Chicken Bravas with Creamed Spinach & Garlic Yoghurt

A lighter take on the smoky-chicken-and-creamed-spinach plate — air-fried bravas chicken, cottage-cheese creamed spinach, and a garlic-yoghurt sauce in place of aioli. No oven, serves 1, about 30 minutes.

Ingredients

Fresh

• 2 boneless skinless chicken thighs (~200g)
• ½ small onion, finely diced (sauce)
• 1 shallot, finely diced (spinach)
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed (1 sauce, 1 spinach, 1 yoghurt)
• 200g frozen spinach (or ~250g fresh)
• 100g cottage cheese
• 15g parmesan or pecorino, finely grated
• 1 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
• 2 tbsp Greek yoghurt
• ½ lemon, juiced (or a pinch of sumac)

Storecupboard

• 2 tsp smoked paprika (½ tsp chicken rub, 1½ tsp sauce)
• ¼ tsp cayenne or chilli flakes (to taste)
• ⅛ tsp grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp Aleppo pepper
• 1 tsp sherry vinegar
• ¼ tsp sugar (optional, balances the tomato)
• ½ tsp Dijon mustard (optional, in the spinach base)
• 150g passata (no-added-salt)
• ~1 tbsp olive oil (split across the three parts)
• Black pepper

Method

1. Prep the spinach. Defrost the frozen spinach and squeeze it bone-dry — sieve, then a final wring in a cloth. Any water left makes the dish watery instead of creamy. (Fresh: wilt in the pan first, then squeeze.)
2. Blend the spinach base. Hand-blend the cottage cheese, milk, parmesan and Dijon until completely smooth. Set aside.
3. Mix the garlic yoghurt. Stir the Greek yoghurt with 1 crushed garlic clove, a few drops of olive oil, the lemon juice and black pepper. Chill — resting mellows the raw garlic.
4. Air fry the chicken. Rub the thighs with ½ tsp smoked paprika and a little olive oil. Air fry at 190°C / 375°F for ~18 minutes, turning once, until cooked through and no longer pink.
5. Bravas sauce. While the chicken cooks: ~1 tsp olive oil in a pan, soften the onion with 1 garlic clove. Stir in 1½ tsp smoked paprika and the cayenne, cook 30 seconds until fragrant — don’t let the paprika catch or it turns bitter. Add the passata, sherry vinegar and sugar; simmer until thick and glossy. Hand-blend smooth for a shop-style finish.
6. Creamed spinach. In a second pan: ~1 tsp olive oil, soften the shallot with the last garlic clove. Add the squeezed spinach and warm through. Drop the heat to low and stir in the blended base off the boil — do not boil it or the cottage cheese splits. Season with nutmeg, Aleppo and black pepper.
7. Plate. Slice the chicken and fold it through the bravas sauce. Plate over or beside the creamed spinach, dollop on the garlic yoghurt, and finish with a pinch of sumac or extra Aleppo.

Variations

• Leaner: chicken breast instead of thighs, low-fat cottage cheese, and a thinner hand with the oil — brings it closer to ~600 kcal with less fat.
• Higher fibre / neutral base: swap the cottage cheese for a blended, drained ½ tin of cannellini beans.
• More heat: double the cayenne, or add chilli flakes to the chicken rub.
• Closer to real aioli: a small spoon of proper aioli used sparingly in place of the garlic yoghurt — richer, much higher fat.

DASH Notes

• Air-fried chicken and a thin hand with olive oil keep the fat sensible; most of it is mono-unsaturated, from the oil and the thigh.
• Cottage cheese replaces cream and garlic-yoghurt replaces aioli — protein up, saturated fat down versus the shop version.
• No-added-salt passata, with smoked paprika and parmesan doing the flavour work, so it needs little or no added salt — taste before adding any.
• Roughly 66g protein and a useful hit of fibre from the spinach and tomato.

Notes

• Two make-or-break points, same principle: don’t burn the paprika (bitter) and don’t boil the cottage-cheese base (splits/grains). Gentle heat protects both. If the base does grain, a quick zap with the hand blender smooths it.
• Squeeze the spinach properly — the single biggest factor in whether it reads creamy or watery.
• Macros are estimates — they swing with thigh vs breast, full-fat vs low-fat cottage cheese, and how much oil you actually use.
• Adjust to taste — go saucier or more spinach-forward by shifting the cottage-cheese-to-spinach ratio, and take the nutmeg up or down to suit.

Dinner — approximately 710 calories, ~66g protein, ~7g fibre