Hunter chicken pieces with rich vegetable stew

I invented this recipe in the early hours of this morning after realising late last night that I need a bigger slow cooker. You see, I had planned to make a slow cooker chicken casserole for dinner this evening, using a lovely recipe from the Weight Watchers community swap. It was only after I'd bought all the ingredients and started defrosting the chicken pieces that I remembered trying to make this dish last winter - and discovering too late that my slow cooker was too small to fit enough ingredients in to feed a family of 6.

I'm very pleased with the resulting dish however, so I'll stick with my little crock pot for now! One word of explanation before I get started though - this recipe features Bisto gravy powder rather heavily.. I was shocked when I first discovered this is kosher (only the original gravy powder mind you) and used to hide it at the bottom of my Tesco trolley because I was worried about what my fellow Jewish shoppers would think of me! Just in case you weren't aware that this little packet of magic is KLBD approved, I'm pointing it out to you (and finally coming out into the open - yes, I buy Bisto!)

HUNTER CHICKEN PIECES - Ingredients

5 chicken thighs, skinless and boneless
5 chicken drumsticks, skinless
1 carton of passata
2 teaspoons Bisto powder
Half a teaspoon of cumin powder
White pepper to taste
Good shake of garlic powder
2 tablespoons of soy sauce

Prepare the chicken pieces in a roasting dish. Mix all the sauce ingredients together and pour over the top. Bake covered for 60 minutes on 200'c and then uncover for a further half an hour. Only the chicken needs to be propointed.

RICH VEGETABLE STEW (Made in a slow cooker)

2 large white onions, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
2 leeks, sliced
10 baby carrots, peeled and halved
500g chopped swede
Half a punnet closed cup mushrooms, sliced
4 teaspoons of bisto powder made up to a pint with cold water
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon mixed herbs
White pepper to taste
2 tablespoons cornflour

Place all the ingredients except the cornflour in your slow cooker and leave on 'low' for at least 10 hours. In the last 30 minutes before eating, mix the cornflour to a paste with some of the gravy from the slow cooker, and then stir it back in to thicken the stew. 0pp per portion - serves 6 - 8 people as a side dish.

Apologies if the picture tonight doesn't look too pretty - the steam from the plate kept misting up my camera lens, and ultimately I wanted to sit down and eat, so what you see is what you get!