Chicken Vesuvio

Rachel Ray's Chicken Vesuvio

This is the recipe that started it all!  She made this recipe during the last week of December, and it was during this episode that I decided to do this project.  It looked so tasty, and I knew that I would probably just add it to a pile of recipes that I would NEVER make.  So, this bog was born! :-)

I halved the recipe and here is how it goes.

I started by getting my roasting pan out and washing it (Hehehe, it was covered it DUST!).  I put it on the large middle eye of my stove and covered the bottom with about 1/4 cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) and heated it over med/high heat.  Then, I added 2 large potatoes each cut into 6 wedges and covered them with fresh ground salt and course ground pepper.

After the potato wedges browned on each side for 10 minutes, I added 6 cloves of crushed garlic, 1 seeded and quartered red chili pepper, 1 TBS or oregano, and 1 bay leaf and let it cook for an additional 4 minutes.

Once that was finished, I took it all out of the skillet and added 8 chicken legs and thighs.  The meat was then covered in fresh ground pepper and kosher salt.  I browned these on both sides for a total time of about 25 minutes.

When the chicken was done, I took it out of the skillet and deglazed the pan with a cup of chicken stock and 1/3 bottle of dry white wine (I googled that, and found out that Sauvignon Blanc fit that category.  Also, I love Sutter Home! :-))

Once the yummy little bits were scraped up from the pan, I added everything back to the roasting pan.  Finally, it went into the oven at 350 degrees for 35 minutes to finish cooking.

The recipe called for serving this recipe with ciabatta rolls.  Well, I couldn't find that.  Instead, I got some submarine sandwich rolls and toasted them up in my warming drawer for sopping up the yummy juices.  After 35 minutes of the chicken cooking, I added 2 Tbs of butter and 1/2 cup of frozen sweet peas and let it cook for 5 more minutes.

Here is the final result:

It was DELICIOUS!  I took a plate to my mom and she said that it was very good!  She even used a spoon to drink up some of the yummy juice! Darren gave it an A+ and turned his bowl up to get all the juice out of the bottom.  Personally, I thought it was fantastic, and I would be more that happy to make it again.  I am sure that this is my favorite so far!