Once again, I’ve been tempted to try a recipe I saw in the New York Times. Owing to problems I’ve had with the newspaper’s culinary offerings, I mostly avoid them. But I was intrigued by this concept of cut-up chicken roasted on a bed of apples, bulb fennel, and onions. Interesting combination: would it work?
Not to keep you in suspense, it did – beautifully. But only after substantial adaptations to the recipe.
A friend would be coming to dinner the evening I decided to try the dish. Just in case it wasn’t going to work, I made sure to have enough other good things to eat at the meal. With aperitifs, I set out some mortadella rolls (wrapped around roasted red pepper strips and cornichons) and a spicy chipotle crabmeat spread (purchased) to heap on baguette toast rounds.
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For a first course at the table, I made an old favorite, mozzarella in carozza. It’s slices of bread and mozzarella, separately dipped in egg beaten with grated parmigiano, then clapped together and fried in olive oil. Delicious, and quite filling. Tom makes a nice little anchovy-and-cream sauce for it.
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The main course, and star of the show – I hoped! – would be the chicken. Let me back up now and describe the recipe as it was given in the “Here to Help” section of the newspaper, and the dish as I actually made it.
For 4 to 6 servings, the recipe called for 2½ to 3 pounds of chicken thighs. That seemed reasonable, so I’d bought half that amount for 3 of us. But quantities of the other main ingredients were ridiculously stingy. Imagine, to feed 6 people:
- 1½ cups of thinly sliced onions – that’s 2 ounces per person or about 3 tablespoons after roasting
- 1 cup of thinly sliced fennel – less than 1½ ounces per person
- 1 thickly sliced apple – about 2 slices per person
That would be more like a modest condiment than a full-plate vegetable accompaniment. Even for my half quantity of chicken, I doubled the full-recipe quantities of these three ingredients.
There was one interesting seasoning: toasted and ground fennel seeds. I toasted 2 teaspoons of them in a tiny, dry cast-iron frying pan, then ground them in mortar and pestle. I’d never done that with fennel seeds before, and this aromatic little trick may turn out to have other uses.
I tossed half of the toasted fennel with the chicken thighs, along with salt, pepper, and a little olive oil, and the rest with the sliced fennel, onion, and apple, along with salt and more olive oil. (I used more fennel seed and olive oil than the recipe wanted: no surprise there.)
In late afternoon, I spread the vegetables on a sheet pan, laid on the thighs, and topped each with a little sprig of rosemary.
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Covered with foil, the pan sat peacefully on the kitchen counter until cooking time, when it was to go into a 425-degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes. All three of us had looked at that instruction and said No way! Indeed, after 30 minutes the chicken was barely colored, and the vegetables were still totally hard.
We all trooped back to the table and continued enjoying our mozzarella in carozza and glasses of white wine for an additional 20 minutes, when we checked again and declared the dish done.
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It was splendid. I was charmed by the way the flavors made a virtual culinary concerto. With the chicken as the lead instrument, I imagined the tangy Mutsu apple as a violin, the tenderly spicy fennel as an oboe, and the smoothly understated onion as a cello. I’ll admit that my table companions weren’t as rhapsodical about the dish as I was, but they agreed it was very good. And we had no trouble getting through most of the apple, fennel, and onion.
For dessert, I’d made another old favorite: a polenta berry cake. It was very good too.
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I’ve done very little sheet-pan cooking, but I can see how its ease and simplicity make it a versatile approach for either family or company dinners. Clearly, if you hit upon an inspired combination of flavors, you have a real winner.
Another Year in Recipes 
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