A Taste of the French Countryside - Chicken Provençale

I think French and the Chinese have one thing in common - we both love food! My idea of a good vacation in France is to stay in a small village, eat different cheeses and drink lots of local wine! Since I've been dreaming about France lately, I thought why not have a taste of the french countryside at home by making Chicken Provençale for dinner!

I found some beautiful free range chicken drumsticks on sale at PnS tonight and found some leftover ham and green pepper in the fridge. I looked up a few recipes online and found a recipe from Eating Well. I think this is a very healthy, low carb, low fat dish. The rich tomato sauce could go with rice or bread. I added my own little twist to this recipe though. In my recipe, it's important to use fresh basil and fresh parsley, adding flavour and depth to the sauce. I also added a bit of dried hot chili pepper. I think diced tomatoes from cans are absolutely awesome! I love them more than fresh tomatoes because they have more texture and also saves me a lot of the hassle to take the seeds out.

I've taken some photos while preparing this dish. There seems to be a lot of ingredients but I just had to spend 15 mins chopping up the onions, green pepper, ham, garlic, olive, fresh basil and parsley. The beauty of this dish, I only need one large skillet or deep frying pan (I HATE washing up)! The sauce is perfect with baguette, pasta, potato or brown rice - my family has been eating brown rice and I think it's so much healthier and it tastes better as well. We couldn't finish all the sauce and drumsticks at dinner, so I left them over night in the fridge, which will make the drumsticks even more flavourful. I can't wait to finish the rest tomorrow!