Chicken with an Australian accent

It often feels like chicken dinner is what happens when you're stuck for inspiration while trawling the supermarket aisles, but the very fact that chicken tends to be a bit bland also makes it a great blank canvas upon which you can experiment with all kinds of flavours.

Last night's dinner (left) was inspired by a meal at what used to be one of my favourite restaurants when I lived in Sydney, the Bayswater Brasserie, as well as a jar of chilli jam from the South Devon Chilli Farm that Mark and I bought while we were getting rained on in Devon the other weekend. The other inspiration was the fact that I didn't have time to go out to the shops, so dinner was cobbled together from bits and pieces I had in the store cupboard and fridge.

For all that it was a scrape-together job, it tasted so good that I had to stop myself from licking the plate clean (a really disgusting habit you can only indulge in when in the presence of those who love you – and, more to the point, can't get rid of you when you do something totally gross).

Chicken with chilli jam for two

2 chicken hindquarters (legs and thighs) or 4 chicken thighs
100g bulghur wheat
a pinch of saffron
1 onion, cut in half and sliced into thin rings
olive oil
1/2 jar of piquillo peppers, cut into thick strips (if you can't find these, you can make do with a couple of grilled red peppers, but there's a wonderful sweetness to the piquillo variety)
a handful of pine nuts
a bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
50mls chicken stock (optional, but it adds something to the finished dish)
2 dstsp chilli jam
2 tsp chipotle chillies in adobo (from the Cool Chile Company)
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Place the chicken in a roasting dish and season liberally. Roast for about 40 minutes, or until done.

Meanwhile, place the bulghur wheat in a saucepan with about half a litre of salted water and the saffron. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer until cooked, about 15 minutes.

Fry the onion slowly in the merest smear of olive oil until soft and translucent. Put to one side.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan and remove from the heat when they start to turn golden (they carry on cooking for a while once you've taken them off the heat, so be careful not to overdo them). Put to one side.

Heat the stock through.

Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the oven and allow it to rest while you pull everything else together.

Stir the onions, peppers, pine nuts and coriander through the bulghur wheat. Put a pile on each plate (as ever, Mark got the large helping – you should go easy on it too, you need it for bulk but you don't want to overdo it).

Add the chicken and spoon over the warm stock. Put a dollop of chilli jam and another of chipotle in adobo on the side of the plate and enjoy.