Recipe: Baked Parmesan Chicken with Pasta

I absolutely love pasta....well any Italian food really!! My go-to dinner has always been chicken in a tomato sauce with pasta and it's not something I'm willing to give up! It's such a quick, easy and tasty dinner to make, why would you want to anyway? I used to fry the chicken and use a jar of ready-made pasta sauce, but now I have opted for a much healthier version. I have to say, it tastes absolutely amazing! I even prefer it to what I had been cooking for myself all along!!

Recipe

1 breast of chicken per person

Frylite

1 400g carton of passata (for 2-3 chicken breasts)

1 tsp paprika

2 tsp mustard powder

2 tsp of grated Parmesan per person

Salt, Pepper

Italian herbs - basil, oregano etc. (I usually just wing it with my Italian herbs mill I got in Aldi!)
Wholemeal Pasta

Method

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Spray each of the chicken breasts with some frylite and coat evenly with the paprika, mustard powder and Italian herbs. Place in an oven proof dish and season with salt and pepper. 

Pour the carton of passata over the chicken breasts and sprinkle 2 tsp of Parmesan over each chicken breast. Place into the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. I threw in a couple of fresh basil leaves as well!

Meanwhile, cook the pasta. I used regular penne pasta here only because there is a bag of it left and I don't feel right throwing it out!! After it's gone I will be using wholemeal pasta only! When it comes to portion sizes you need to be very careful with pasta; this is a serious downfall for me! Pasta will obviously swell as it cooks, so the dry pasta always seems like such a meager portion before you cook it and then afterwards you're left with too much pasta! As I've already alluded to, I don't like waste so of course I would always end up eating way too much. The rule of thumb here would be a fistful of dry pasta per person. I use one fistful for myself and two of my fistfuls for my boyfriend. (getting used to smaller portion sizes)

Serve the chicken and sauce on a bed of pasta. To me, this looked like a really small portion but I was so happy after this, I couldn't believe it. I had just enough to make me feel full but I didn't feel bloated or get a stitch while I was training later on! Cooking this dish has really made me aware of how much more attention I need to pay to my portion sizes...clearly my eyes are much bigger than my stomach! I was very unorganised this week with my shopping as I am only really getting started. Next time I cook this, I'm going to spray some aubergine, courgette and bell pepper with fry lite and roast in the oven for 10-15 minutes then add the chicken and passata! I'm not lying when I say I cannot wait to cook this again!! :D

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did!

Niamh x