Mediterranean Chicken Dinner

Filled with herbs, lots of garlic, lemon, artichokes and olives, we are making what I like to call my Mediterranean chicken, it's just so simple and so delicious, a really easy one but I also feel like it's one of those things that it's so simple to make in a skillet and just bring it to the table and it's just so special to make for a big crowd as it is to make just for a couple people, it's wonderful and I'm thrilled to share it with you. So I've got my oven preheating to 400F, these are artichoke hearts, whole artichoke hearts that I buy in a can, you can also just buy the quartered artichokes if you want to, I like the whole ones because I feel like when you cut them in half they're just so pretty on your final dish but you by all means can use absolutely artichoke quarters. I also have some green Castelvetrano olives, which are so delicious, they're pitted, but you know, makes my life a little bit easier. And then in here, I should say over here, I have my cast iron skillet here preheating with a little bit of olive oil, I want that to get really nice and hot when we add the chicken in. I'm just making four pieces today, but you're going to need four, six, eight, whatever, think of this as just like a method versus just like an exact recipe, because you can double this up very very easily. We've got boneless, nope, nope, nope, boning, skin on, chicken thighs, and I want to season them really really well on both sides, because once these go into my pan, I want them to just render a lot of fat, get really delicious and crispy, especially in that skin. Let's see if my pan is ready, yeah! Let's get them in, they're trimmed, they're cleaned up, good to go. And I'm just going to leave these in here, I'm going to season the second side as well, and I am just going to leave them here for a good 10-15 minutes, not too high of a temperature because all that's going to do is burn your salt and pepper, but I also just want to make sure that I'm taking the time to really render that fat, which is why I have it on medium, between medium and medium high, and not all the way high. In the meantime, all I'm going to do is chop up a lot of garlic, I have a mixture here of some thyme and some rosemary, ow that splattered me! I'm not going to need all of it, goodbye! I'm not going to need all of them, but I am going to just take some rosemary and thyme and give it a nice little chop along with the garlic. Chicken is perfection, the skin is nice and golden and crispy, it cooked for about 15 minutes on this side, about 12-15 minutes, and then on the opposite side it only cooked for about 5 minutes, it doesn't have to be fully cooked through because it's going in the oven. I discarded some of that chicken rendering fat, but I left a little bit behind because I don't know about you, but a little rendered chicken fat can only mean one thing. Flavortown! And I like me some flavor, I don't know about you, but I like me some flavor. This is already smelling insane, just going to give that a few seconds to get that garlic going, deglaze with a smidgen of wine, optional, just a little, just a teeny tiny bit. You know? And look, it lifts up all of those bits from the bottom, again, look at the color of that! All of those bits that were stuck are now no longer. And now I'm going to go ahead and add in a little bit of stock, a little bit of chicken stock, which is just my bouillon powder. I'll go ahead and add in my herbs. Oh! I didn't even chop them! What was I thinking? Give them a nice little chop, just remember it was just your rosemary and thyme and then we're going to finish it with some parsley. And then I'm just going to add a smidgen of salt, not much because the chicken is already really well salted. We're going to add olives to this, which are salty. The chicken stock is salty so we don't have to add a whole whole lot here and I'm just going to wait for this to bubble up and come to a boil, it's only going to take a second or so. Now, make sure you have your oven hot and preheated to 400F because once we bring everybody back into the pool, it has to go into the oven for about 15 minutes or so or until the thickest part of your chicken thigh reaches about 170F, which we know between 170F and 175F for dark meat chicken is really my preferred temperature. Just one of the important things here is that your chicken, like the skin of your chicken doesn't touch any liquid so that it stays nice and crispy. So get that in there and I'll show you what I like to do with my artichokes and my olives, look how beautiful! First of all, any of that that rendered, that collected in the bottom of your plate, those chickeny juices, make sure you're adding them back in. Then take your artichoke hearts because look at how beautiful, right? So not only delicious, visually very appealing! You know? We're going to finish this off with a little bit of lemon when it comes out of the oven and it is just the stuff that my dreams are made of, I don't know about yours, but my dreams are made of mostly food and they look a little something like this. Scatter your olives through, pop this into your preheated oven, like I said, 15 minutes or so or until your chicken is fully cooked through. Then we'll chop up some parsley, get a lemon ready to juice over the top, thrilled! I am thrilled! Hope you are too! Chicken came out of the oven, it was only in there like 10-ish minutes, not even, look at that! Look at that gorgeous juice, that beautiful sauce, if you were to make like a roast potato, you can serve this just with a baguette, whatever your heart desires, but it is beautiful, full of flavor, really lovely crispy skin, I don't know if you can hear it, I'm going to try and get my mic close to it, let's see if you can hear it. That, my friend, is what I call gorgeous, gorgeous and beautimous. I'm going to take a lemon, I'm not going to go heavy because I can always just serve wedges, but I like to drizzle it right in that warm sauce and it just, it almost like brings everything to life, it's fantastic. I also have parsley that I chopped up, add that right in there, and that is beautiful. Now imagine this, hear me out, okay? You've got a lemon tablecloth on your table, okay? You bring that to the table along with some roast potatoes, maybe a grilled or roasted veg, or actually maybe just a simple green salad of arugula, olive oil, lemon juice and a pinch of salt, chilled white wine, life is blissful, okay? That is the vibe with this, that's the vibe I want for you, and I know you're just going to love it, and the chicken is so tender, look at this, look I don't want to get rid of the skin because I want to take a nice picture for you, look at that, the chicken just falls apart, it is so tender and so gorgeous, it's going to be hot though so I'll give myself a minute. I can actually really smell the garlic and the thyme and the rosemary. Goodbye! It's everything I wanted it to be and so much more, go to LauraintheKitchen.com for the written recipe, I hope that you have enjoyed spending time with me, I will see you in the next one. Oh! I lost a piece! Bye bye! Oh!