Roast chicken with grapes, olives and rosemary

Harvest roast chicken with grapes, olives and rosemary

From “Smitten Kitchen Cookbook” by Deb Perelman

Ingredients

Eight pieces of chicken, bone-in and skin on

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup seedless grapes

1 cup pitted Kalamata olives

2 small shallots, thinly sliced

½ cup white wine

½ cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

Method

Preheat oven to 450. In a stove-burner safe roasting pan (or oven-safe skillet), heat oil over medium high heat. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and cook until nicely golden brown, skin side down, before flipping over to brown the other side. Add grapes, olives and shallots. Cook in oven for about 20 minutes until done.

Remove chicken to serving platter. Put pan back on stove top. Add wine, broth and rosemary and cook over high heat until it’s reduced into a slightly thickened sauce.

Rating: Quite reasonably tasty, and the grape-olive combination works. I don’t give it a CR (company rating) because it’s not really particularly attractive and the sauce is a tad oily, but otherwise it’s repeatable. It’s quite similar to a recipe I’ve made previously from Martha Stewart Living Everyday Food  using cut up chicken instead of Cornish hens. That version is slightly prettier and lacks the olives. Both are a pretty good way to use up grapes that come in rather overly large packages for small families. So this appeals to my non-food-wasting sensibilities. 

Or if you're in the market for really low-brow food, there's this option.