Inspired Winter Chicken

When it's freezing outside, chicken and potatoes are always good, but I was looking for a new spin on an old meal. I've tried plain chicken: salt and pepper the bird, put it in a dish, leave it in the fridge overnight so the skin gets crispy, and bake it. That was my husband's favorite recipe. But I liked stuffing the bird with a lemon, or lemon and garlic, or lemon, garlic and rosemary. We always had fresh rosemary growing in our garden, but the children didn't like that particularly tangy herb, so when they were eating with us, we had to leave it out. 

Browsing in REWE, I came across fennel-stuffed sausages and vaguely remembered a restaurant meal involving chicken and sausages. I've tried different versions of this recipe--you can use chicken thighs instead if you like--but tonight's version involves the following:

One entire (preferably corn-fed) chicken that has been seasoned and left in a pan in the fridge overnight. This time I used a salt-rosemary mix. 

One pack fennel sausages--the kind you'd normally fry in the pan, or skewer and roast over a campfire. The kind you can't eat raw. 

Red onions--sliced in largish chunks

Garlic--lots. Whole cloves--six or eight. 

Roma tomatoes or any juicy-looking medium sized bunch of tomatoes. You might want three or four.

Put the bird in the pan. Slice the sausages--usually about four come in a pack--and stuff them into the chicken. Add around three cloves of garlic. You can truss the bird too, with twine (I did) but you don't have to do so.  

Slice the tomatoes and the red onions and put them in the pan with the rest of the garlic. Place the bird on top. Bake at 220º for around an hour and a half. I put aluminum foil over the bird so it wouldn't get too dry or too brown on top, and basted it a few times. 

I fully intended to provide a photograph of the finished product--but most of it was inhaled by a hungry adolescent before I could do so.