recipe: crispy chicken with sweet tomatoes.

Been a while since I posted a recipe. It's not that I haven't been doing much cooking. On the contrary, I've been doing a lot of it on weekdays so I can head out exploring on the weekends. I'm being a good girl. ANYWAYS, most of what I usually cook on the weekdays are familiar home favourites which I've grown up with; curry chicken, stir-fried vegs etc. Nothing exciting although always comforting because of the absence of mum's cooking. This week however, I decided to shake things up a little and head for the books for inspiration instead.

I found this recipe from Jamie Oliver's, Jamie's Dinners. I actually highly recommend this book because I find the recipes are easy to follow, aren't over complicated and are basically things that you would eat on a regular basis. Most importantly, THEY WORK! In fact, I'm almost inclined to do the 'Julie & Julia' thing and cook every recipe out of the book daily. Then again, I might cause some sort of a protest.

I admit, I was lazy so hence, the choice of this one pot wonder. Easy cooking, easy clean up. I probably should cook this way more. I did some variations of my own to the recipe and also changed it down to feed 2. It should be very easy to multiply the portions according to the number of people that you have to feed.

Ingredients (serves 2)
4 chicken drumsticks
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a large bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked, stalks finely chopped
1 punnet cherry tomatoes, halved and 1 ripe plum tomato, quartered
1 whole bulb of garlic, broken up into cloves
1 fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme
zest of 1/4 lemon
2 medium sized potatoes, sliced
olive oil

• Preheat your oven to 180℃.
• Season the chicken well and place in a baking tray.
• Add all the other ingredients to the tray and drizzle just enough to ensure that all the ingredients are well coated. Add more salt and pepper if you desire.
• Toss all the ingredients in the tray to ensure all the seasoning gets well distributed. Arrange the pan so that the tomatoes land up underneath.
• Place in oven for approximately 1.5 hours, bring the tomatoes to the top halfway through and cook until the chicken skin is crispy and meat falls off the bone.
• Squeeze the garlic out of the skins before serving.

Instead of roasting the potatoes, you could serve the chicken with mash potatoes, cannellini beans or remove the meat from the bone, shred it and toss with spaghetti together with the tomatoes and its delicious roasting juices!

Enjoy!