Ooh la la!

Or in english "I say, that is a lot of garlic!"

This is another french dish which I absolutely love and my son loves it too. There is so much garlic, but after being roasted it is all soft and sweet and just delicious. You can serve it with your favourite bread or with mash and veg to make a big meal out it. My son is currently challenging gluten, so I made an unbelievably good spelt baguette to go with it which I will post soon. It is a really simple meal to make and great for when you are having guests because you can just put it in the oven and not do anything else until it it is done.

Once again this recipe is adapted from a french cook book that I own.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Ingredients

• 1 chicken, skinned, approx 1.6kg (if you want to serve 4 people)
• 2 celery stalks, including leaves
• 40 cloves of garlic, unpeeled (take off the thin papery skins, but leave on the inner thick one)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 large leek, cut into about 4 chunks
• 1 1/2 cups of home made chicken stock (or water, but if you use water add another chunk of leek and celery)
• 4 springs parsley

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200℃
2. Put a chopped celery stalk, sprig of parsley and 6 garlic cloves into the chicken cavity. Tie the legs together. Brush with oil and season with salt.
3. Put 10 cloves of garlic in the bottom of a casserole dish, along with the rest of the parsley, a chopped celery stick and the leek.
4. Put the chicken in the dish. Add the remaining garlic around the chicken and pour over the stock (or water) and what is left of the oil.
5. Cover and bake for 1hour and 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked and the juices run clear.
6. Lift out the chicken and strain the liquid into a saucepan. Reserve all the garlic.
7. Boil the liquid for a few minutes to reduce it slightly
8. Cut the chicken into serving portions (good kitchen scissors make this job easy), pour over the juices and scatter with garlic. Serve with bread or veg (the garlic is particularly good spread over bread).

Variations
Amines - leave the skin on the chicken.
Salicylates - Add 4 sprigs of thyme, 2 of rosemary and a roughly chopped carrot to the pot.
You could also use chicken pieces instead of a whole chicken (for example if you only like breast or if you can't be bothered to cut up a whole one). Cooking time will come down to 45mins - 1hour depending on the size of the pieces.