I believe it was Robert Rodriguez (above) who said not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to make love. Or something like that.

Everybody should know how to cook one good meal. If there’s one easy dish I think everyone should know, it’s this riff on the classic called Chicken and 40 Cloves.

That’s cloves of garlic mind you–but you don’t have to use 40 cloves (hence the “riff.”) However, if you’ve never tasted the sweet, mellow flavor of slow roasted garlic, then my-oh-my are you in for a treat. Not only is this dish simple (you don’t have to measure), it’s inexpensive, and only uses one pan. Oh–and it makes your house smell like the part of France that doesn’t smell like dirty Europeans. Try to contain your excitement.

Before you start, make sure you have some really nice crusty bread on hand. It’ll make sense later.

I like to use chicken thighs for this because I love their flavor–but they’re also very cheap. What you see here is about $1.50 worth of bone-in thighs with the skin removed. Honestly though, you can use any cut or combination of cuts of chicken for this–but pieces with the skin removed prior to cooking do better (you can remove it yourself.) Just make sure it will all fit in your pan.

A note on the pan–a pan with an oven-safe handle and lid works best for this. But if you don’t have one of those, a cast-iron skillet and a piece of aluminum foil works just as well.

Now follow along. Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Put your pan or skillet on medium high heat, and let it get good and hot. Into the hot pan pour more than enough extra virgin olive oil to coat the bottom. When the oil is almost smoking, carefully put in the chicken (don’t burn yourself!).

Now walk away for a couple minutes. Let the meat brown. It’s the only way to develop the depth of flavor we’re after–you know, the flavor that makes good restaurant food taste so much better than ours. Plus, if you don’t fiddle with the meat too much, it’s more likely to release from the pan when it’s time to turn it over. Which you should do–but only after seasoning it with salt and pepper. When both sides are finished browning, remove the pan from the heat and season with a little more salt and pepper.

We’ve now reached the point of improvisation. Garlic is essential to this dish–I use almost an entire bulb’s worth of peeled cloves, but you can use as much or as little as you want. Just toss them in the pan like giant sprinkles.

We also need herbs–parsley and fresh thyme for sure. A few sprigs of each. To this add a few sprigs of either fresh sage or fresh rosemary. You could use both, but I think that takes things too far. After you’ve made up your mind, pour about a half cup of extra-virgin olive oil over everything. Use more if you want to.

Put the lid on (or cover tightly with aluminum foil) then place the pan in the oven. It takes 90 minutes for this to cook, but set a timer for one hour. When the hour is up, remove the pan from the oven, turn the chicken over and cook for 30 more minutes.

Congratulate yourself. You just made some incredibly tender, rich and flavorful chicken. But that’s not all! You also have a pan full of garlic and herb infused olive oil, perfect for slathering over the crusty bread I talked about earlier. And the garlic cloves are now soft, sweet and mellow. Spread them on bread or eat as is.

Oh, just look at that. And look how beautifully it pairs with a few roasted vegetables! But that’s another show.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.