Jamie Cooks Italy
By Jamie Oliver
1 hr 30 mins
Not Too Tricky
serves 6
About the recipe
Welcome to chicken bastardo, baby! Look, you will probably think the amount of garlic, bay and chillies here is outrageous, but because everything is left whole as it cooks you get a big but wonderfully gentle, round, warm, delicious flavour, and the vinegar mingles with that beautifully. You don’t actually have to eat the chillies if you don’t want to, you could simply peel, deseed and put them under oil for use another day.
Recipe From
Ingredients
1 x 2kg whole free-range chicken, jointed (ask your butcher)
olive oil
20 cloves of garlic
20 fresh bay leaves
20 fresh mixed-colour chillies
100ml red wine vinegar
optional: 1 tablespoon runny honey
Method
- Preheat the oven to 1180ºC/350ºF/gas 4.
- Put a large ovenproof frying pan on a high heat. Place the pieces of chicken in the pan skin side down, along with 2 tablespoons of oil. Fry for 15 minutes, turning regularly until all the pieces are lovely and golden all over.
- Make some space in the pan, then add the whole unpeeled garlic cloves and the bay leaves. Prick and add the chillies. Fry for 2 minutes, mix everything together, then pour in the vinegar, add a splash of water and season well.
- Cover with a scrunched-up sheet of wet greaseproof paper and place in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes, or until golden and cooked through. Sometimes I drizzle over honey when it comes out of the oven.
- To serve, divide up the chicken between your plates. Peel the chillies, scrape out the seeds, then chop the flesh and, to taste, stir it back through the pan juices. Squeeze the sweet garlic out of its skins into the pan, stir together, then spoon as much as you like over the chicken. Delicious with a simple side salad and a loaf of good bread. Sometimes I serve the chicken on a platter, then toss freshly cooked spaghetti through the pan juices to enjoy on the side – a very delicious option.
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