Chicken Baked with Lemon

 

(adapted from Loukie Werle's Italian Country Cooking)

I love when I actually manage to make a complete, balanced meal - you know, with multiple food groups, side dishes, etc. Like this meal, lemony baked chicken served with aglio e olio and a side of broccoli rabe. It barely all fits in the photo!

The most fun part about this dish was making the "aromatic salt"...or, you know, seasoned salt. It's kind of a recipe unto itself, and it makes a lot of it - so you can keep it around for a few months, refrigerated, to use in other dishes. I'd call it a lemon-garlic salt, but you can taste a good bit of the rosemary in there. You should pay better attention to Werle's recipe than I did, though - in her introduction, she notes that you just need a teaspoon of salt to flavor six chicken thighs. I used four thighs. What can I say, I got excited about the aromatic salt.

4 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on

1 lemon, thinly-sliced

1 lemon, squeezed

1.5 tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup white wine (the recipe called for water, but wine sounds better for deglazing the pan, right?)

AROMATIC SALT (halve this if you want - it makes a lot, and certainly more than you need for the chicken):

3 cloves garlic, peeled and 2 chopped

1 cup coarse salt

Zest of two lemons

1.5 tsp chopped fresh or dried rosemary leaves

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 bay leaf, if you have it (I didn't)

For the salt, place all of the ingredients except the 1 non-chopped, reserved garlic clove and the bay leaf into a food processor and chop until the salt is ground. Store the mixture in an airtight container, with the reserved garlic and bay leaf buried in the salt. Refrigerate if storing.

Place the chicken on a plate, season with the aromatic salt, and cover with plastic wrap to marinate in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 425. Place sliced lemon in an ovenproof dish. Heat a pan over medium-high, add the oil, and add the chicken with the skin side down. Brown well on both sides, about 6 minutes. Place the chicken on top of the lemon slices in the ovenproof dish, skin side up.

Add the lemon juice and wine to the pan in which the chicken was browned and boil, scraping up any brown bits, for about four minutes, or until it gets slightly saucy. Pour over the chicken. Put the chicken in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked. (I forgot the next step, myself:) Remove from oven and place on a heated platter, cover loosely with foil, and let stand 5 minutes before serving.