Honey & Lemon Chicken

I absolutely love this recipe.  I love the way the lemon juice caramelises in the roasting tin - and in doing so, it caramelises onto the chicken and the potatoes which are roasting and just absorbing all that lovely lemon juice and honey which has been infused with rosemary and garlic.  With the melted butter, it just winds up with a gorgeusly chickeny, roast potatoey, lemony melange that makes my mouth water.

Son and hubby both decided that it was just "okay", but I am afraid it is going to re-appear at some point in the distant future, because it is just too gorgeous to ignore.  We'll have to call this one a "Mummy Supper" and everyone else will just have to suffer it.  *chuckle*

There aren't many that I insist on cooking, and I do try to avoid potatoes, but I am afraid I just enjoy this one too much.  You need to use a BIG roasting tin so as to give everything room to manoeuver, or it will braise too much instead of roasting.

HONEY & LEMON CHICKEN (serves 3)

Ingredients :

2 lemons, 1 zested and juiced, the other simply juiced

50g butter

3 tbsp clear honey

leaves from 4 rosemary sprigs

2 garlic cloves , finely chopped

4-5 chicken breasts, without skin, cut into biggish goujon shapes

400-500g potatoes , peeled and cut into smallish chunks

green salad , to serve

Method :

Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6/fan180C.

Put the lemon juice into a bowl, together with the butter, honey, rosemary, garlic and salt and pepper then microwave for a minute or so, until the butter melts and it smells fragrant.

Place the potatoes into the roasting tin and drizzle with lemon butter to coat evenly.

Add the chicken to the remainder of the lemon butter and set aside.

Roast the potatoes for 15 minutes.

Add the chicken and the rest of the lemon butter to the roasting tin.  Spread the chicken so that it lays in individual pieces, or it won’t cook evenly.

Roast for another 30-40 minutes, turning after the first 20.  Don’t worry if there is an awful lot of juice in the pan – there’s supposed to be!

Serve with a green salad, or with carrots, peas & broccoli.

Tuesday again and the new week's menu is up!

Oh, I had such a job organising this week's menu list!  I had two dishes that I really wanted to do, but after that .. nothing.

In a "usual" week, I cook on a Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun and hubby cooks on a Wed/Thurs/Mon.

This routine has come about because I ordinarily work on the days when hubby cooks - he's good enough to relieve me of the task of setting to after what can, some days, be a somewhat brain boggling day (well, 4 hours) at work.  For those of you reading this who are thinking "four hours?  She's got it made!", can I just say that I've done my time of working from 8.30am through to 8.30pm and it darned near killed me at the time and having very nearly been given my honorary harp and cloud again, some two years ago, four hours three days a week is plenty for me thankyou.

Anyway, I digress.

So there I was with five day left to fill, two of which were "my" days.  I immediately consulted my "Recipes I haven't tried yet, but want to" folder and found one candidate.  That left my "Tried and Tested Recipes" folder, where I found another admirable candidate.  Next stop was hubby, to see what he fancied cooking.  Unfortunately, he had even less idea than I did (which is odd, because normally we've each got at least two recipes hovering on the background).  One day was easily filled owing to our local Supermarket having meatballs on special offer.  The next was a stroke of brilliance on hubby's part.  Having suggested the age-old Chilli Con Carne (*groan*), he had the bright idea of making some Cornbread to go along with it instead of the rice.  What a cracking idea!  I used to make Cornbread a few years ago and I loved it, especially with Chilli.  So that was a definite.  That just left one day to fill.  We pondered on what we'd got lurking in the cupboards, what was on special offer at the supermarket - trying desperately to find something other than the ubiquitous Spaghetti Bolognese, which is our usual fallback position.  After much deliberation as to the relative merits of home-made -v- shop bought, (price -v- quality, the usual story), we opted for the price argument and decided to have shop bought Cornish Pasties.  Hey ho!

So, here's what we're having this week :

Tues : (today) Smoked Haddock Chowder.  This is just a bowl full of gorgeousness, which I'll blog about during the week.

Wed : Cornish Pasties, potato waffles and beans.  Ah well, at least hubby and son like them!

Thurs : Chilli and Cornbread.  Yay!

Fri : Prawn & Peanut noodles.  I've a few reservations over this one, but I've put my trust in BBC Good Food and hopefully it'll be lovely.  If nothing else, it'll soothe my desire for a noodle stir fry!

Sat : Honey & Lemon Chicken, carrots, peas & broccoli.  Oooh, now this is a really delicious meal, which uses two lemons together with chicken portions and potatoes.  Everything comes out all caramelised and sticky.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it!

Sun : Pot Roast Chicken, roast potatoes & parsnips, carrots and peas.  I've never done a pot roast chicken, so now's my chance!

Mon : Meatballs and Spirali Pasta.  It's a meatball, tomato and cheesefest.  Who wouldn't like it?