Meat mains
Piri-piri chicken legs with tomatoes, peppers & sweet potato wedges
Piri-piri is a sauce that hails from Portugal. It’s popular all over Africa, and now the world thanks to certain fast food chains. Essentially piri-piri is a hot, acidic chilli sauce, you can adjust the heat to suit your taste.
Cook's notes
Sweet potatoes seem a natural fit for this dish. They can be roasted successfully without parboiling first. Start them on the top shelf as they are more likely to get some colour at the edges up where the oven is at its hottest.
Ingredients
- 2 chicken thighs
- 2 chicken drumsticks
- oil for roasting, e.g. light olive
- 600g sweet potatoes
- 2 red peppers
- 1 red onion
- 4 tomatoes
- 1 chilli
- 2 garlic cloves
- 15g thyme
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp Worcester sauce
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 lemon
- olive oil
- ½ tsp red chilli flakes
- salt and pepper
Method
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Step 1
Preheat oven to 220°C/Gas Mark 8. Slash each piece of chicken 2-3 times with a sharp knife. Coat the chicken pieces well with oil. Season them with plenty of salt and pepper. Place them in a roasting tray, skin side up. Bake for 20 minutes until the skin has turned lightly golden.
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Step 2
Meanwhile wash and scrub the sweet potatoes. Cut them into even shaped chunks or wedges. Place them in the other roasting tray, coat with oil and season with salt and pepper. Halve and deseed the peppers, cut them into rough 2 cm pieces. Peel the onion and cut into 12 equal wedges. Cut each tomato into 8 pieces.
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Step 3
When the chicken has cooked for 20 minutes, remove it from the oven. Remove the chicken from the tray and add the peppers, onion and tomatoes. Oil them lightly (there may well be enough in the tray from the chicken) and season with salt and pepper. Place the chicken back into the tray sitting on top of the veg.
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Step 4
Drop the temperature to 200°C/Gas Mark 6. Put both trays in the oven (potatoes on the top shelf). Roast for 20 minutes. While things roast make the piri-piri sauce.
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Step 5
Deseed and finely chop the red chilli. Peel and finely chop/crush the 2 garlic cloves, strip the leaves from 3 good thyme stalks. Mix them with the vinegar, Worcester sauce, smoked paprika, the juice from half the lemon and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Taste the sauce and add some dried chilli flakes to it if you want more heat.
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Step 6
After 20 minutes, remove the roasting trays from the oven. Give the potatoes a turn. Add the sauce to the chicken and veg. Mix well and return the trays to the oven. Bake everything for a further 10 minutes. Divide the chicken and roasted veg between 2 plates and serve with the sweet potato wedges.