Nigella Lawson's Chicken in a Pot with Lemon and Orzo

The weather has been pretty cool for the past couple of weeks so I've been on the lookout for warming dishes such as this--not that it really matters to my family; we have been known to knock back steaming bowls of Portuguese bean soup in the dead of summer. But still, I do find these dishes satisfying when the weather chooses to cooperate!

Here's the cast!

I rinsed the chicken and blotted it with paper towels before I seasoned the cavity and put it in, breast side down, into the hot oil of a Dutch oven.

The idea is to get some color on the breast since it is the only part of the chicken not to be submerged in liquid later on. I could have got a bit more golden on it.

Chopped garlic and lemon zest went into the oil around the chicken and over the top.

Then I added the sliced carrots and leeks. It was smelling pretty good already.

The recipe called for flake salt--fortunately, I had some. I think kosher would have been fine, too.

I added enough water to bring the level up to where the golden part of the breast began--maybe 2/3 of the way up the legs.

I rarely cook with tarragon but I think I should start. it's got a really nice anise-y smell but it's not overpowering.

I added black pepper and red chili flakes to the liquid and a sprinkling of pepper went onto the chicken as well.

In went the juice of two lemons (I lost a seed but since I think I also found the seed when I was eating, it worked out).

The mixture was brought to a boil, then I covered it and put it into the oven at 350F for 90 minutes. It's interesting that there were only three cloves of garlic in there but I could really smell them in there.

In the meantime, I measured out the 300g. of orzo--kind of annoying that the recipe didn't call for the full box because now I have a box in the fridge that's really not enough to make anything else. Ah.

I chopped flat-leaf parsley and left that for later, too.

After the 90 minute mark, I stirred the orzo into the liquid, covered the pot, and put it back into the oven for an additional 30 minutes.

The chicken was so tender, I could pull it apart with a fork. I picked out the bones as well as I could but the long cooking time meant some of the smaller bones, like the vertebrae, had fallen apart quite a bit. Tom was the lucky guy who found a piece of that.

I stirred the chicken meat into the orzo and vegetables, then topped it with the chopped parsley. I love one dish dinners and this was perfect. Chris tasted it and mentioned that it tasted like a chicken dish of Paula Deen's that I used to make called Chicken Bog. I completely forgot about that one. The orzo in Nigella's dish was a nice change from rice and, uh, the name is just a tad more elegant!

Here's the promised link:

Nigella's Chicken in a Pot with Lemon and Orzo