Oven-Roasted Drumsticks with Garlic and Rosemary

If you’re hosting a dinner for say, 10 people, chicken drumsticks are pretty easy to work with. You save the trouble of roasting a whole chicken and also, you don’t get equal portions of meat per person. As mentioned on my Instagram post, here’s the recipe!

Ingredients (I have omitted the numbers. Adjust accordingly!)

• Chicken drumsticks
• Garlic cloves
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Lemon, sliced
• Smoked paprika
• Dried rosemary
• Olive oil
• White onions, chopped

Steps:

1. Chicken should be at room temperature – easier to handle as it won’t be very stiff.
2. Score the meat with a sharp knife – this allows the marinade to penetrate deeper.
3. Marinate the chicken with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, garlic cloves, paprika and lemon slices. Keep the chickens in a large Ziploc bag if you have one, or a plastic container that is big enough. [I marinated mine for at least 3 hours.]
4. 30 minutes before cooking, take the meat out and pre-heat your oven to “full whack”, or the maximum temperature. Place a deep glass dish into the oven to heat it up.
5. Add oil into the glass dish, add the chopped onions, and place the chicken (skin side up) + everything else in the marinade, on top of the onions. Bring the temperature down to about 200°C and let it cook for about 30 – 40 minutes. Remember to always baste.
6. Once the meat is almost cooked, bring the dish up towards the upper levels of your oven and allow the skin to crisp up.
7. Serve and EAT immediately!

Note: If you have leftover gravy, toss some pasta (of your choice) in it. Or, mix some gravy with a little balsamic vinegar and drizzle it over some salad leaves e.g. rocket/arugula/radicchio etc.

 

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Roasted Garlic Sour Cream

Another recipe to mark the last day of 2017! Potatoes are pretty much a frequent staple in parties. Roasted, boiled, mashed, on a pie, deep-fried into chips etc. These are great methods to cook them but what about the sauces? Chilli and Ketchup are common favourites but they might get boring after a while.

I’ve improvised a sour cream recipe that was inspired by Nigel Slater. His Salmon and Roasted Garlic Cream recipe involves blending double cream together with roasted garlic and ladling the mixture over salmon that are on crispbreads.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 garlic cloves, skins on
• A pinch of salt and pepper
• Approx 1 tbsp lemon juice, to taste
• Grated lemon zest
• A small tub of sour cream (200ml)

Steps:

1. Roast the garlic in a 180°C oven until it is soft.
2. Spoon out the sour cream into a medium-sized bowl. Mix it gently to loosen the cream.
3. Squeeze the roasted garlic into the sour cream and dispose of the skins. Make sure you mash the garlic.
4. Add the lemon juice, zest, salt, and pepper.
5. Mix well.
6. Eat it with boiled potatoes, spread it on bread with egg slices and bacon, use it in salads too!

This is extremely easy to make, full of flavour, and can be totally customised. To make it more luxurious, add a few drops of truffle oil to give it “boomz”. This can be used as an appetizer: a bowl of it in the centre of the table with breadsticks around it, or a dollop of cream over smoked salmon.