40 Clove Garlic Chicken

Ingredients

1 whole roasting chicken, cut into pieces
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
40 garlic cloves
1 1/2 cups Latah Creek Pinot Gris
3 tbsp sweet vermouth, divided
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp heavy cream
freshly ground salt and pepper

Directions

Season chicken liberally with salt and pepper.

Heat butter and olive oil in large pan over medium high heat. Sauté chicken skin side down until brown, about 4 minutes. Turn over with tongs (do not pierce skin) and brown on other side, another 4-5 minutes. When chicken is brown, transfer to plate.

Add garlic cloves to pan and sauté 2-3 minutes per side, or until evenly browned. Our pan was a little hot, so the garlic was a little more browned than normal, but it did not affect the taste at all!

Add wine and 2 tablespoons sweet vermouth, bring to a simmer and scrape bottom of the pan.

Return chicken to pan and sprinkle with thyme. Cover and simmer 20-30 minutes or until chicken is cooked through, 165ºF internal temperature. Remove chicken to platter and keep warm.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour and 1/2 cup sauce from pan then whisk it back into pan. Add cream and last of the sweet vermouth. Cook 3 minutes, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Pour sauce and garlic over chicken and serve hot.

Ellena's Notes

This is a great recipe discovered by my daughter, Natalie. She prepared it for Mike and me a few years ago and we both fell in love. As a side dish, Natalie first made this with rice, but for us she used wide egg noodles. So choose any side dish you’d like and enjoy. The sauce is “to–die–for good” ladled over everything. One thing to say is that 40 cloves of garlic seem like A LOT, you know, but since the garlic is whole, not cracked, you don't have any overwhelming garlic flavor, just an accent flavor. In fact, next time I make this I am going to double the amount of garlic cloves because I like to eat a piece of garlic with every bite and there just isn't enough when I have to share with everyone else.

P.S. To make life easier for me, I bought the container of already peeled garlic from the grocery store. If you choose to buy whole heads of garlic, you will need 3 to 4 of them. Bring a pot of water to boil and drop the unpeeled garlic cloves in the water for 60 seconds; this will allow the skins to easily peel right off.