Meathenge is honored to have the very famous musician, artist & all around fun person, Amelia Ray step in for a little recipe action today. I haven’t seen her in quite a while, but it looks as though she’s doing just fine. And I have to say this recipe is pretty fricken cool. Just when you thought you’d had chicken every possible way, something like this rolls along. Let’s sit back and see what’s she’s gots.

Lemon Chicken (Ivory Coast Recipe)
Someone left an entire chicken in my freezer a couple of weeks ago. I don’t have an oven, so I searched around for a recipe for cooking a chicken in a pot on the stove. I found a dusty old Italian recipe book, and there, to my delight, was a lovely recipe for lemon chicken!

The list of ingredients was overwhelming in a very good way (1 chicken, garlic, dried figs, dates, olive oil, half an onion, red peperoncino, salt, pepper, a glass of broth, saffron, one lemon, almonds, pine nuts, 3-4 oranges, raisins, half a tomato, yoghurt, hard-boiled eggs, and some kind of sweet pickle sauce).
First I boiled about three eggs and set them aside to cool. The chicken came cleaned, so we didn’t have much to do there. I stuffed the chicken with two cloves of garlic, minced figs, and pitted dates. I lathered the baby in oil, and put it in a pot with half an uncut onion, the peperoncino, salt, and pepper. While the chicken was roasting (until golden), I melted the saffron in the broth. I used chicken broth, though I’m sure any kind would work. To the broth saffron mixture, I added the juice of a lemon, the almonds, and the pine nuts. Once the chicken was golden, I poured this mixture on top of it, and let it stew.
After about 40 minutes (recipe calls for 45 minutes), I added a half a bottle of champagne (instead of the oranges, since one of my guests was allergic to oranges), two tablespoons of raisins, and half a tomato. Then I let the baby stew for another half an hour (recipe calls for 40 minutes). I served the chicken on the cutting board, and we just hacked off pieces as we ate. It was so tender! We were supposed to pour yoghurt over the chicken, but the same guest who was allergic to oranges was also allergic to dairy, so we skipped that step. I used the yoghurt to thicken the gravy for those of us with no such allergy. I served it with rice noodles (though the recipe calls for rice pilaf). For the sweet pickled sauce, I used Patak’s aubergine pickle relish, which works really well with rice noodles. The hard-boiled eggs were also served as garnish.
It was so easy (and fun!) to make, and it didn’t take that long, at all. With prep time about two hours. The chicken was pretty small, though – I’d say about 3.5 – 4 kilos. The result was delicious, juicy, and gone in less than twenty minutes. The entire house smelled of yummy poultry delight, and the leftover champagne made for a great accompaniment.

I’m no professional meat photographer like Biggles, but I remembered to take a couple of shots during the process.
-amelia