Spicy chicken casserole with celeriac and mango

Make this lovely casserole before your workout. Later you can just heat it up and eat. The casserole has lots of protein from the chicken, very little fat and no sugar. The sweetness comes instead from the apple juice and mango. Garlic, capsicum and chilli speeds up the digestion.

Credit: Velochef, Hardie Grant Books

• serves

  4

• prep

  20 minutes

• cook

  30 minutes

• difficulty

  Easy

Ingredients

• 500 g chicken (boneless thigh or breast)
• oil for frying
• 1 red chilli
• 1 red capsicum (pepper)
• 1 garlic clove
• 500 g tinned chopped tomatoes
• 300 ml apple juice, unsweetened
• 100 g celeriac
• 1 ripe mango
• salt and black pepper
• 100 ml low-fat crème fraîche
• chopped flat-leaf parsley, to serve
• cooked wild rice, to serve

Instructions

Cut the chicken into smaller pieces and fry in oil in a large pot.

Chop the chilli, capsicum and garlic finely and put into the pot when the chicken has started to brown. Let it sizzle for 1–2 minutes.

Add the chopped tomatoes and the apple juice. Let the mixture boil for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, cut the celeriac and the mango into 2 cm cubes. Set the mango aside.

Boil the celeriac quickly in salted water and strain.

Stir the celeriac gently into the pot and season with salt and pepper.

Serve the casserole with a dollop of crème fraîche, mango cubes and chopped parsley.

Serve with wild rice.

Recipe and image from Vélochef by Henrik Orre (Hardie Grant, $39.99, hbk).

View our Readable feasts review and more recipes from the book here.

Cook's Notes

Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.