This lemony garlic chicken is one of the easiest and cheapest dishes for supper. Work on the basis of 1 chicken thigh per child and 1-2 per adult depending how hungry you are. If you have an AGA then blast the dish in the roasting oven for 20 minutes before transferring to the simmering oven for at least an hour or it’s fine to stay in there for 2-3 hours, you may need to add a little more wine or stock if it starts to dry out.
This is a great family staple, it’s cheap – £2.50 for 6-7 chicken thighs, 30p for a lemon and similar for the garlic, use the bottle of wine you have to drink from. I am making an assumption that you do drink white wine, if not, use stock as it would be shame to buy a whole bottle of wine that would get wasted. You could always send it over to our house, it certainly wouldn’t get wasted here. Actually, just realised that’s what’s missing, it’s gone 8pm and I don’t have a glass of wine in my hand, this is so wrong.
This dish you can pop into the oven at around 2pm and it will be ready when the children get in from school, serve it with some rice or mashed potato and veg, you could always adapt it for a supper party version and serve it with a big green salad and lots of fresh crusty veg. Serve it in the roasting dish as the juices caramelise at the bottom of the pan and cry out to be mopped up with lovely bread.
The skin becomes lovely and crispy and the garlic softens as it roasts meaning that you share out the cloves, squeeze them out of their papery skins over the mash or crusty bread, smear the roasted lemon on top, dunk into the lovely juices collected into the pan and stink of garlic for at least 24 hours. Do you know what, it tastes fantastic so just make sure that anyone you want to kiss also eats the roast garlic.