Cheats Chicken and Butter Bean Stew with Thwaites Indus IPA

Somedays I'll spend my lunch hour wandering around the market seeing what looks good and come up with something to eat that evening, usually I start with a decent piece of meat or some veg that looked particularly fresh and work from there. Today was not one of those days.

I'm going on holiday this Friday, which combined with the fact I haven't had a day off since last Weekend and have a million and one things to sort out, meant food wasn't really top of the agenda. Thankfully, a short but fruitful trip to the M&S in the train station saved the day with a little pot of casserole base which only needed some chicken, a can of tomatoes and butter beans to make a tasty tea. Perfect.

All you've got to do is fry your chicken (about 3-4 chicken breasts) in some olive oil in an oven proof dish, throw in the whole pot of casserole base and fry for a minute or so to sweeten up that tomato paste a little, then chuck in a tin of tomatoes and a large tin of butter beans including their water. Stir, bring to a simmer, then transfer to a preheated oven and cook for an hour, covered, at about 180C*-190C*

A bottle of Thwaites Indus IPA fitted the beer match bill nicely (and was already in the fridge); a hoppy beer with enough malt character to match with the tomatoes, but also a touch of spiciness from the British IPA hop flavour which works well with the paprika, cayenne and black pepper.

A hunk of crusty bread is all the accompaniment it needed. A bit of a dumb luck match, but one I'll be repeating.

p.s. This is the stuff I used. It's great