orange, honey and lemon thyme chicken

… back from Mallorca and it was a lovely, restful break but frustratingly short… as usual we ate very well and even found a very very good and quite progressive vegetarian restaurant… a HUGE deal for a Spanish holiday resort or anywhere in Spain really… that was tucked into a teeny alley in the heart of town which as you can imagine went down very well with The Viking and has also given me a few inspirational ideas that i’ll share with you over the next few posts…

… in the meantime my good friend Shannon has arrived from Michigan for a super-fast weekend catch-up before she goes off next week on a set of work seminars in Cambridge… we grew up together in London and even though our worlds are now a million miles apart, not just geographically but in the fact that she is a scientist, we are fortunate enough to be able to get together nearly every year to catch up… it’s like a whirlwind of life stories, usually fuelled by enough alcohol to sink a battleship and we always seem to end up doing the most peculiar things that we simply, normally would do… yesterday we drank our way through too many bottles of wine to mention and ended up following a band we’d seen in one pub halfway across London to see them play at another pub… we were the fastest groupies in the world and had a blast… although now, as you can imagine, we’re both in recovery mode

orange, honey and lemon thyme chicken with lemon potatoes and oven roasted balsamic tomato salad
I thought i’d share today’s lunch with you… this is what I call a ‘recovery’ lunch… a sweet sticky chicken that provides the protein and is very easy on the stomach without being bland… some lemon and sea-salt roasted anya potatoes for the much-needed starch and an oven-roasted tomato salad for that little bit of green we feel we ought to have… the aroma of the chicken roasting alone is enough to take you out of your dink-infused slumber and begin salivating for lunch… the fact that it looks like sunshine in a roasting tin also helps cheer you up… just a little…

1 medium free-range chicken
1 onion – quartered
1 orange – quartered
the juice and zest of another orange
a bunch of lemon thyme
1 tablespoon of orange blossom honey
1kg of anya potatoes (these are very nutty and roast really well… small charlottes or new potatoes would work just as well.)
1 lemon – quartered
1 tablespoon of seasalt
olive oil
1 bunch of cherry tomatoes on the vine
balsamic vinegar

in a small bowl combine the orange juice and zest, honey and a little olive oil

prep and clean the chicken to your liking… i’ve always boiled a kettle and poured hot water over it… then stuff it with half the onion and half the thyme, then pour over the honey and orange sauce, wrap in foil and stick it in the oven for an hour on 180C followed by an hour with the foil removed.

next throw the vine tomatoes into a dish, sprinkle over some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and pop it into the oven with the chicken, it should take no longer than 30 mins to bubble away and release loads of gorgeous tomato juices… remove from the oven and set aside to cool

meanwhile place the potatoes in a bowl, pour over the oil and cut up the lemons into small chunks, add the salt and mix together… throw this into a roasting dish and bung it in the oven for 45 mins or until golden

once everything is cooked, take the chicken out of the oven and set aside whilst you make the salad… I just use a bag of leaves and whatever is in the fridge… the tomatoes are placed on top and the juices are used as the dressing… all entirely amazing!

eat and of course, enjoy!