Christopher's cBeebies album again. Even better was finding not one, but two summer dresses in Matalan. Now I've just got to hope that the good weather continues long enough for me to wear them a few times!

For supper tonight I cooked a recipe from BBC Good Food magazine. I've subscribed to it for years and I try to cook at least one or two recipes from it every month. I keep six months' worth of back issues at a time and go through the oldest edition, cutting out all the recipes I want to keep, as soon as my new copy arrives. They now have a website with a pretty comprehensive archive (though the recipe I used tonight is not listed there, so see below), but I still do my cuttings as I can organise them in plastic wallets by categories I choose, and refer to them when I'm planning meals and looking for inspiration. It really saves time, not having to trawl through all the family meals when I want something for entertaining and vice versa. I quite enjoy doing just one issue every month, but when I used to keep more we used to get inundated by old magazines very easily, and I used to clip them then lose all the clippings, then forget to throw the cut-up magazines away anyway. I also take cuttings (anything that piques my interest) from other magazines I buy, food and non-food related, and keep them all in a little filing area I've set up for the purpose, where I also store the current issues of magazines and my collection of mail-order catalogues.

This Sticky Marmalade Chicken was really nice. It had something of a 'sweet-and-sour' flavour and went very well with some Basmati & Wild Rice and steamed broccoli. It's even more appealing because most of the ingredients come from the storecupboard. I had chicken fillets and chicken stock in the freezer so it was cheap, too, with only the broccoli bought fresh this week.

Sticky Marmalade Chicken

4 chicken breast fillets

300ml chicken stock

4 tbsp fine-cut marmalade

fresh thyme leaves

Heat a little olive oil in a large deep-sided frying pan. Season the chicken and fry it for about 10 minutes, turning halfway, until golden on both sides. Add the stock, marmalade and thyme. Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove the chicken and keep it warm while you boil the sauce hard to reduce it to a syrupy glaze. Pour this over the chicken to serve.