Chicken Vesuvio

Tonight I made a recipe I saw on Giada's DeLaurentiis' Every Day Italian cooking show several months back. I wasn't able to make it when I first watched the show because I didn't have a dutch oven that could withstand the heat of a 450 degree oven. But now I do! So I went to my recipe box on the Food Network's website and printed out the recipe I have been waiting to try. It incorporates another one of my favorite foods (artichokes) so I knew it would be a hit. It also reminded me of when I was younger and my mom would bake chicken with potatoes in the same pot. It is a really easy recipe to make and actually very cheap since it calls for dried herbs instead of fresh and has only a few ingredients. This chicken dish is one that you could turn to in a fix because chances are that you have all the ingredients you need at any given time.

Chicken Vesuvio

3 tablespoons olive oil
4 chicken thighs with skin and bones
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 pounds small red-skinned potatoes, halved
4 large garlic cloves, minced
3/4 cup dry white wine
3/4 cup chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
8 ounces frozen artichoke hearts or 1 cup frozen lima beans, thawed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Heat the oil in large ovenproof pot over high heat. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. Working in 2 batches if necessary, cook the chicken in the pot until golden brown on all sides, about 10 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a bowl. Carefully add the potatoes to the same pot and cook until they are golden brown, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute. Add the wine and stir to scrape up any brown bits on the bottom of the pot. Add the broth, oregano, and thyme. Return the chicken to the pot. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Cover and bake in the oven until the chicken is cooked through, about 20 minutes. (Picture below is after the chicken baked in the oven.)

Transfer the chicken to a platter. Arrange the potatoes around chicken.

Add the artichoke hearts to the sauce in the pot. Cover and simmer over high heat until the artichokes are tender, stirring often, about 4 minutes.

Turn heat to low. Stir in the butter. Pour the sauce over chicken and potatoes, and serve.

I took the skins off of our chicken thighs before serving and used Benecol (low cholesterol butter for those of you who have the pleasure of not knowing what it is) where it called for butter in order to bring this recipe closer to our healthy recipe standards. After reading the reviews of the recipe on the Food Network's website and discovering that there were a few people who felt that the dish was bland, I generously added fresh ground pepper to the sauce after warming the artichokes for added flavor. The chicken was very tender and the potatoes were perfectly cooked.