Spanish Chicken or Blackened Mess?

By accident the other day, I happened to catch a little of Nigella Lawson's TV show.  She was making a super easy oven-baked Spanish chicken.  I found the recipe online and tried it out last night.  Before baking it looked gorgeous.

After baking, not so much.

Before dinner, I told my husband I would have to blog about this chicken as a major FAIL.  He insisted that it was not a failure at all.  Turns out he likes onion and garlic blackened in olive oil.  Actually the chicken and potatoes were quite tasty, and even the chorizo was good if one could look past the heavily blackened exterior.

I'm pretty sure the finished dish is not supposed to look like this.  I'm not sure what went wrong.  I did trim some of the fat from the chicken thighs before cooking.  I also used Mexican chorizo rather than Spanish.  It was a soft chorizo with no casing.  Maybe that's why it charred.  The onions? I don't know.  I cut them in fair sized pieces.  Maybe next time -- and, yes, I think there will be a next time -- I'll lower the temperature a bit.  The only changes I made from Nigella's recipe were to reduce everything (I used four thighs rather than twelve), lightly salt the chicken, and I added a couple of grinds of black pepper over the whole thing and  three large cloves of garlic, peeled and quartered.  Click here to go to Nigella's recipe.  Don't judge her recipe by my blackened mess.

Nigella's Chicken Schnitzel

I once heard an interview with Michael Caine on NPR where he recalled growing up with a somewhat opinionated and unenlightened father.  His father apparently refused to eat chicken as it was not a manly meat.  Whether it is manly or not, we eat a fair amount of chicken at our house, so I'm always looking for new ways to prepare it.  The other day, I stumbled on a recipe from Nigella Lawson for chicken schnitzel with bacon and white wine.

It's not really a proper schnitzel, but it did sound interesting, so I gave it a try.

The sauce looks mostly like bacon grease here, but there is wine in there!

The chicken was flavorful. I used a hickory smoked bacon for a smoky flavor and some Yellowtail Moscato, which added a touch of sweetness.   I also added a sprinkling of salt and pepper, which the recipe did not include.  The chicken itself was a little thick.  I had cut the breasts in half, but I think next time (if I am not too lazy) I will go the extra step and pound them into very thin pieces.

If you aren't afraid of unmanly meat, you can find the recipe on Nigella Lawson's website.