Roasted Lemon Chicken

This is a really easy combo of a Nigella recipe and one I cut out of The Times ages ago.
The lemon chunks left to cook slowly in the oven almost caramelise and you can eat them, skin, pith and all, their sour bitterness sweetened in the heat. Sounds like a lot of garlic, but whole and roasted they become sweet and not overpowering.
Add new potatoes to the mix in the tin and you have a one pot meal. Yum.

INGREDIENTS

6-8 chicken legs, cut into drumstick and thigh, skin on
1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves
2 unwaxed lemons, cut into eighths
2 red onions peeled and quartered lengthways
Small handful fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil
150ml white wine
Black pepper

METHOD
Serves: 4-6.
Pre-heat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3.
Put the chicken pieces into a roasting tin and add the garlic cloves, lemon chunks and the thyme; just roughly pull the leaves off the stalks, leaving some intact for strewing over later. Add the oil and using your hands mix everything together, then spread the mixture out, making sure all the chicken pieces are skin side up.
Sprinkle over the white wine and grind on some pepper, then cover tightly with foil and put in the oven to cook, at flavour-intensifyingly low heat, for 2 hours.
Remove the foil from the roasting tin, and turn up the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Cook the uncovered chicken for another 30-45 minutes, by which time the skin on the meat will have turned golden brown and the lemons will have begun to scorch and caramelise at the edges.
Sprinkle over remaining thyme and dish up straight from the pan.


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