Slow-cooked chicken with tomato, olives & white beans

This dish is all about harnessing that wonderful chicken fat, which you render at the beginning and use instead of oil. And it infuses the dish with a deeply delicious chicken flavour. This has loads of punch with just a few store cupboard-y ingredients.

ingredients

serves 3-4

• 3-4 chicken legs or 8 thighs
  2 onions, sliced
  4 garlic cloves, thickly sliced
  1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
  4 tbsp black olives
  4 sprigs of rosemary
  1 bay leaf
  1 x large jar (approx 400g drained weight) white beans or borlotti beans

instructions

Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan.

Place your legs skin-side down in a cold, large oven-proof pan and place it over a medium heat. Gently fry for 8-10 minutes without disturbing them until you can easily release them, then continue cooking for another 3-5 minutes, shuffling them about to prevent sticking.

Meanwhile, get on with slicing your onions and garlic. Remove the chicken from the pan, leaving all the chicken fat in there. Add the onions and garlic, scrape up any delicious stick brown bits, add some salt and fry for 10-12 minutes until they begin to soften and turn golden.

Add 1/2 the rosemary (you just need 3-4 small sprigs for the chicken) bay, tomatoes, olives, beans and any bean stock (or enough chicken stock or water to almost cover), season and nestle the chicken in the pan.

Return to a simmer before placing the remaining rosemary and some salt on top of the chicken and placing a lid on top.

Place in the oven for 25 minutes, then remove the lid for another 15 minutes until the skin is golden and crisp and the meat falls off the bone. Serve with a green salad and some mash if you like.