The Utterly Distracted Cook: Victory, Thy Name is Jamie’s Chicken
Third time’s the charm, right?
I am happy to report that my third try at finding a new “staple” recipe was wildly successful. Thank you, thank you, Jamie Oliver! I own several of his books, but haven’t gotten around to cooking many of the recipes yet; I flipped open one of his cookbooks last week to find a seemingly simple chicken dish that looked both tasty and low-maintenance. Here it is, also posted on his website:
Tender and Crisp Chicken Legs with Sweet Tomatoes
First, I must also thank Gloria for taking a long enough nap in the afternoon to enable me to completely prep the dish ahead of time. It only took about twenty minutes — I chopped up a bunch of fresh red, yellow, and cherry tomatoes, a whole bunch of basil, and one red chili pepper. Frances helped me peel the skins from six or seven garlic cloves, and we were ready to roll. I used two packages of skin-on chicken (thighs and legs were all we could find), seasoned them, threw them in a casserole dish, distributed tomatoes over and under them, added garlic cloves, and then covered with saran wrap and put in the fridge.
At around 4pm I slid my totally completed dinner out of the fridge, removed the saran wrap, drizzled it with olive oil, and put it into a preheated oven. My only mistake was covering the chicken for the first hour; the recipe didn’t specify and I was being cautious, but truly I think this is meant to be cooked uncovered. After the recommended 90 minutes at 350 my chicken wasn’t done, so I cranked up the heat to 400 for 15-20 more minutes, and it ended up just right.
This basically makes a nice mellow flavorful chicken with meat that falls off the bone. Jamie recommends serving it over mashed potatoes (which would be excellent) or noodles (which I did, was very good too). I had some fresh parmesan on hand and used that on top. It seems like it is very hard to mess up this recipe (a major plus) and the leftovers were fab. Totally going into our regular rotation and possibly even nice enough to serve to company.
Frances did not eat it due to having a very slight stomach bug, but I am sure she might actually eat some of the chicken in the future; I’m going to go out on a limb and even call this recipe kid-friendly.
So: Allrecipes 0, Moosewood 0, Jamie Oliver 1!
1 comment April 18th, 2007
