Honey and grainy mustard-glazed chicken thighs with orrechiette salad

Sometimes, the best recipes are the improvised recipes. I recently received Rata honey for experimenting with it and grainy mustard from a friend. I thus improvised honey and grainy mustard-glazed chicken.

To serve with I used leftovers of home-made pasta dought, which I shaped into orrechiette to create a beautiful but simple roasted tomatoes and mushroom orrechiette salad. The salad is better served warm.

Spot on! all the flavours, from the chicken and the salad went very well together.

Home-made orrechiette are quite time-consuming - so we worked as a team: Dinodad rolled the little balls, Dinomum squeezed and rolled the balls on the board to form the orrechiette and Dino No.1 checked that the orrechiette were well shaped, while No. 2 was nicely sleeping! Heaven! These moments are so rare that I have to record them. But this is not the topic of this post!
Be reassured, you don't need to make your own orrechiette, dry orrechiette will be perfect instead!

Ingredients (6 servings)

- 6 chicken thighs, skinless, deboned
- 1 1/2 tbsp honey*
- 3 tbsp grainy mustard
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- salt, black pepper
- 4 tomatoes, chopped in 16
- 10 mushrooms, chopped in 4 or 6 depending their size
- mixed herbs
- 400 g orrechiette*

Instructions (~ 45 mins)

1. Pre-heat the oven, fan bake, at 180C.
2. Mix the grainy mustard, the honey and the olive oil together.
3. Brush the mustard mix all over the chicken tights and roll it on itself. Salt.
4. Put the meat in a baking dish and in the oven for 30 mins at 180C.*
5. Cook the orrechiette and prepare the veggies.
6. Five minutes before the chicken is ready, add half of the tomatoes and the mushrooms in the baking dish and cook with the chicken for 5 minutes. Keep the other half of tomatoes raw for the salad.
7. Take the veggies out and mix in the orrechiette (cooked and drained). Drizzle the cooking jus from the baking dish over the orrechiette as a seasoning. Add one extra tsp of mustard if you want to give it a kick.
8. Add the raw tomatoes and sprinkle some mixed herbs. Season with salt and pepper to your taste.
9. Serve and bon appétit!

Good to know...

* I used a Rata honey (Airborne); because it is a little buttery, I heated it slightly for better combination with the mustard and the oil.
* You're welcome to increase the portion of pasta, but after several months of WW diet (and 14 kg less! Yay!!!), I learnt to increase the proportions of veggies at the expense of the carbs. So if you want to keep this meal as healthy and balanced as possible, I suggest you stick with 60-70 g pasta per person.
* The honey, mustard and oil mix will slightly caramelised over the chicken. The pictures may look like burnt but it was just perfectly caramelised. That said, be careful that you oven temperature is not too high or the glazing may burn.
* For my GF friends, I suggest to replace the orrechiette by cannellini beans - you'll love this salad!