Baked Chicken, Artichoke Hearts, and Cannellini

During the course of COVID quarantine, I have come up with and refined a baked cannellini, artichoke, and chicken dish that pleases the both of us greatly. The flavors are delicious and the preparation is easy. I went through several iterations, a half dozen at least, before reducing the dish to what I think is its essence, by paring away unnecessary ingredients.

Gone from the various versions of the dish are white wine, chicken stock, onions, leeks,olives, fennel, and various spices such as cumin and coriander: they were good but not essential. One of the biggest lessons a chef can learn is how to pare a dish back to its essence and to wow diners with the quality of a few ingredients instead of awing them with a lot of ingredients. It takes a discipline born of years in the kitchen.

There are three different ways to make this dish, depending on the amount of effort that you want to expend and how calorie conscious you are. The pictures below are of the lowest fat version, which tastes really good, but not nearly as good as the higher fat versions. But no matter how you make it, at its heart, the dish is a layer of chicken thighs covered in a layer of cannellini mixed with artichoke hearts, lots of herbs, garlic, and lemon zest.

Baked Chicken Thigh on Herbed Cannellini

Garlic and Herbs From the Garden

Each time I make this dish, the amount and mix of herbs varies depending on my mood and what's growing outside. The idea is to have a lot of fresh herbs in the beans, not necessarily any particular mix of herbs. This version as you can see has a lot of parsley and more moderate amounts of rosemary, thyme, and sage. I often include oregano; I'm not sure why I did not this time other than my oregano plant is pretty beat right now from the brutal summer sun.

Chop the Parsley Fine; Mince the Harder Herbs

I chop the parsley finely, while the woodier herbs﹘thyme, rosemary, and sage﹘I mince just as finely as I can. I use no shortage of minced garlic in the dish; you see probably six cloves minced on the cutting board. One of the keys to this dish is lemon. The first incarnation of the dish included lemon slices and lemon juice, the next lemon slices only, and the final version has been refined to just the zest of lemon.

You see my microplane in the photo above. If you don't have one, get one today. I have worn out dozens of them over the past 20 years. They are indispensable for grating hard spices such as nutmeg, hard chocolate, hard cheeses, and for zesting all manner of citrus. Microplane zesters are not expensive and they are indispensable. It's not often that I recommend a piece of kitchen equipment; this one is a no-brainer.

Layer of Seasoned Bone-In Chicken Thighs

Spray a baking dish with pan spray and layer in your chicken thighs. For roasting chicken, you'll be much happier if you roast the thighs bone-in. I never recommend roasting breasts. Your three options are lowest fat, skin off and trimmed as above; intermediate fat, skin on and browned; and most fat, skin on and raw. I could also have seared the skin thighs before roasting them, but I don't see that as adding a lot of flavor, not enough to justify dirtying another pan.

Each dish is slightly different in its own way. The low-fat version is the least tasty, but the best for you if you're watching your calories as we are. The browned skin version leaves behind much of the skin fat while bringing a delightful caramelized fried chicken flavor to the dish. The raw skin version lets all of the skin fat cook into the beans yielding the tastiest and most unctuous dish at the expense of extra calories.

If you skin your chicken thighs, save the skins to make stock at a later date. If you're not going to use them right away, or you don't have enough to make a pot of stock, you can put them in a bag in the freezer. I also collect all the bones after dinner to add to my next batch of stock.

Chicken Covered by Cannellini and Artichokes

One thing that appeals to me about this dish is that it uses canned cannellini and canned quartered artichoke hearts from my pantry. Would it be awesome to cook your own cannellini from dried and pare down and cook artichoke hearts? It would. But I don't want to invest that much labor into an easy weeknight dinner.

For baking this dish, I use a very old (lets call it 40 years old) half hotel pan, my favorite half pan from the restaurant. It is very heavy duty and of a quality that you can no longer find at any restaurant supply house. By all means, use any baking dish you like, be it glass, ceramic, terra cotta, enameled cast iron, raw cast iron, lined copper, lined aluminum, or stainless. The pan doesn't really matter. You just need to size the recipe to your pan. The recipe at the end of this post is sized to a commercial half pan.

In a large bowl, mix the white beans, artichokes, herbs, lemon zest, and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper. For a full-on luxurious high fat dish, drizzle in a couple tablespoons of olive oil as well, though I did not for this dish.

Put the bean mixture over the chicken thighs and then cover the pan. Roast in a moderate oven (350F) until the chicken is tender and ready to fall off the bone. A fully packed pan like this took every bit of three hours to cook. I've cooked the same dish in the same pan with only four thighs instead of eight and it brought the cook time down by half an hour, forty-five minutes because the chicken pieces were not packed in tightly together.

While Dinner is in the Oven, Ed and Ann Will Play

Three hours of cook time gave us plenty of time to relax by the fire pit on the front porch with a bottle of local Pinot Noir Blanc aka White Pinot Noir, a still white wine made from not totally ripe red Pinot Noir grapes by pressing the juice right off the skins. After settling for a few days, the juice is then inoculated and transferred to French oak barrels to ferment and then to age. The rose gold color of the resulting wine is pretty unique and a great indicator if you are tasting blind. The yeasty, beery nose with overtones of stone fruit is also fairly indicative.

Because we're just going into our rainy season which will last until next May, we have relocated our front patio furniture from under the open pergola to under the cover of the front porch, around the fire pit. Doesn't everyone have a fire pit on their front porch? It makes a great place to have a glass of wine when the weather is not too cold or too rainy.

Baked Chicken, Artichoke Hearts, and Cannellini

8 bone-in chicken thighs

salt and pepper, to taste

1 bunch of Italian parsley, destemmed and minced

3-4 sprigs thyme, destemmed and minced

1 large sprig of rosemary, destemmed and minced

1 sprig oregano, destemmed and minced

8-12 sage leaves, minced

6-8 cloves garlic, minced

zest of one lemon

2 8-ounce drained weight cans of quartered artichoke hearts

3 15- to 16-ounce cans of cannellini beans

Decide how you're going to prepare your chicken thighs. Skin, season, and/or brown as appropriate.

Place the chicken in the bottom of a greased baking pan.

Rinse and drain the artichokes and white beans.

Mix the herbs, garlic, lemon zest, artichokes, and beans. Season to taste.

Layer the beans over the chicken.

Cover the pan and roast in a moderate oven (350F) until the chicken is ready to fall off the bone, two and a half to three hours.