Braised chicken Sunday

Such a nice day, the weather started out a bit suspect but the sunshine held out long enough for a family walk to the farmers market. That was great for many reasons, delicious food, fresh veges, cheeses and bread. plenty to make the perfect lunch. It was also great because we needed to buy some seedlings for the garden.

We were doing so well this year and had our seeds planted weeks ago to prepare for an early start on the garden. All was going great until we planted our little seedlings out last week and they nearly all got eaten! I kid you not, overnight we lost about half and within a few days many more. We believe the culprit was slugs so off to buy more slug bait we went. Totally gutting, so to get a head start on the season we decided to purchase a few larger seedlings and sow some more seeds for a second round.

So today was about planting.

And a little weeding. Here's hoping these ones don't get eaten!

There was also some time to put a nice braised chicken on for dinner. I'm really into braises at the moment, the way the flavours all melt together in the pot. Not to mention the way you can chuck it in the oven and ignore it till dinner time. Love that.

Braised whole chicken

1 chicken

1 onion

10 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole

kumara (pumpkin would work too)

1/3 C sherry

1/3 C balsamic vinegar

2 C chicken stock

1 bay leave

1/2 C flour

 1/2t salt

1/4 t pepper

Mix together flour salt and pepper and coat the chicken. Fry the whole chicken in a little oil to brown the skin. Once browned add in the onion and garlic and fry for 2 more minutes.

I have a cast iron pot so i can fry on the stove top and then transfer it straight into the oven. But if you don't have one just use a fry pan.

Then transfer to an oven dish and add in the sherry, vinegar, stock, kumara and bay leaf. Cover and put in the oven for about 1 1/2hrs or until the chicken is fully cooked. Take the lid off for the last 10 mins and the chicken will brown up a bit and reduce the liquid.

I didn't have time to brown the chicken much but the flavours were delicious. 

The kumara soaks up the flavours and the whole garlic cloves just melt in your mouth. I think the only thing i would do differently would be to reduce the liquid more and maybe thicken it, but it was still amazing. This recipe is here to stay.

Hope you had a great weekend in your corner of the world.

 xxx