Carluccio's Chicken
This is based on a recipe my dad cooked, which he credited to the late, great, Antonio Carluccio. I've never actually seen the recipe as published by him, if indeed it ever was, that said it's not the most complicated of things to cook. You end up with crispy skinned chicken, miniature crispy roasted potato bites, sweet slightly caramelised onion and the icing on the cake is the roasted sweet and sticky garlic that can be squeezed out of the cloves.
Stats
Serves: 2
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 2 chicken legs, split into drumsticks and thighs
- 600g potatoes
- 1 onion
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 10 fat cloves of garlic
- Fresh rosemary
- Fresh thyme
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 200° fan-assisted
- Whilst the oven is pre-heating, pat dry the skin on the chicken with some kitchen towel
- Peel the potatoes and chop them into even pieces about three to four centimetres in length - you want pieces that just have to be cut in two so that they can be eaten
- Peel the onion and cut into six to eight wedges
- Place the chicken pieces in a heavy based roasting tin skin side up, then also place the onion wedges around them
- Tumble the pieces of potato into the pan so that they fall around the chicken and onion, adjusting them so that they all have some of their surface in contact with the roasting tin
- Drizzle the olive oil over the chicken, onion and potatoes then season everything well with salt and pepper
- Finely chop the rosemary and thyme, then sprinkle it over the tray
- Cook in the oven for 20 minutes, before adding the garlic cloves and returning to the oven for another 40 minutes
This is surprisingly forgiving if you leave it in the oven for longer, though any garlic cloves that are in direct contact with the pan will cook quicker and go from soft, sweet and sticky garlic paste to inedible in fairly short order. Adjust the cooking time up, or down, depending on whether the chicken skin has crisped up or not.