The ‘utterly delicious’ one-pan chicken dish Julia Busuttil Nishimura cooks every week

A lemony tomato and bean broth. Spaghetti served with broad bean and basil pesto. A seasonal salad with fig, sugar snap peas and halloumi. For Julia Busuttil Nishimura, everyday cooking goes beyond tangible elements such as simplicity and deliciousness.

It’s also about the ebb and flow of seasons, sitting together around the table after the meal has finished or foraging through the pantry for favourite ingredients. It can even be about things as ordinary as messy benchtops, too many dishes and another trip to the shops.

“It is beautiful and life-enhancing and needn’t be complicated,” she writes in the introduction of her latest cookbook.

The collection, Simple Pleasures, is dedicated to the joy of cooking that punctuates our day-to-day life, and is filled with the types of pared-back recipes for which Busuttil Nishimura has become known.

It includes a chapter dedicated to pasta, as well as sections about soups, vegetables and salads, plus lots of homemade bakes, both sweet and savoury. Chicken dinners (many one-pan or equally easy and simple to make) are a perennial favourite, and feature heavily throughout.

“Try not to overthink it all – just be at home in the kitchen, making effortless yet elegant food to share with the people you care about most,” she writes.

Here, Busuttil Nishimura shares three essential chicken recipes, including a one-pan Thai-inspired dinner, a spiced dish dotted with pomegranate and a salad with ranch dressing.

– Megan Johnston

Ginger and coriander chicken

This Thai-inspired, flavour-packed chicken dish is a wonderful one-pan dinner. Between the marinade, which is punchy, sweet and salty, and the coriander and spring onion sauce, which has some kick to it, it really is utterly delicious. Served with some fluffy steamed jasmine rice, I could and often do, eat this every week.

INGREDIENTS

• 1kg boneless chicken thighs, skin on
• steamed jasmine rice, to serve

Ginger and coriander marinade

• 5 garlic cloves, peeled
• 20g ginger, peeled and chopped
• 3 coriander roots
• sea salt
• 1 tsp coriander seeds, lightly toasted
• 3 white peppercorns, lightly toasted
• juice of 2 limes
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 2 tbsp light-flavoured extra virgin olive oil

Coriander and spring onion sauce

• ½ long green chilli, finely chopped
• 2 spring onions, chopped
• handful of coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• juice of 1 lime
• 1-2 tsp soy sauce

METHOD

1. For the ginger and coriander marinade, using a mortar and pestle, pound the garlic, ginger and coriander roots with a pinch of salt until you have a rough paste. Add the coriander seeds and peppercorns and continue to pound until roughly crushed.
2. Now add the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and olive oil and mix well. Season with salt to taste.
3. Place the chicken in a bowl and pour on the marinade.
4. Use your hands to mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, but ideally 2-3 hours. Bring the chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking.
5. Preheat the oven to 200C fan-forced (220C conventional). Arrange the chicken, skin-side up, in a shallow roasting tin and roast for 35-40 minutes or until cooked through and nicely coloured. Remove the chicken from the tin and set aside to rest for 5 minutes.
6. For the coriander and spring onion sauce, add the chilli, spring onion and coriander leaves to the same tin. Stir well to combine with all the cooking juices and season to taste with the lime juice and soy sauce.
7. Return the chicken to the tin and serve with the steamed rice.

Serves 4

Spiced pomegranate chicken

I love how burnished this chicken becomes thanks to the pomegranate molasses. It’s sweet, a little sour and heady with spices, and is very much inspired by the flavours of the Persian chicken stew fesenjoon. The overnight marinade is very worthwhile, but even a few hours will give a good depth of flavour.

INGREDIENTS

• 8 bone-in chicken thighs, skin on
• sea salt and black pepper
• steamed basmati rice, to serve

Spiced pomegranate molasses marinade

• 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 cardamom pods, crushed
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1⁄4 tsp ground turmeric
• good pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 onions, halved and sliced

Pomegranate, walnut and herb salad

• seeds from 1 pomegranate
• large handful of parsley leaves, mint leaves and dill fronds, roughly chopped
• 50g walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
• 2 tsp pomegranate molasses

METHOD

1. Begin this recipe the day before you plan to serve it.
2. Place the chicken and all the marinade ingredients in a large container. Season well with salt and pepper and use your hands to massage the marinade into the chicken. Cover, then refrigerate overnight.
3. Bring the chicken out of the fridge 30 minutes before cooking.
4. Preheat the oven to 190C fan-forced (210C conventional).
5. Arrange the chicken, skin-side up, in a shallow roasting tin and pour on any marinade, tucking the onion in and around the chicken. Roast for 40-45 minutes or until the chicken is deep golden and cooked through.
6. Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the pomegranate, walnut and herb salad in a small bowl and season to taste.
7. Take a ladleful of the chicken juices and stir it through the rice. Top the chicken with the salad and serve alongside the rice.

Serves 4-6

Poached chicken salad with ranch dressing and croutons

The first time I tried ranch dressing was at my local pizza place, where they serve small bowls of it on the side of your pizza to dip your crusts in. It’s rich and creamy but with a good amount of zing and freshness from the herbs. It happens to make a really good dressing for a poached chicken salad too. Here, with crunchy croutons and quick pickled onions, it has everything I love.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 slices of sourdough, cubed
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• sea salt
• 1 red onion, finely sliced
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 cos lettuce, cored and torn
• iced water, for soaking
• 200g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 6 radishes, finely sliced

Poached chicken

• 2 skinless chicken breasts (about 500g)
• 2 tbsp dry white wine
• 1 fresh bay leaf
• a few parsley stalks
• 1 shallot, halved
• 4 black peppercorns
• good pinch of sea salt

Ranch dressing

• 80ml (⅓ cup) buttermilk
• 40g mayonnaise
• 80g full-fat sour cream
• small handful each of chives, parsley leaves and dill fronds, finely chopped
• ½ garlic clove, finely grated
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• sea salt and black pepper

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180C fan-forced (200C conventional). Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Place the bread in a bowl and drizzle on the olive oil.
3. Season with salt and arrange in a single layer on the tray. Bake for 15 minutes or until the croutons are crunchy and golden. Set aside to cool.
4. Combine all the poached chicken ingredients in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer, then immediately turn off the heat and allow the chicken to sit in the poaching liquid for 8 minutes. Remove the chicken from the liquid and allow to rest for another 10 minutes, then slice.
5. Place the onion in a small bowl, pour the vinegar over the top and add a pinch of salt. Massage the vinegar and salt into the onion and allow it to quickly pickle for 10 minutes.
6. Soak the lettuce in iced water for 10 minutes, then drain and dry very well, ideally with a salad spinner.
7. Meanwhile, whisk all the ranch dressing ingredients together in a bowl. Season to taste and refrigerate to chill.
8. To assemble, place the lettuce, pickled onion, poached chicken, tomato halves, radish and croutons in a large bowl. Pour the ranch dressing over everything and toss to coat.

Serves 4

This is an edited extract from Simple Pleasures by Julia Busuttil Nishimura, published by Plum, RRP $44.99. Photography by Armelle Habib.