Creamy Salsa Chicken with Brown Rice

I recently joined a Facebook page for slow-cooker obsessed people!  There are some good recipes on there, but I was pretty surprised that so many of the recipes call for packets or jars of this, that and everything.  One of the more popular recipes seems to be salsa chicken which calls for some chicken fillets, a jar of salsa, a packet of taco seasoning and a tub of sour cream - all mixed together and slow cooked!  As delicious as the flavour combination sounded, I thought I would make up a recipe that is a lot healthier and I can guarantee tastes a lot better too without all the nasties from those packets.  Enjoy!

Ingredients (serves 6):
- 500g chicken thigh fillets, sliced
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 4 large diced tomatoes or 400g can of diced tomatoes
- 1/2 red capsicum, diced
- 1 medium red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 tsp raw or rapadura sugar
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- 2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 cup water
- Squeeze of fresh lemon or lime juice
- Sea salt, pepper and Herbamare to taste
- 200g creme fraiche or sour cream or natural yoghurt
- 1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
- Brown rice, soaked for at least 6 hours and then drained and rinsed
- Avocado slices to serve

Method:
1.  Into your slow cooker, add all the ingredients except the rice, creme fraiche and parsley.  Stir to combine.  Cook on "low" for around 5 hours, stirring every now and then.  When finished, stir through the parsley and creme fraiche.

If not using a slow cooker, preheat oven to 150 degrees, add the above ingredients to a casserole dish, stir, cover and bake for around 2 hours, stirring every now and then.  When finished, stir through parsley and creme fraiche.

2.  About half an hour before the chicken is ready, cook your brown rice as per the packet instructions (if using Thermomix, I added 1 litre of water into the TM bowl and cooked 300g of soaked/drained/rinsed brown rice for 30min/Varoma/sp4).

3.  Serve the brown rice topped with creamy salsa chicken and avocado slices on top. Yum!