However, if the bread is a delicious gourmet toasted sandwich in a fancy restaurant, he will eat it with gusto.  Similarly, he'll polish off a plate of chips but won't touch a baked potato.  So you see, a finicky eater.  My Afrikaans Ouma would have said ‘sommer vol nonsens’.

As far as his preference of flavours goes, he leans strongly towards the spicy flavours of Indian cuisine or the sweet, salty, sour tastes of South East Asian food. The recipe I share with you today is his favourite chicken dish.  And it is very distinctly neither Indian nor South East Asian in origin.  I can only assume he likes it because it combines common sense ingredients or ingredients that naturally go well together and deliver a dish that is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Let me tell you more about it!

NIGELLA LAWSON - FOREVER SUMMER

Nigella Lawson. Enough said. I could just stop there and you would know that this is an easy and delicious dish.  

Love her or hate her, Nigella Lawson is one of those cooks (even she doesn't call herself a chef), who develops recipes for real people. Even though it's not her first cookbook, Forever Summer is the first Nigella book I ever bought. I fell in love with the colourful food and the easy, fuss-free recipes.  

I've made the slow-roasted garlic and lemon chicken recipe so often that I could probably make it in my sleep. It combines the flavours of the Mediterranean - olive oil, lemons, garlic and white wine - and gives you a dish that takes care of itself in the oven while you get on with other things. The end result is juicy, flavourful chicken with a crisp skin and lots of lovely sauce.  As usual, I give the recipe as she gives it in her book, with my own thoughts and notes in italics.

SLOW-ROASTED GARLIC AND LEMON CHICKEN

Serves 4 - 6

1 chicken, cut into 10 pieces (now I don't know where Nigella buys her chicken, but Woolies doesn't have a chicken I can joint into 10 pieces for six people.  So I just bought eight chicken portions - four thighs and four legs)

1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves

2 lemons, cut into eighths

Small handful of fresh thyme (I never have fresh thyme in the house - dried it is.)

3 tablespoons of olive oil

150 ml of white wine

salt and black pepper

1 red onion, quartered (My addition - it doesn't appear in Nigella's recipe but I think it works.)

Pre-heat the oven to 160°C.  Put the chicken pieces in a roasting tin and add the garlic cloves, lemon chunks, onion (if using) and the thyme.  (At this point, I also sprinkled over some chicken spice.) Add the olive oil and using your hands, mix everything together, then spread the mixture out, making sure all the chicken pieces are skin side up.

Pour over the wine, season with salt and pepper and cover tightly with foil. Put in the oven to roast for 2 hours.  Remove the foil from the roasting tin, turn up the heat to 200°C and leave the chicken uncovered for another 30 minutes. (Very important note: Apply some common sense here. Since I didn't have Nigella's gigantic chicken, I left the chicken covered on 160°C for just over an hour and then took the foil off and continued at 180°C for another thirty minutes or so until the skin was crispy and the chicken was done).

Before serving, squeeze the garlic out of their skins and serve with the chicken.  This is a lovely, rustic recipe that I would just serve straight from the tin with some couscous or mashed potato to eat with those lovely juices.  

***