Mediterranean Chicken Tray Bake

This is a very easy one dish meal packed with vegetables and aside from some chopping, very little hands-on effort.  If you have time, you can do step 1 in advance and marinate the chicken for 12-24 hours but it isn’t essential.

1. Remove any excess skin from the chicken thighs and put them in a bowl or plastic bag with 2 Tablespoons of oil and some salt and freshly ground pepper.  Peel and crush the garlic and add this to the bag or bowl.  Turn the chicken to coat it thoroughly and, if marinating, put it in the fridge until shortly before you need it.
    
2. When you are ready to cook the chicken, remove it from the fridge to bring it to room temperature.  Preheat the oven to 200°C Fan or 210°C
3. Prepare the potatoes and put them in a large roasting dish; any baby potatoes can go in whole or halved and larger potatoes chopped so that they are roughly 3cm square. Drizzle over 1 Tablespoon of olive oil and grind over some salt and pepper and turn the potatoes so that they are covered in the oil, salt and pepper.  Put the tray in the oven and cook for 10 minutes.
   
4. While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the remaining vegetables.  Peel and slice the onions into wedges, cut off and discard the stem of the aubergine and cut it into roughly 3cm cubes, cut the peppers into 3cm chunks, remove and discard the ends of the courgettes and cut them into chunks about 3cm long.
    
5. Remove the roasting dish from the oven.  Add the vegetables to the roasting dish, drizzle over another Tablespoon of oil and a little more salt and pepper and give all the vegetables a good stir to combine.  Place the Chicken thighs on top of the potatoes and return the tray to the oven.  Cook for a further 40 minutes.
   
6. When the chicken and vegetables are cooked scatter over the olives and tear over the basil leaves.