A simple storecupboard chicken supper

A simple chicken dinner.

Simplicity itself. Just put this in the oven to cook away, good natured dish that it is.
If you have a rustic-looking earthenware dish, it will be even more comforting.

For four, or greedier souls, take eight chicken thighs, bone in. Probably skinned because, when you're not roasting, the skin of the chicken is not so delectable.

Take your chicken thighs and pour oven them a tin of decent quality plum tomatoes, which you have chopped in the tin. Add a good slurp of olive oil, a few chilli flakes, a handful of rinsed capers and some finely chopped garlic. Agitate this gently around the chicken (or mix the lot in a bowl first and then pour over). I might also add some small shiny wrinkled little black olives and, on top, I might put a couple of rosemary branches from the garden. If you need some iron, you could also -- and this is an ingredient I swear by-- have the chicken nestling on five or six pellets (I realise this sounds agricultural) of chopped, frozen spinach. Right: salt and pepper and into the oven you go. Cook for about an hour in a medium hot oven. Make sure you don't reduce the rosemary to cinders!

A nod to the Mediterranean, I think. You could take your dinner off in a different direction with the addition of ground cumin and a pinch of ground cinnamon. Either way, it's good with plain rice or perhaps some couscous.

A simple dinner for the tired and overworked. If you are both these things and also Welsh or of Welsh extraction, you'll have to read the next article!