Nigella's Spanish Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes

After seeing this recipe cooked on the recent TV series by Nigella Lawson, I just knew I had to make it soon! I prefer chicken on the bone in general, love both chorizo and potatoes, what more could I ask for?

The best part about this dish is how easy it is to make, as in theory its just chicken pieces, the potatoes, sliced chorizo, bit of onion and a twist of orange and whacked in the oven, however that would be far to easy for me and I decided instead to buy and joint two whole chickens instead, as they were on offer...needless to say I'm never going to win any prizes for butchery but it worked out at very good value, as I now have a sort-of-crown of chicken in the freezer for next time and we had enough meat leftover for our lunchboxes, and this was after feeding five of us with this dish! I also managed to pretend I was a sort of Nigella by using my old favourite Joseph & Joseph chopping board! Though she does luckily seem to have them in every colour going, mine is plain old white!

Unfortunately I still have not managed to work out a way to get the pictures from my Iphone to here, without distorting so they do not show the dish in its best light, however it really was delicious so I urge you to try it! If anyone has any suggestions please let me know! Edited: Have cracked it now thanks :)

This bad picture is the two assembled trays, ready to go into the oven. The recipe calls for red onions but I managed to forget and buy white ones, this was also down though to me deciding to cook this for dinner, halfway around Tesco's and trying to remember the ingredients!

  

What really lifts the whole dish is the orange zest, it gives the dish a subtle hint and helps to cut through the lovely reddish orange paprika-hued oil and juices, without tasting too orangey!

The smell when this is cooking in the oven really gets your tastebuds going and had us all eagerly waiting it to be cooked through, so much so this is the final picture, inside my oven! Just couldn't wait to take pictures sorry!

This is the recipe, which I roughly followed, mainly from memory. It says about basting halfway through, though I did it every 5-10 minutes as it looked a little dry on top.

2 x 15ml olive oil
12 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on - mine was a mix of thighs, legs and wings
750g chorizo sausages, baby ones or cut up - not sure if this a typo, I used a 250g packet and seemed about right..
1kg new potatoes, halved
2 red onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tsp dried oregano
grated zest of 1 orange - I used two though as mine were quite petite

Pre-heat oven, 220o/ fan 190o

Oil the chicken, place in two baking trays, divide the remaining ingredients between and bake for an hour or so, turn the trays around in the oven, swapping shelves if needed and baste. Though I did it every 5-10 minutes as it looked a little dry on top. And thats it! How easy and simple, for a really delicious dinner too!

I also seasoned the dish with sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, though realised after it was not stated in the original recipe, not sure if I imagined her doing it perhaps?

A salad would be nice with this, however it was a cold night and I did buttered savoy cabbage instead, plus a tray of roasted red and yellow peppers,with garlic and a pinch of smoked paprika over, which was a great side dish.

And of course I just had to snap this little fella!