Nigella's Slow-cooked Lemon Chicken

Our home welcomed a a gorgeous new dining table and chairs and on the weekend we had our first dinner party on it with lovely old friends. I love a good dinner party and always have hundreds of ideas of what I can make. Unusually this time I couldn’t set my mind on anything. Wow it was stressful.

Finally on Friday night after much tossing and turning I told myself to stop being silly, to go to sleep and I would sort it out in the morning.

I woke up even earlier than usual and delved into the cookbooks. Nothing was coming to me.

The difficulty was I knew exactly what I wanted to make for dessert (yep, next post) and it was a heavy one so I had to have something not too intense.

As I was about to give up and get a pizza for them all I remembered my trusty note book with all my favourites. It opened up to the page with Nigella’s lemon chicken and all was well.

It’s all very easy and delicious in true Nigella style. Its crispy, golden brown chicken with tangy caramelised lemon and garlic, you can eat it all. I like to serve it with a nice green salad. I’ve also made this and added a few potatoes which is great.

1 chicken, cut into 10 pieces
1 whole garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into chunky eighths
small handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150ml white wine
black pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 150C/300F.

Combine the chicken pieces, garlic cloves, lemon chunks, oil and thyme (leave some thyme intact for strewing over later). Mix everything together, its easiest to use your hands.

Spread all this out in a roasting tray, trying to keep the skin side up.

Evenly sprinkle over the white wine top with freshly ground pepper.

Cover tightly with foil and put in the oven for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, remove the foil and turn up the oven to 200C/400ºF and cook, uncovered chicken for another 30-45 minutes.

Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the remaining thyme.

S