This recipe comes via Blai’s mother and has become one of our favourites. It’s simple to put together, we almost always have all the ingredients lying about at home and the end result tastes fantastic with the tender chicken and almost caramelised onion and tomato pieces. The Catalans rarely roast chickens whole, preferring to cut them first into pieces; I like this – it gives each piece a chance to get its skin nice and crispy. The recipe can easily be scaled to feed more too.

Catalan Roast Chicken

We like to serve it with kale cooked in the Catalan way with raisins and pine nuts and either some good bread to mop up the delectable sauce or some fried potatoes or, even better, both. I’m also particularly fond of squeezing out the roasted garlic onto some bread. I know I’ll be serving this recipe up a few times over the Christmas season this year!

Catalan Roast Chicken
serves 3-4.

4 chicken legs, separated into drumstick and thigh
olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
dried oregano
1 large onion, sliced thickly
2 tomatoes, sliced thickly
3-4 cloves garlic, unpeeled
3 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
about 100ml of white wine or cognac

Preheat your oven to 220 Celsius.

Arrange the chicken pieces skin side up in a roasting pan (they should fit in one layer). Rub them all over with olive oil and then dust with salt, pepper and dried oregano. Arrange the onion and tomato slices in between the chicken pieces. Snap the cinnamon stick in half and then also arrange that, the garlic and the bay leaves around the chicken. Drizzle olive oil over all and then splash on the wine/cognac.

Place in the oven and roast, turning twice throughout the cooking process (they should finish with their skin sides up), until fully cooked, skin burnished brown and much of the liquid has cooked down to a thick, almost gravy (this will take somewhere between 1 hour and 1.5 hours). Serve, spooning the sauce and the roasted onion and tomato over.