Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic

I think I will make it for "family dinner" this weekend. Every week I try to make a nice, sit-down dinner for family and friends. I don't like fussy, super gourmet recipes. Just good home cooked food. This recipe caught my eye for this week. I will make a fresh loaf of bread in the bread machine and a green salad on the side. Simple but satisfying.

Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic

Serves 8. From "Epicurean Delight: The Life and Times of James Beard," by Evan Jones (Alfred Knopf, 1990).

2/3 cup olive oil

8 chicken drumsticks and thighs (or 16 of either)

4 celery ribs, cut in long strips

2 medium onions, chopped

6 parsley sprigs

1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon, or 1 1/2 teaspoon dried

1/2 cup dry vermouth

2 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of nutmeg

40 cloves garlic, unpeeled

Toasted slices of French bread

PUT the oil in a shallow dish, add the chicken pieces and turn to coat.

COVER the bottom of a heavy 6-quart casserole with the celery, onions, parsley and tarragon and lay the chicken pieces on top. Add the vermouth, sprinkle with salt and pepper and a dash or two of nutmeg, and tuck the garlic cloves around and between the chicken pieces. Tightly cover the top of the casserole with foil and then the lid. (This creates an airtight seal so the steam won't escape.)

BAKE in a 375-degree oven for 1 1/2 hours, without removing the cover.

SERVE the chicken, pan juices and whole garlic cloves with the toasted bread. The garlic should be squeezed from the root end of its papery husk onto the toast, spread like butter and eaten with the chicken.


Sounds yummy! Anyone made it before?

Here are more galicky recipes from the same article if anyone is interested. They even have a garlicky desert!

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/living/food/12820049.htm

for dinner. I love it! I will have to try it myself. Have been lazy lately.The garlic is sooo good.

It's always marvelous.

We make a lazy variation, which is to take a whole roaster, and shove into the cavity as many cloves of garlic as we can fit. Then we shove in one of the kids, a bicycle, and some fish that was frozen for too long.

I like to put it on top of - and surround it with - apples and lemons and celery and onions, all with minced garlic thrown on top. (We like garlic.) Throw any dry white wine on top, and proceed as you wrote. It's so easy and so good, and all that garlic on fresh bread. Oy gevalt, it's like buttah ...........

Now, I gotta check out that link. Thank you!!!

I did not have drumsticks or whole garlic, so here's what I did -

Took a pack of frozen chicken breast put in a baking pan
Added dried chooped onions
Garlic from the jar - about 10 tablespooons
Parsley
Season salt
Pepper
Parmesan cheese spinkled

Put in oven at 350

In the crockpot I put
medium bag of mixed veggies
can of mushrooms
sm can of cream of celery and cream of chicken
8 oz can of chicken broth
dried chopped oinions
parsley
chives

on high

cooked some macaroni shells

Still cooking, and I am unsure what I'll do -
probably dice the breats add half the veggies to the pan and bake and the other half to the crockpot and continue cooking.

I'll serve the product over noodles.

Did not have vermouth, etc. so I improvised.