Mexican Chicken, Black Bean & Brown Rice Casserole

Ingredients

• 800 g raw chicken breast (→ 600 g cooked, shredded)
• 165 g dry black beans, soaked (→ 450 g cooked; or 1½ cans)
• 105 g dry brown rice (→ 300 g cooked)
• 700 g broccoli, florets and peeled stems
• 600 g zucchini, 1 cm half-moons
• 200 g bell pepper
• 150 g onion
• 15 g garlic (~4 cloves)
• 400 g canned chopped tomato
• 300 g 2% cottage cheese
• 150 g 0% Greek yogurt
• 80 g sharp cheddar, finely grated
• 20 g olive oil
• 40 ml lime juice
• 20 g flat-leaf parsley
• 2 tsp cumin · 1 tsp ground coriander seed · 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp dried oregano · ½ tsp black pepper · ½ tsp ancho (optional)

Method

1. Salt the zucchini. Toss with ½ tsp salt, drain in a colander 30 min, blot dry. Skip this and the tray weeps by Wednesday — it is the one step that decides whether this survives five days.
2. Cook the rice deliberately underdone, about 80%, five minutes short. It finishes in the oven and keeps absorbing moisture in the fridge.
3. Poach the chicken in salted water 18 min. Lift out and shred.
4. Bloom the spices 30 seconds in the oil. Add onion, pepper and garlic, 6 min. Add tomato and beans, simmer 5 min.
5. Sear the zucchini in a dry hot pan 2–3 min, in batches — colour on it, not steam. Steam the broccoli 3 minutes only, then cold water to stop it; it gets a second cook in the oven and a third in the microwave all week.
6. Blend the binder — cottage cheese and yogurt smooth in the blender; it goes in off the heat, or the yogurt splits.
7. Fold everything together in a large bowl: rice, chicken, bean-tomato mix, both vegetables, binder, lime, parsley. Taste for salt. Lime goes in at the end — cooked lime turns dull and faintly bitter.
8. Into a 9×13. Cheddar over the top in a thin even layer. 190 °C for 25 min, until set and just bubbling at the edges. Rest 15 minutes before cutting six portions — hot, it will not hold a line.