If you’ve somehow managed to miss the “marry me” chicken (and chickpea, and butterbean, and salmon...) recipes that took TikTok by storm in 2023, you probably haven’t avoided eating it.
That’s because the recipe, which involves cooking flour-coated fried poultry in a tomato and herb sauce before adding cream and Parmesan cheese, is essentially Tuscan chicken; a recipe the BBC calls “classic.”
So it’s no wonder Cordon Bleu-trained chef Mary Berry shared her “marry me”-style Tuscan chicken recipe with BBC Food in 2022, long before the TikTok fandom peaked.
But while the viral recipe usually features sundried tomatoes, Mary Berry had a twist on the trend before it even came to be.
What does she use instead?
Mary Berry’s “marry me”-style Tuscan chicken (though really, “marry me” chicken is Tuscan-style chicken) uses a different kind of tomatoes.
It calls for something called “sun-blushed,” rather than “sun-dried,” tomatoes.
“Sun-blushed tomatoes are sometimes sold as semi-dried tomatoes, slow roasted tomatoes or sun soaked tomatoes,” Mary Berry explained under the recipe.
Because they’ve spent less time in the sun than their sun-dried counterparts, they’re less shrivelled.
That means that while they do pack some extra umami flavour in comparison to fresh tommies, they’re plumper and juicier ― which makes them a lot less chewy and easier to incorporate into a sauce.
What if I can’t find any?
You can make sun-blushed tomatoes at home if you like; they’re useful for far more than just Tuscan sauce recipes.
All you need is tomatoes (cherry tomatoes or baby plums are best), oil, herbs, salt, and an oven.
Italian food YouTuber Mi Terruno Food suggests cutting the tomatoes in half, placing them cut-side-up in a single layer on a baking paper-lined tray, covering them with salt and herbs of your choice, coating them in oil, and popping them in a 200°C oven for 20 minutes.
Leave them to cool and either use them right away or store them in a jar with oil and garlic, Mi Terruno suggests.
“You can use them in salads, panini, focaccia, bread dough or as part of a traditional Italian antipasto with some sott’oli, cured meats, cheeses and artisan bread,” the YouTuber writes (don’t mind if I do)...