Mr Slater's chicken with orange and olive sauce

Nigel Slater's first book Real Fast Food is not a glamorous, glossy cookbook full of beautiful photos and nice, recycled paper, it's a small dog eared, oil splattered paperback printed on the kind of paper you find in school text books with a few illustrations here and there. But, printed on that paper are words that inspire pure, unadulterated food lust. It's the lists that I really love: 

"Some good things to put in a ham sandwich", (Nigel suggests sauteed dandelion leaves, pine nuts and raisins for one).
  

"Good things to add to scrambled eggs" "(a tablespoon of juices from the roasting pan)". 

"Good things to put in an omelette", "(nasturtium leaves and flowers, shredded and dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice)". 

"A dozen ways to cheer up a bag of frozen prawns", (my favourite with suggestions like sandwiched between hot toast with butter, mango chutney and rashers of hot bacon) and "Secret snacks and the quick fix" (tahini drizzled on dry toast, condensed milk boiled for an hour). 

There are more too, all equally as tempting and ingenious, enough to make me want to rush to the kitchen and try every suggestion.

But there are also stand alone recipes, many of them, all with the virtue of taking less than 30 minutes to prepare. This particular recipe caught my eye because of the use of both oranges and olives, giving it a distinctive Spanish flavour in my opinion. 

I remember a friend once flicking through this cookbook and immediately giving it back in disdain because, as she surmised, "there are no pictures of what it's supposed to look like". I can partly understand. It's helpful to see the finished product, helping you decide whether it looks appealing or not, but there's something so old-school and attractive about using your own imagination to fill in the gaps. 

This is where really good writers cut their teeth. If they can invoke the appetite with a mere description or a list, making your mouth water with simple printed letters, they have indeed earned the right to call themselves a food writer. Nigel's recipe sounded tasty: Fresh floral orange, slightly bitter olives and aromatic chicken stock all pulled together in a sauce to be poured over well browned, deep mahogany chicken legs. It would be gratifying to think that Nigel trusts us enough as cooks to reproduce the recipe ourselves to far outshine any photo, but, I suspect the truth is that photographs were just way too expensive for his first book.

Recipe : Chicken with orange and black olives

Adapted from Real Fast Food by Nigel Slater

2 tbsp olive oil

2 oz butter

2 chicken legs

1 cup chicken stock

1 tsp dried thyme or rosemary

a handful of sliced black olives

1 orange, cut into thin slices

1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped finely

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil and half the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat and fry the chicken on both sides until really browned. (I had an idea to press down on the chicken with a heavy object, like in the chicken under a brick recipe, in the hope that the chicken would really caramelise and crisp, but the darn chicken kept slipping about and so I abandoned the idea)

Add the chicken stock, thyme or rosemary, olives and orange slices and cover the pan. (I used two pieces of foil for this as my frying pan has no lid). Reduce the heat to low and simmer the chicken for about 20 minutes. 

Nigel suggests checking the chicken is cooked after this time and removing to a plate to rest. I wanted a crispy skin and no uncooked chicken risks so I adapted by laying the chicken on a baking dish and placing in the oven with the potatoes for a further 20 minutes at 375oF. 

Whether you set the cooked chicken aside or place in the oven, you can now finish your sauce.

Add the parsley and stir well. Taste the sauce and season carefully, then turn the heat back up to medium to high and let the sauce bubble softly until it has thickened slightly and reduced. Add the remaining butter and stir well to melt. Your finished sauce should be glossy and very aromatic. Keep warm on a very low heat until the chicken is ready. Pour the sauce over the chicken legs, (I removed most of the orange slices before serving) and eat with some baby roast potatoes or another type of carb such as rice or noodles.