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Nigella Lawson's chicken and pea traybake
Excerpted from At My Table: A Celebration of Home Cooking by Nigella Lawson. Copyright © 2017 by Nigella Lawson. Photography © 2017 by Jonathan Lovekin. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
SERVES
4
Ingredients
- Frozen petits pois – 7 cups (approx. 2 pounds)
- Leeks – 4–5 medium-large, trimmed and cut into approx. 1 inch slices
- Garlic – 2 fat cloves, peeled and minced
- Dry white vermouth – ¼ cup
- Regular olive oil – 2 tablespoons, plus more for drizzling
- Sea salt flakes or kosher salt – 2 teaspoons, plus more for sprinkling
- Dill – small bunch, torn into pieces
- Chicken thighs – 8, skin-on and bone-in
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F and clatter the frozen peas into a large roasting pan, followed by the leeks, garlic, vermouth, 2 tablespoons of oil, 2 teaspoons of salt, and most of the dill. Turn everything together in the pan – breaking up any large clumps of the frozen peas – until well mixed. I advise you to wear CSI gloves for this, just to stop you getting frostbite, though you still will feel the cold.
- Arrange the chicken thighs, skin-side up, on top, then drizzle them with a little olive oil and give them a good sprinkling of salt, before roasting in the oven for 45 minutes. Remove from the oven, give the peas a small stir or tamp down, so that the few that are sitting on the surface and drying out a little are submerged in the liquid. Don’t do the same to the leeks, however, as the bits that are peeking out will become desirably caramelized in the heat. Put back in the oven for a further 30 minutes, by which time the peas and leeks will be soft, and the chicken tender and cooked through, its skin golden and crisp.
- Tear off the remaining dill fronds, and scatter over the top on serving, perhaps with some simply steamed baby potatoes to soak up the pea and chicken juices.
