Recipe: Tender and Crisp Chicken Legs
Here is a simple one-dish wonder from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook
Serves 8
- 4 chicken legs, cut into pieces at the joint
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- A big bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked, stalks finely chopped
- 2 big handfuls of red and yellow cherry tomatoes, halved, and ripe plum tomatoes, quartered
- 1 whole bulb of garlic, broken up into cloves
- 1 fresh red chili finely chopped
- Olive oil
Preheat your oven to 350 F. Season your chicken pieces all over and put them into a snug-fitting pan in one layer. Add all the basil leaves and stalks, then add tomatoes. Scatter the garlic cloves into the pan with the chopped chili and drizzle over some olive oil. Mix around a bit, pushing the tomatoes underneath.
Place in the oven for 1 1/2 hours, turning the tomatoes halfway through, until the chicken skin is crisp and the meat falls off the bone. Skim any excess fat from the pan and squeeze the garlic out of the skins before serving.
Use bone-in chicken pieces or chicken thighs if you cannot find chicken legs.
Serving suggestions:
- Serve the chicken with some simple mashed potato.
- Add some drained cannellini beans or some sliced new potatoes to the pan and cook them with the chicken.
- Remove the chicken meat from the bone and shred it, then toss into a bowl of linguini or spaghetti and serve at once.
