Chicken Thighs Roasted with Rosemary, Red Onions & Red Potatoes: My Roasting Bible (The Best of Fine Cooking Magazine)

2 navel oranges
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
kosher salt
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
8 baby red potatoes (12 oz.), halved
2 medium red onions, sliced into half-inch-thick circles
Two 5-inch sprigs fresh rosemary, plus 3/4 tsp. minced
8 chicken thighs (about 8 oz. each), trimmed of excess fat and skin

I have a roasting bible. Whenever I have a ton of root vegetables that need to be used up, I get the urge to roast them, and I turn to a magazine that I found in the grocery store over Christmas last year. That is when most people start to decide that roasting is a good idea. If you're going to roast a chicken, what else can I throw in the oven with it? Pretty much anything. You just need a reference for how long things should be roasted, and what flavours complement the roast. The pictures in the magazine, though, were so beautiful that I've been meaning to try more of them. Mostly simple recipes with basic ingredients, French-style cooking, for satisfying meals. Though I'm not a huge fan of orange in recipes, specifically desserts, I ended up with two navel oranges kicking around my house and then stumbled upon this recipe, which was too convenient to pass up.

I grated the orange zest, added the oil, a tsp. salt, and red pepper flakes. I tossed a tbsp. of this with the vegetables on half of a large rimmed baking sheet. I had bought a whole chicken rather than just legs and placed the legs, the giblets and wings on the other end of the baking sheet and brushed them with the remaining oil mixture. I unfortunately had to use dried rosemary and crush dried chili peppers in a mortar and pestle, which may have resulted in less flavour, but I tucked this rosemary between the chicken pieces and sprinkled lightly with salt.

I then roasted for 20 minutes and 425 in the oven followed by a round of basting. There was lots of uice to marinade with thanks to the addition of the giblets. I continued roasting and basting every ten minutes for 30 minutes.

Then the weird part...you peel the oranges, removing the pith and membrane. You slice crosswise into half-inch circles and then chop into half-inch pieces. Add 1/4 tsp. of rosemary to this and when the chicken is done you pour it over the chicken on a serving platter. How do you pour chunks of orange? I decided to scoop as much of the orange juice that escaped in the cooking process as possible, but there really wasn't much liquid to pour. Navel oranges should be juicier, but the orange flavour really didn't get into the chicken. For me, who doesn't always appreciate orange flavour, this shouldn't have been a disappointment. I mean organic chicken, roasted simply with vegetables. Should have been beautiful. It wasn't bad...it's just, well, the French in me thought that if had gone to all the trouble of removing membranes and pith and chopping into precisely 1/2 inch pieces, then there should be something to show for it besides the visual effect. Next time I think I would add some of the juice to the vegetable marinade/basting liquid. If you're trying to make the dish taste of orange, shouldn't the cooking process employ more orange? The zest didn't have enough punch.

Still, a nice recipe from a good magazine. I also added carrots and turnip to the roasted vegetables in a seperate baking dish, which did cheer me up a bit.

In the spirit of second chances, I am in the marinading stage, as I write, for the recipe on the adjacent page-Roasted Cornish Hens with Wildflower Honey and Orange. Okay, I cheated more on this one...Roasted chicken breasts (what was left from butchering the chicken for the above recipe)instead of cornish hens, and blueberry honey instead of wildflower. Blueberry goes with orange right? If it's awful I'll use a little lemon juice instead next time. I'll give the recipe and results with the next post.

Optimistically,
Amie