Roasted chicken with creamy walnut sauce

1. step 1
2. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. In a roasting tin, toss together the chicken, cumin, paprika, 1 tbsp olive oil and seasoning. Cook for 40 mins until the chicken is crisp and cooked through.
   40 minutes
3. step 2
4. Meanwhile, tear up 1 pitta bread and place in a small bowl. Pour over a couple of tbsp chicken stock and leave to soak. Dry-fry the walnuts in a frying pan for about 3 mins until golden and toasted. Set aside. Heat the remaining oil in the pan and cook the onion and garlic until softened. Place the softened pitta bread, onion mixture and most of the nuts into a blender. Pour over the rest of the chicken stock and whizz together until a rough paste forms. Return the mixture to the pan. Add the cream and lemon juice, season and keep warm.
   3 minutes
5. step 3
6. When the chicken is cooked, arrange on a platter. Stir the coriander through the sauce and spoon into a bowl. Roughly chop the remaining walnuts and scatter over the chicken. Toast the pittas, cut into wedges and serve alongside

Cooking notes

When scaling protein-led dishes, weigh the meat rather than counting pieces, and remember that the pan size limits how much you can sear at once.

For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.

When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.