Sunday Feast № 11 | Rosemary Chicken and Beans

Once upon a time I cooked the old fashioned roasted chicken Provençal, a very good dish with herbes de Provence, lemon, garlic, dry vermouth, and garnished with fresh thyme sprigs, among the usual suspects including the said chicken - bone-in, skin-on thighs. Tasty as it was, dredging those thighs in flour before placing them in oiled roasting pan I could've done with out. Then I stumbled upon a riff on the very dish, sans flour dredging, at Petite Kitchen blog. Then I played with that.    In the recipe below, compared to the Petite Kitchen one, I halved the amount of chicken, and doubled the amount of beans and used two varieties of beans. Yes, I swapped white wine with sherry or vermouth, depending which I had on hand, and also tried the chicken with or without skin, all on separate occasions. And I eye-balled the garlic. The Petite Kitchen called for one bulb, but my bulbs seemed enormous enough that I opted for 8-10 cloves instead. This is a superbly easy, self contained, and forgiving dish you can make your own.

~ ½ kg/1 lb chicken thighs, skin on or off as preferred 1 can butter + 1 can red kidney beans (439 g/15. oz each) drained and rinsed 8-10 garlic cloves peeled and roughly chopped 2 lemons quartered ½ cup white wine or dry white sherry or dry vermouth 1 cup chicken stock olive oil handful of fresh rosemary ¼ cup pine nuts coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 355°F/180°C. Add beans, garlic and lemons to a large roasting dish. Lay the chicken pieces on top then pour the alcohol and chicken stock over the top. Drizzle with olive oil, scatter the rosemary and pine nuts on top. Season with sea salt and pepper. Bake in the oven for at least an hour (in my case 1 hour + 5-10 min). Remove from the oven and leave to cool a bit before serving over handfuls of either baby spinach, spring lettuce mix, or similar salad greens, dressed in the juices from the roasting dish.

For the original recipe and far sexier photo go here.