Lemon, Garlic and Olive Oil

If you have been following my blog for some time you must have noticed that Syrian cuisine, especially in Damascus, is very light on the spice side. In many many dishes salt and pepper, or allspice, is the only seasoning. We make up for this by using fresh strongly flavoured ingredients. We love lemon for example and we use it quite a lot in our food. Olive oil, fresh coriander and garlic all feature heavily in our cuisine.

These ingredients are often used in combinations. The most obvious example is green coriander and garlic. These are usually fried very gently in warm olive oil and used in an endless number of dishes.

Today's recipe uses one of these classic combination: lemon, garlic and olive oil. The three flavours matches perfectly together. They work very well with grilled chicken. You can use them as a marinade or to drizzle over your spatch-cooked barbecued chicken or even a dipping sauce.

Today's dish is one of my all time favourites and regular dish on my big family dinners. We always called this dish in our household Oven Potato with Lemon, Garlic and Oil. Although chicken is the main ingredient in this dish for some reason we always ignored its presence in the name. May be because the main flavour is not the chicken but the strongly flavoured potatoes. Anyway, if you don't like the name call it Lemon Chicken Roast or Oven Chicken and Potato or any other name you like.

You can use any cut of chicken you like. Thighs, legs, breasts, on or off the bone, with or without skin all works fine. I even used chicken wings only on occasions. Today I am using cubed chicken breast purely because this is what I had in the fridge. The only thing to keep in mind that you need to adjust cooking times depending on the cut and the size of chicken pieces you are using.

P.S. this dish is heavy on lemon , garlic and olive oil so if you don't like any of these ingredients this dish is not for you. Similarly if you are looking for a dish to cook for a romantic dinner and you are planning some bed-time activity then again this garlic infused dish is not for you.


Here is the recipe:

Chicken Breast 500g (or any chicken cut you like)
Potato 1kg
Garlic 8-10 cloves
Two lemons
Olive oil 100mls
Preserved chopped chillies (or Syrian red pepper paste) 2tbsp
Chilli powder (optional)
Salt 1tsp
Pepper 1tsp
Vegetable oil

Put the chicken in a freezer plastic bag. Add the crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper, olive oil and the chillies. Mix well and let marinade in the fridge for few hours.

Heat the oven to 200C.

Peel the potatoes and slice into 5mm slices. Deep fry the potato and vegetable oil till almost done.
Drain and layer the potato in the roasting dish. Arrange the chicken on top of the potato. Add all the marinade juices to the roasting tin. Top with hot water up to the level of the potato.

Bake in the oven till the chicken is fully cooked. You will need 25-30 minutes for chicken breast. If you are using thighs or chicken breast whole on the bone you will need 45-60 minutes and you will need to turn the chicken for the skin to brown on both sides.

Serve with Arabic bread.