This goes particularly well with red lettuce salty salad with soft shallots, only exchange the lardons for capers, pecans, or black olives…or a mix of all! At any rate, you want a salad with lots of dressing.

Some earthy, rich fried potatoes would also go down well.

You can make this ahead of time (and even freeze), but if you do, when you reheat, add more vermouth to the dish, and cover with foil. Reheat from room temperature in an oven at 180ºC for about 20 minutes.

If you have time, and some fresh pesto to hand, you can brush the chicken with some of that. Or you could do the same with some tahini sauce.

Recipe for ludicrously simple pink vermouth chicken

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 x chicken breasts – total weight about 350g/12 oz
• 1 x 180g/6 oz cream cheese
• 180 – 200g/6-7 oz – at least eight rashers anyway – smoked bacon
• 240 ml/1 cup pink vermouth – plus possibly even more for deglazing
• Freshly ground black pepper or Urfa pepper flakes
• Couple of large sprigs each of rosemary and thyme

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 210ºC.
2. Divide the bacon rashers in half, and lay down to form two ‘squares’ in which you are going to wrap up the chicken breasts.
3. If the breasts are quite thick, cut a pocket in them, season with pepper, and stuff with the cheese. Place them on their squares of bacon. You’ll have some cheese left over so simply ‘spread’ the breasts with that. Season again with pepper.
4. Put a sprig of rosemary and thyme over the just-spread cream cheese. Wrap the whole thing up in the bacon.
5. Put in an oven-proof dish, add the vermouth, and roast for 30 minutes.
6. Serve – if it looks a little dry, deglaze the dish with a bit more pink vermouth.