This is one of those recipes you’ll make time and time again. It’s really easy – you just put everything in the roasting dish and leave it to cook in the oven… and your home will smell lovely and lemony!
Ingredients:
1 chicken (approx. 2.25kg / 4½lbs) cut into 10 pieces
1 bulb of garlic (separated into unpeeled cloves)
2 unwaxed lemons – cut into chunky eighths
1 handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150 millilitres white wine
black pepper
Method:
Pre-heat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3/325ºF.
Put the chicken pieces into a roasting tin and add the garlic cloves, lemon chunks and the thyme; just roughly pull the leaves off the stalks, leaving some intact for sprinkling over later. 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.
Sprinkle over the white wine and grind on some pepper, then cover tightly with foil and put in the oven to cook, at a flavour-intensifyingly low heat, for 2 hours.
Remove the foil from the roasting tin, and turn up the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6/400ºF. Cook the uncovered chicken for another 30-45 minutes, by which time the skin on the meat will have turned golden brown and the lemons will have begun to scorch and caramelise at the edges.
Sprinkle with the remaining thyme and either serve from the roasting tin or transfer to a warmed casserole dish.
Serves: 4-6