Turkey breast in tomatoes

This is one of those dishes made out of nothing. Basically, a quick idea for using up quite a lot of turkey and chicken breast that had been sitting in the fridge since being bought for Easter. I didn’t want to make Ninka breaded fillet yet again, or turkey strips. Luckily, there were fish fingers on standby, which she still seemed to like.

Hence this quick idea for turkey breast done completely differently. Essentially, in a sort of stew. Served this way, it seems very “Polish” to me. It’s in tomatoes, but with the flavour sharpened by a fairly generous amount of garlic and fresh parsley.

I have to admit that I didn’t think it would be a runaway success, particularly on the Easter table. Admittedly, it was already Easter Monday, so hardly anyone was still giving food serious thought. But, as they say, you ought to eat something.

This time that something turned out to be a particularly fortunate choice. Above all, because it beat the fish fingers. Hooray! And Nina didn’t even complain much about the parsley. Highly recommended!

At a glance:

Preparation time: 50 minutes

Serves: 5 people

Calories: perhaps turkey-lories?

Ingredients for tasty Polish-style turkey in tomatoes:

• about 1 kg of turkey breast fillet (I had about 800 grams of turkey and about 250 grams of chicken mini fillets)
• 1 tin of chopped peeled tomatoes
• 8 garlic cloves
• half a bunch of parsley (fresh, of course)
• 5 shallots (fairly large)
• olive oil
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• ground black pepper
• sweet red paprika powder

Recipe for poultry fillets (turkey and chicken) in tomatoes:

I washed the turkey and chicken fillets (as I said, I had a mixture, with more turkey, but it doesn’t really matter; use whichever you have) and cut them into fairly small pieces, about 3 – 5 cm long. I seasoned them with salt, black pepper and sweet red paprika. I added 2 crushed, finely chopped garlic cloves and a drop of olive oil. I mixed it with my hands to coat every piece of meat in the seasonings and put it in the fridge for a while.

I heated olive oil in a frying pan (quite a lot; I wanted the dish to be very tomatoey, but also rather rich with olive oil — that was the idea, though of course you can use less). I added the turkey and chicken pieces to the hot oil and fried them for a good few minutes, turning them over from time to time.

While the fillets were frying, I chopped the shallots fairly coarsely and added them to the turkey and chicken. I did the same with the fresh parsley: I chopped half of my half-bunch (so 1/4 😉 and added it to the fillets. I stirred and fried everything for another few minutes over fairly high heat, stirring so it wouldn’t burn.

About 10 minutes after starting to fry, I poured the tin of chopped peeled tomatoes into the pan. I stirred and added the remaining garlic (this time I crushed the cloves and chopped them coarsely), freshly ground black pepper and the remaining fresh parsley. I lowered the “heat” and cooked it for about 30 minutes, allowing some of the water from the tomatoes to evaporate and a lovely tomato and olive oil sauce to form. The dish is ready.

The chicken is tender and very aromatic, and the sauce is perfect. Enjoy!