114. Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Date Cooked: October 28, 2009
Page: 315
Rating: A-

Whenever I imagined this recipe I always thought it was a whole roasted chicken. If I had known it was a chicken broken down into parts I may have actually cooked this one sooner. There was a time that the mere name of this dish would have turned my stomach. Garlic was not something I loved, but I honestly cannot remember when that changed. Today I put garlic in a lot of my cooking and I am liberal with it. In fact most of the recipes that call for a clove of garlic get two or three.

This recipe starts with the roasting of 3 heads of garlic, broken out into their cloves, and some chopped shallots. Actually the recipe starts with brining chicken but that is becoming routine so we’ll move onto the more exciting aspects of this dish. The garlic and shallots were tossed with oil, salt and pepper and then roasted for almost 40 minutes. At the end of the 40 minutes the garlic was starting to smell nice.

The chicken pieces were removed from the brine, rinsed, dried and then seasoned with pepper. In an ovenproof skillet they were browned in oil until both sides had crisped nicely. The chicken was set aside and the pan was deglazed with chicken broth and dry vermouth before some rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf were added. I was supposed to tie the sprigs of rosemary, thyme and the bay leaf together but I don’t have any kitchen twine. So I prepared myself for the inevitable fishing expedition required to get them out later. I added the garlic and shallots before reintroducing the chicken. The skillet went into the oven to roast for about 15 minutes.

Once done in the oven, the chicken was plated and most of the garlic and shallots were plated with it. The herbs were fished out and discarded, then some of the garlic was squeezed through a sieve and whisked into the pan sauce with some butter. The sauce was served over the chicken.

Rating: A-. This turned out really nice. The chicken was full of flavor and felt very comforting and satisfying. I think I ate 75% of the chicken myself. I will be making this again.