The 11th recipe I made for the Cook the Book Fridays group using the Everyday Dorie cookbook by Dorie Greenspan is Lemon-Fennel Chicken in a Pot, it can be found on page 133.
Ingredients: chicken, fennel, lemon, shallots, garlic, olive oil, honey, salt, pepper, thyme, chicken broth, and bay leaves. (She also recommends serving it with a baguette to soak with juices from the pot.)
This is an incredibly easy recipe…you just toss everything in a pot with the chicken on top of it all and bake. While she recommended 450 degrees for 90 minutes, some shared that they thought it was a bit too high and too long. I pondered a bit and chose 425 degrees for 90 minutes and that was perfect for us, it left it “falling off the bone” and moist, just perfect. The seasonings and vegetables added a wonderful taste to the chicken. She recommended running it under the broiler for a few minutes at the end of cooking to darkened and crisp up the chicken skin, but I didn’t do that as we weren’t going to eat the chicken skin anyway.
Serving it all with a baguette seemed like a fine thing to do and Mark enjoyed it very much…I just couldn’t do it, not wet bread…I just can’t do wet bread, it’s right up there with chocolate, coffee, and liver…not happening. You can decide for yourself. All in all, this was a wonderful recipe, delicious, and incredibly easy, even for a weeknight. Leftovers can be used in any number of ways, a giant plus. Definitely repeat worthy.
To see what others in the group made this week, click here, for the Cook the Book Fridays link. We don't publish recipes from the book here in deference to the author, but sometimes the author has been generous and you can find them online.