A slow roasted chicken with garlic and lemon, perfect for when the sun is shining or when it’s not! It is gloriously easy: you just put everything in the roasting dish and leave it to cook in the oven, the fabulous smell will fill the house with the scent of lemon and thyme and mellow, almost honeyed garlic…
Ingredients for 4 portions
1 – 2 pieces chicken per person
1 bulb garlic separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons cut into chunky eighths
Fresh thyme
3 tablespoons of really good olive oil
150 ml white wine or vermouth
Black pepper
Method
1. Pre-heat the oven to 160ºC/gas mark 3.
2. Put the chicken pieces into a roasting tin and add garlic cloves, lemon chunks and the thyme; just roughly pull the leaves off the stalks, leaving some intact for strewing over later.
3. Add the oil and using your hands mix everything together, then spread the mixture out, making sure all the chicken pieces are skin side up.
4. Sprinkle the white wine over the mix, grind on some black pepper, then cover tightly with foil and put in the oven to cook, at flavour-intensifying low heat, for 2 hours.
5. Remove the foil from the roasting tin, and turn up the oven to 200ºC/gas mark 6.
6. Cook the uncovered chicken for another 30 minutes, by which time the skin on the meat will have turned golden brown and the lemons will have begun to scorch and caramelize at the edges.
Serve with a green salad or vegetables, potatoes, rice, pasta – this dish goes with almost anything.
Mop up the juices with a hunk of French bread!
