Here is my recipe for a luck of the draw chicken dinner.I made it up on the spot.
You will need:
Chicken. For this recipe I used 3 large chicken legs with back portions. Kosher chicken tastes better so I used Empire chicken.
3 garlic cloves
1 large shallot
fresh coarse ground black pepper
salt
paprika(the normal kind, not smoked or hot)
1 bay leaf
a quarter can of low sodium chicken broth. Chicken broth and boullion cubes are packed with sodium.We are trying to cut down on salt — we have been ossifying our organs and bones with salt for decades.We are old now and care about these things. But the truth is that tasty cooking needs salt.The trick is to allow all the flavors to meld for long enough in the oven or pan so that you won’t even want to add even more salt when at the dinner table.
drizzles of olive oil(on second thought the fat from the chicken is probably enough.So if you are concerned about fat calories leave the olive oil out–olive oil has the good fat–you just have to weight the pros and cons of good fat over caloric intake.
a liberal splash of red wine. We had a leftover bottle of 8 buck cab my cheapass roommate bought. It is marginally drinkable (I found it on the sweet and thin side) but it is still drinkable. I think you should only cook with wine that you could actually swallow. And when I say liberal we are coming close to a cup 🙂
baby carrots-about a bag’s worth
a deep baking dish, think Pyrex 9 by 11
aluminum foil
a preheated oven.
We have a toaster oven. All our meals are prepared in a toaster oven because we don’t have a real oven.
If you are fortunate enough to have an oven (which is most of you) set your oven to 450. If you use a toaster oven think about whether or not it runs hot or cool . Ours runs cool. So I set it to 480 (the highest setting) on bake.
But this is Neglected Drunken Chicken so fussing over oven temps isn’t all that vital.
Preparation:
rinse and pat dry the chicken,place in baking dish.
drizzle chicken with olive oil.
grind pepper over chicken.
sprinkle chicken with salt and a lot of paprika. The paprika will give the chicken a wonderful color.
chop garlic. I sprinkled one chopped garlic clove over each piece of chicken.
chop shallot. I sprinkled equal amounts of chopped shallot over each piece of chicken.
pour the chicken broth into the baking dish around the sides of the chicken. Repeat the same for the red wine.
arrange the baby carrots in the baking dish around the sides of the chicken.
put the bay leaf in the liquid.
put a sheet of tin foil over the dish (tent-don’t seal) and then put the dish in the oven.
Here comes the fun part:
My toaster oven has a dial that sets the cooking cycle for one hour.
I turned the dial to 60 minutes and went to watch some old episodes of The Office. I fell
alseep a little even though I do enjoy the antics of Ricky Gervais. He plays such a total prick so well on that show.When the toaster oven dinged in it’s 60 minutes I got up and turned the oven down to 350.Then I fell back asleep. I woke up again and inspected the chicken.It was looking mighty fine.In fact it was a thing of chicken winey beauty.By this time it had been in the oven for about 2 hours…I think if you want to get all uptight about times and temperatures you could cook it for one hour at 450 or 480 and then for another hour at 350 then another hour on keep warm(160 degrees,depending), but a little neglect didn’t hurt this dish at all. There are health hazords to keep in mind when dealing with poultry,so I wouldn’t recommend letting the oven get cold.
I turned the oven down to “keep warm” made some jasmine rice and walked the dog over to A.’s studio in Dumbo to drag him home and make him eat his dinner.
When we got home about an hour later I removed the dish from the oven and I poured all the lovely liquid (chicken fat,broth and wine) into a small saucepan and heated it up a bit. Then I poured out as much of the oily top layer as I could and then poured the remaining sauce back over the chicken. The chicken and rice meal is not to be underestimated…and the carrot’s sweet taste counterbalanced very well the garlicky, shalloty, winey sauce.
So: 2 short naps, a little TV, one dog walk and one fetched boyfriend later, we had a meal that was delicious.
This meal could feed 3 people for under 12 dollars.