Nigella puts an Italian spin on her roast chicken
Nigella Lawson has shared her recipe for Italian roast chicken with peppers and olives – a perfect meal for this warm August bank holiday weekend. Serving four to six people, it’s a dish the entire family can enjoy.
On the BBC Food website, where the recipe was originally published, Nigella said: “A roast chicken always is celebratory. The vibrantly coloured and intensely flavoured vegetables that are cooked alongside here seem only to underline this, offering their own brightness and brio, sunny in taste as well as mood.”
The dish takes one to two hours to cook and under 30 minutes to prepare.
To begin making the chicken dinner, preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Untruss a 1.5kg chicken, sit it in a roasting tin and put two lemon halves and two rosemary sprigs into the chicken’s cavity.
Wash and trim three leeks, cut each into three logs, then slice lengthways and add to the tin. Now remove the core and seeds of the two red peppers and slice them into strips, following their natural curves and ridges, and add these to the tin.
Tumble in 100g pitted dry-packed black olives, and now pour four tablespoons of olive oil, mostly over the vegetables but a little over the chicken, too. Add two rosemary sprigs to the vegetables, along with some sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper, to taste.
Using a couple of spoons or spatulas, gently toss the vegetables about to help coat them with the oil and make sure everything’s well mixed up.
Sprinkle some sea salt flakes over the chicken and put it in the oven for about 1-1¼ hours, by which time the chicken should be cooked through, and its juices running clear when you cut into the flesh with a small sharp knife at the thickest part of the thigh joint.
The vegetables should be tender by now, too, and some of the leeks will be a scorched light-brown in parts.
Remove the chicken to a carving board and, while it rests (for about 10 minutes) pop the pan of veg back in the oven, switching the oven off as you do so.
Cut the chicken up chunkily, transferring the pieces to a large warmed platter.
Now take the pan back out of the oven and, with a slotted spoon or spatula, remove the vegetables to the large platter and when all is arranged to your aesthetic delight, pour over it all the bronze, highly-flavoured juices that have collected in the pan.
Nigella Lawson has published several best-selling cookery books, many alongside a television series, and has become nationally known for her dishes.
After studying Medieval and Modern Languages at Oxford, she went on to work as a publisher, becoming deputy literary editor of The Sunday Times. She then pursued a successful career as a freelance journalist, during which time her work was published in significant culinary and lifestyle magazines around the world.
Nigella was voted author of the year at the 2001 British Book Awards. In 2001 she was awarded – but turned down – an OBE from Queen Elizabeth for services to journalism and cookery.
For more dishes you can make at home, see our ‘recipes’ page.
